A new garden season means a lot of really bad ideas getting posted & shared across social media.
Like this one:
PLEASE, for the love of gods & goddesses, DO NOT mix a bunch of random household chemicals & start dumping them on your soil.
PLEASE.
Chemicals are chemicals -- PERIOD.
It doesn't matter if they live under your sink or in your garden shed.
They will ALL run off into our water systems, and affect wildlife & the health of the water.
Especially dangerous is mixing ammonia with other things -- AND you can easily wipe out your soil biome using these random things!
Epsom salts are NOT often required in anyone's garden -- the only way to know if your soil is magnesium deficient would be to have a broad-spectrum test done on it at a proper lab. (Hint: MOST soil is not deficient in magnesium, plants need very little of it to begin with. And no, it doesn't "prevent Blossom End Rot"; simply rubbing your fingers over the blossom end to knock it off the fruit does the job perfectly -- dead plant matter + water = rotting/composting = BER, IMHO. I have yet to see BER in 40 years of gardening in several places.)
Soil is a living breathing thing. Feed the soil & your plants will do juuuussst fine. We've been first-hand witnesses to what stripping the soil to dry dust year after year, and using more chemicals to kill weeds, then more chemicals to fertilize the plants, because we were told there are no nutrients in soil, you have to add them (WRONG!)
Compost is a miracle for soil. Soil needs moisture, nutrients, and air, or it will die. Dead soil cannot feed your plants. Skip the worm bin, bury your fall cleanup in trenches where you plan to out a heavy feeder next year (& be sure to include the green grass clippings (adds nitrogen to the soil), and it will compost over the winter, feeding all the good bacteria & funguses as well as attract worms over the winter. It'll be mostly done by spring, I just give it a toss, marvel at the moist, crumbly, soft, soil & the hundreds of earthworms, & plant whatever I want to put in.
I never bag grass clippings for municipal "garbage" pick-up. I mix them into my soil, use them to mulch over various plantings & layer my compost bin with them. In all honesty, I get more use out of them by directly using them on beds... managing a compost bin takes a long time. I do A LOT of trench composting because it is soooo much easier. I just bury whatever I have on hand, and/or mulch over well-watered seed beds.
I did my garlic beds yesterday -- hauled lots of rainwater in watering cans, and gave each bed a good soaking, then put about an inch of grass clippings on top (it was the first mow of the year, so there was dead leaves, dead grass, and green grass all mixed together. I also dug some of it into the holes that I was digging thistles out of - when I was post-surgery last July, I wasn't able to garden at all & unfortunately, some thistle seeds took hold -- Canada Thistles AND "Creeping Thistles", GRR! So the battle is, once again, ON.
They are very difficult to control if they get the chance to establish themselves. Creeping thistle especially -- it sends out lateral roots, covered in little nodes, and these roots break easily. Each piece of root will do the same -- send out more lateral roots with a plant sprouting every few inches. From what I read online last year, it is about a 3-year battle.
UGH.
I went a bit off-topic there for a minute, sorry.
My main point is to please NOT share these ridiculous memes. They're perpetuating myths that are just that --- MYTHS. Except these myths that can be downright dangerous & carry some really bad consequences to the people using these things. I've even seen posts like this saying "Don't use those bad bad chemicals in your garden, use this instead!", then go on to list 4-8 actual chemicals pulled from the cleaning cupboard or under the sink. (Yes, vinegar is a chemical -- it is acetic acid. Some wart removers have highly concentrated acetic acid because it dissolves skin/tissue! The regular 5% we have to drizzle on fries isn't bad, but there's also pickling vinegar that's a bit stronger, and some stores carry 20% solution for tougher cleaning jobs -- but if you mix it with certain other things, you can seriously injure yourself, or, worse.)
Please - leave the cleaning stuff & random things in the cupboard! All you need is kitchen trimmings, coffee grounds, tea bags, brown paper (paper takeout/grocery bags, brown cardboard, egg cartons or beverage take-out trays work, too - in Canada, newspaper ink is veggie-based, so safe for gardens - I leave the colour-heavy flyers in the blue bag, but shred newspaper to line planting holes, to hold onto some water & attract earthworms, skipping the worm bin step entirely).
Have a fun, SAFE gardening season, wherever you are!
Some sources linked below:
https://toxedfoundation.org/mixing-cleaners-just-dont/
https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/common-household-cleaning-products-you-should-never-mix/
https://www.nfpa.org/news-blogs-and-articles/blogs/2020/04/13/diy-the-dangers-of-mixing-chemicals
