By Greg Seaman • August 8th, 2010

“Weed ‘n feed” is a combination herbicide and fertilizer product which is designed to kill weeds and fertilize the grass in a single application. Marketed under many different brand names, these chemically-based herbicides are some of the most toxic substances which are still legal to buy. (In Canada, all weed ‘n feed pesticide and fertilizer combination products have recently been banned.)

Each year Americans apply an estimated 27 million pounds of weed ‘n feed to parks, cemeteries, home lawns and anywhere else mown grass is found. A mix of three “phenoxy herbicides” called 2,4-D, dicamba and mecoprop typically blended together into weed killers and weed ‘n feed products, they kill broadleaf plants such as dandelions while sparing grass.

The lure of convenience, and effective marketing, have made weed ‘n feed among the most frequently used lawn care products. Short-term effectiveness is gained at the expense of long-term lawn and soil health. The overpowered chemical fertilizers these products contain actually weaken turf—causing the kind of fast, weak, unnatural growth that’s susceptible to pests and disease.

Giving up the weed ‘n feed does not mean you’ll have to live with a weed strewn lawn. Organic lawn care practices, combined with nontoxic pre-emergent herbicides, will restore your weed patch to a healthy lawn, over time.

Here are six reasons to avoid using synthetic weed ‘n feed products on your lawn:

1. Uneven, excessive application of herbicides.

Granular “weed and feed” products are applied to the entire lawn, not merely to areas of weeds, which results in herbicides being applied where they are not needed. The mixture of fertilizer and herbicide is incompatible because one ingredient should be applied to the entire lawn, and one is intended for problem spots. In most lawns, broadleaf weeds like dandelions usually occupy less than five or 10 per cent of the area.

Gary Fish, an environmental specialist at the Maine Board of Pesticide Control, who used to work with Chemlawn before it merged with Tru Green, believes the combined weed ‘n feed products, whether for pre-emergent fertilizer or for weeds, are unnecessary and harmful to the environment. Fish said weed ‘n feed products use 20 to 30 times more pesticide than is needed.

When we give lawns more food than they need, the excess fertilizers end up in the water because plants simply can’t absorb as much as we think they want.

2. Granular “weed ‘n feed” chemicals harm the environment.

Quick-release fertilizers, commonly used in...

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Location:  Vancouver, CA

Hello. My name is Greg Seaman, and I write the pages for Eartheasy. Here's a little information about my background and how the pages of Eartheasy have come into being. A native of Long Island, New York, I...