Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, but those mistakes can often be avoided. Particularly those mistakes that end up killing off 70 acres of grass.
As Max Philby writes in his piece for The Courier, out of Findlay, Ohio, a landscaping company mistakenly applied a chemical similar to Roundup, instead of the fertilizer they were meant to be applying, to 75% of the grass areas around the University of Findlay. This error, aside from costing the landscaping company their contract, will also hit their insurance premium hard – professionals estimate the cost of repairing the ground will be anywhere from $500,000 up to $2 million, depending on how much needs to be sodded versus reseeded.
This costly error cans serve as a reminder for homeowners and landscapers alike that we are only a short bit away from a disaster if we take shortcuts. They haven’t released a statement on how this mistake happened, but it is likely due to a labeling error – a container was improperly labeled, or not labeled at all. Having a chemical sitting around with an incorrect label or no label is a surefire way to create mistakes. Even if it means writing something on the container in permanent marker, this is a much better option than no label or a wrong label.
A secondary lesson that can be taken from this is that whenever you apply something to your lawn and garden, be thoughtful of what you are putting down, and how much of it you are applying. Be thorough when weighing the effects of a chemical, whether it be a fertilizer, pesticide, weed killer, or anything else that you are adding into your local ecosystem. While this mistake only ended in killing off grass, it could have been much worse. Mistakes can lead to the ruining of the soil, run-off into waterways, or poisoning local wildlife.
