Toxicity of Roundup

[raymondo]

Glyphosate resistant weeds are bound to show up wherever it is used regularly. You've probably already got resistant amaranth in Germany imgrimmer.

I wonder what the next chemical on the GMO agenda will be? I heard they were developing 2,4-D ready crops. Perhaps they already have. The mind boggles. We continue to accept whatever is dished up.

[RpR]

As far as these weed killers go, I have found that some work well, usually not the big brands, only if you heavily dose, i.e. poor it straight out of the bottle on the weeds.
This is the best way to use systemic if you do not want to broadcast is over every living thing.
Obviously only works on small areas.

I have also found that the old stuff,I have access to a shed with decades old stuff, works far better than the latest greatest.

I have for the most part simply stopped using it on the garden except for the method I said, only way to stop thistles really, although digging down to rhizomes and painting them does work.

For my parking lot/drive way I probably will go back to pouring old gasoline on it as that is the only thing that works well, is cheap and most of the nasty compounds evaporate.

[prairiegarden]

I THINK that the latest was a sort of 2-4D cocktail and it was rejected by the USDA as "possibly affecting more than the target crop" or some such apologetic comment.

RpR, if you want to sterilize your soil so nothing will grow,   vinegar is said to be difficult for plants to handle, especially the stronger concentrations such as pickling vinegar.  Or undiluted urine in sufficient quantities will certainly do it, at least for a while, especially if dosed regularly for a few days. At least it's worked to get rid of the quackgrass snuggled under and around the concrete steps, although quackgrass being what it is, it will likely need to be repeated each year.  A lot cheaper and doesn't have negative impact on the rest of the environment or on your health. 

[steev]

For spot application in paving, draining hot pasta-water on weeds can be very effective, although you may not want to carry a pot from the kitchen and back.

Were I to use old gasoline, I think I'd only do so where I could toss a match at it.

As for urine, I prefer to use it for gopher-purge, not wanting to stick a lit road-flare down the hole and tamp in soil (works a treat, but all that strontium!).

[reed]

I pour boiling water on the sidewalk cracks as needed. The drive is gravel, little grows in the tracks of course and the center is a mat of plantain, dandelions and this wonderful smelling little wild camomile weed. I like to stomp on it on the way to the mail box. There is a little bit of a small ground cover thyme, it holds on but has never taken off like I hoped it might. If grass tries to invade I dig it out or scald it with water. I'm very careful not to spill gasoline and herbicides are completely banned from my property, zero tolerance.

[RpR]

I bought some new stuff called Erase , a vegetation killer.
It works on the parking lot-drive-way but do not use on a lawn as even dropping drops on a dandelion, leaves a yellow spot bigger than expected,but with the wet humid weather they filled back in.
At that it does not linger in the soil too long as some spots treated ,even with roughed soil for penetration, are now showing signs of spurge coming back.

[flowerbug]

i try not to use any *cides here, but once in a while i have had to use some to control some wild grape vines, but that is only once every four or five years or so. we used to use a lot more but i wasn't happy with that and have gone to manual methods as much as i can. alas, i do have some physical limitations so i'm not always able to get them all removed.

in the vegetable gardens i don't use any sprays at all but i'm sure some drifts in from the surrounding farm fields when they spray. i have blocked all surface flows now to keep their runoff from going across the gardens out back. i didn't mind it for many years because they were not farming the field where the water was coming from, but now that they've put it back into production i built a berm to deflect the water. so far that is working.

[prairiegardens]

You have to be careful with some of this crap. In a load of hay, one bale had obviously been hit by drift. It LOOKED the same as the others, and the horses ate it, but it was nearly 10 years before ANYTHING would grow where it had sat on the field. Not weeds, not buckwheat, it just sat as an ominous bare grey/ black on the ground. A few years ago in Britain thousands of people had their gardens destroyed when people used manure from cows that had been fed some chemical, don't now remember what it was. It didn't hurt the cows, it seems, the stuff passed through the digestive system unchanged and ready to kill any vegetation it hit. People had to change out their soil. A total disaster.
the thing I don't understand - one of many- is that anyone who looks into this will find it's also connected with spontaneous abortions in animals fed hay sprayed with glyphosate and women who work in close contact such as greenhouses using the stuff. Also implicated in unusually high rates of prostate cancer. I sent a study abstract done by a joint university group which called for an immediate ban because of what they learned in the greenhouse industry of southern Ontario, to every politician in Ottawa remotely connected to agriculture. If a reply at all, it was a condescending  comment telling me Ag Canada had decided it was safe so not to worry my hysterical little head about it, everything was fine. I really loathe politicians.

[steev]

As well you should.

[flowerbug]

what i would like is for all of these herbicides, pesticides and fungicides to be applied to the lawns and foods of the people who make them.

[steev]

Working in the ag=chem industry, it occurred to me that people should have to live near the plant in proportion to the money they make from it; ie: the CEO should live next door, not some poor shmuck who can't afford a less offensive environment.