Allergy Free Gardening

I borrowed this book from the library, but I may have to buy a copy.

Basically, the drive for fruitless trees in landscaping has led to higher and higher pollen counts in urban and suburban areas.  There is no such thing as a trash free tree, it either drops fruit (including nuts and seed pods) or fills the air with pollen. The drive to not have to clean up anything in yards has led to increases in the rates of allergy and asthma.

I found out that two of the biggest offenders in my yard (pegging a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10) are bermuda grass and carrot.  I don’t plants carrots on purpose because they are just to difficult to get to grow right with our heavy clay soils.  but I have a lot of wild carrot that seems to overtake my garden before I have a chance to get it out of there.  And the bermuda grass has been a major weed in my garden from day one.  It’s the grass that all the builders put in because it is cheap and easy, but it is also very invasive.  And now I find out that it is also very allergy inducing.  No wonder John can’t get through mowing without a major allergy attack!  We have been trying to shift over to Buffalo grass, fescue, St. Augustine and rye, but it has been slow going.

The Live Oak also ranks pretty high, but I’m not getting rid of my trees.  We will just have to make do where they are concerned.  Other than that, our garden seems to be mild to moderate.  Yeah us!