Re: Quick question on Round Up

RoundUp is a powerful herbicide spray that's absorbed through plant foliage. It'll kill everything except ivy and vinca. Suggestions to apply with a brush or sponge-tipped tongs are meant for places where one wants, for example, to eliminate specific weeds in a flowerbed of desirable plants. That is, where wholesale spraying is not practical. You can probably (carefully) spray the weeds and grass around your shubs with good effect. RoundUp doesn't poison the ground or kill through the ground or roots.

For application directions, read the label. RoundUp is sold in both ready-to-use spray bottles and containers of concentrate designed to be diluted before spraying (or painting or sponging). It is applied to living foliage (won't do a thing for eliminating dried grass) on the morning of a preferably sunny day when rain isn't expected. Day of the week is not pertinent.

Instead of using a sponge why not use gloves?

You put on light surgical rubber gloves then woollen or cotton glove over, then just dip your hand into the Weed killer mix, close your hand to get rid of excess liquid, and then draw your hand over the weeds you want to kill.

Also it is better if you can treat the weeds in the evening rather than the morning. The weed killer doesn't evaporate so fast so more is absorbed into the weeds.

If that method of application is not on the label, I strongly recommend it not be used in that way. Round up is a systemic pesticide and I wouldn't use it for anything, certainly not with my latex covered hand. Who knows if it would break down the latex? I may be alarmist, but if you have the glove on and all, how bout watering the night before and pulling weeds out?

It would be wise to use heavy duty gloves made for handling chemicals. Can be found at garden centers.

karen

animaux wrote:

The label for Roundup specifies rates and mixes but not the equipment. The technique of applying with a cotton glove over a rubber glove is a standard technique that has been recommended to me by our county agents and horticulturists at Longwood Gardens. One very successful use of this method was to eliminate bindweed from an asparagus patch. If you pull bindweed, each piece of root forms a new plant. The Roundup applied with a cotton glove over a latex glove worked great.

other than that constant twitch we've been meaning to mention?

or even wiser to learn to garden and develop soils without weeds?

I wish people would believe this. I have been in this house now since 1999. This is the fourth spring my garden has been worked on. I am noticing a great deal of highly successional plants which indicate good soil, not poor soil. Many weeds do indicate poor soil. I'm glad you brought that up, because it is a valid fact, one which I am experiencing in my own garden.

We were riddled with Johnson grass when we moved here. Each spring we'd water out back and sink a nice long fork, loosen the soil and pull gently till we got the whole rhizome. Each year, less and less. This year I think I've pulled about 20 pieces of it on a half acre. I also use mulch, lots of it. Always free every year after Christmas trees get shredded. Next year I'm going to rent a giant trailer and get as many tons of it as my body allows me to hoist onto the trailer.

Then again, many people are not gardeners. They want a garden, but not the gardening. For me, gardening is an activity I can't live without.

Anyway, off on a tangent, but I'm glad you brought up the fact that if we build healthy soils, we don't have the trouble with weeds that people who feed plants, instead of soils, have.

I understand that. What we need to be more aware of is that at one time I was and currently you are in the industry. People who know about the grave dangers of pesticides have superior knowledge than the average homeowner who thinks more is better.

I'm not trying to put anyone down. But inform people who are novice or hobby gardeners who hear these unbelievable commercials from Round Up and Bug B Gone and how great they are...etc. At one time, Monsanto had such a huge set of balls to go as far and say, on a television commercial, "Round Up, save as table salt..." The EPA jumped on that and in a weeks time a judge deemed it false or misleading and they had to can all their silly commercials...including the one where the weeds talked and were acting like they were mobsters, and such. I doubt you have those commercials in the UK.

I think you can see where I'm going with this. Not meant to offend, rather to inform.

Victoria