Hi Guys!
Would small amounts of dish soap be toxic to grass?
I have a mouse in a glass cage that needs cleaning from time to time. I typically use about two or three squirts of dish soap and just scrub it and then rinse it out with the garden hose. Then I ceremoniously dump the whole lot onto the back lawn. My landlord's son saw me doing this, and said I was going to kill all the grass. I clean the cage once a month, tops (it's big and there's only one mouse, so it stays clean for a while), and like I said I use about three squirts of dish soap. Am I committing genocide on the lawn, or is this stuff relatively harmless?
I can see why he'd think it might be detrimental, but I've heard of bug treatments using soap so I thought it couldn't be that toxic or no one would tell you to put it on your plants. Plus I've been doing this for over a year now and haven't noticed any patch of lawn death yet...so, meh, dunno.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts!
Might depend on the type of dish soap. I do know dawn dish soap will do no harm to the grass. However dish soap is not the best thing to clean a small pet cage with. Vinegar is actually better. It disinfects as well as bleach, kills as many germs as bleach, removes smell better than soap, and being acidic breaks up urine deposits. On top of that it is completely nontoxic to the pet and the outdoors unlike bleach residue. Although after bleach dries it turns into harmless salt.
Also if you are currently throwing it away the bedding and mouse droppings will actually be very beneficial to the lawn. 5years later there is an area of grass that grows 4 times faster and greener than the rest of the lawn where I used to dump the guinea pig cages. The only thing is you will either have to spread it or designate one spot to pile it because too thick of layer of bedding will kill the grass under it until it breaks down. Having 2 gerbils, 2 degus (like south american version of a squirrel), and 3 guinea pigs I have a compost pile just for what I clean out of their cages or sometimes I use it as mulch between plant rows which also provides fertilizer.
Also if you are currently throwing it away the bedding and mouse droppings will actually be very beneficial to the lawn. 5years later there is an area of grass that grows 4 times faster and greener than the rest of the lawn where I used to dump the guinea pig cages. The only thing is you will either have to spread it or designate one spot to pile it because too thick of layer of bedding will kill the grass under it until it breaks down. Having 2 gerbils, 2 degus (like south american version of a squirrel), and 3 guinea pigs I have a compost pile just for what I clean out of their cages or sometimes I use it as mulch between plant rows which also provides fertilizer.