Locally Grown

4 Comments

• 1
  John S. Thomas
  Posted May 11, 2007 at 11:02 am | Permalink

  That is some nice looking sod…

  Does anyone know if the City intends to use only ORGANIC, NON CHEMICAL methods to maintain this grass?

  Seriously, this sod is close to the pool where our children will be swimming. Users will be walking accross this with bare feet.

  This is NOT a good place for chemicals to be applied. I would be very curious to hear what the maintenance plan will be.

  Personally, I feel this should be a chemical free zone, as should all of our parks in Northfield.

• 2
  Griff Wigley
  Posted May 11, 2007 at 11:55 am | Permalink

  Great question, John. Can you or someone contact Joel Walinski or someone on the parks and rec advisory board?
  http://www.ci.northfield.mn.us/cityhall/boards/parksandrecadvisory

• 3
  John S. Thomas
  Posted May 11, 2007 at 12:15 pm | Permalink

  E-mail sent to Joel, we shall see.

• 4
  John S. Thomas
  Posted May 15, 2007 at 7:39 am | Permalink

  I am quite pleased. Here is the relevant portion of the response from Mr. Walinski:

  =*=*=
  Our plans for care of the turf within the pool use area do not include any major herbicide use particularly when the pool is open for business. Most of the turf care, other than watering and mowing will occur primarily in September after the pool is closed, this includes aerating, over seeding, and fertilizing. In the spring we may use gypsum to help with the compaction.

  As for the general park areas, our goal is not to use herbicides. The exceptions to this would be at parklands that have been identified for major turf improvement, -where we’re trying to get a handle on improving the turf we may use one treatment or several spot treatments. We also treat our athletic fields somewhat differently because of the expectation of higher quality turf.
  =*=*=

  Thanks for the quick reply Joel!

  -J