Before an annual fundraiser he holds in his large backyard, a Minnesota man headed to the local garden center to pick up some weed killer in order to pretty things up. He spent $175 on five bottles of product from the company Ferti-lome. But the product he chose has a cousin in a similar bottle that doesn’t just kill weeds: it kills every plant in sight, then stays in the soil and prevents any plant growth for about six months. Guess which formula the garden center sold him?

Now about forty thousand square feet of lawn is dead, and he took to the local news to warn others about the similar-looking products. It’s not clear why dead grass forced him to cancel the annual benefit the family holds for cystic fibrosis charities, but they couldn’t find another site and were forced to cancel the event.

Other scorched-earth herbicides make their purpose clear right on the label. “I think the packaging should say right on it, this will kill your lawn,” he told TV station KARE.

Backyard fundraiser canceled after lawn mistakenly killed [KARE]

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