Glyphosates are not as innocuous as the sellers would like you to think. I have seen reports that USEPA Groundwater researchers have found it miles from where it was applied, in the groundwater. Other researchers have found genetic problems with toads, frogs, etc. where it is used fairly heavily. The researchers at Iowa State University report plants developing immunities to it.

Mosses grow where they want to. Most people will tell you that mosses grow on poorly drained, wet, acidic soils in shady locations, but I have mosses growing on the crushed dolomitic lime on my driveway in full sun as well as on the concrete blocks that are the foundation of my house as well as in well drained sand out back that is in full sun.

I have at least a little concern about the toxicity of something that you can spray on a few leaves of a plant and within a week the whole plant is dead. In all fairness I'm not sure of the nature and extent of safety testing information available on glyphosate, but many people probably remember or are aware of the unintended effects of DDT for example.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=glyphosate%20cancer

This Glyphosates has been on more then one thread, some with over 50 post.
On many forms.
All I know is a man in Ga. uses round-up to weed his vegetable garden all Spring & Summer long, for years now.
And he has some of the best crops & they taste good too.
Over twenty years, now & soil grows what ever he plants.
A weed comes up,he sprays it with round up.
I told him about the first thread & how I was call crazy for telling this story.
He laughed & pointed to the garden of pea vines, corn,squash & said,what do you think about barren soil.
I stand in his garden looking at a 60 inch egg plant, he had to stake & wondered how he did it.
I have grown organic garden for over twenty years & never had a 5 foot egg plant.

I use glyphosate products on the farm, I don't know the answer to your question. I do know I follow the rules when applying and the products work as claimed on my fields.

As an aside I chuckled when art mentioned "the toxicity of something that you can spray on a few leaves of a plant and within a week the whole plant is dead" as I thought of vinegar.

Lloyd

I think glyphosate is less toxic than the concentrated vinegar that some gardeners use.

The problem with glyphosate, like many chemicals, is when its is misued, or overused. Some plants are becoming resistant to it.

Glyphosate works by disrupting the plants synthesis of amino acids.

The surfactants added to the product are harmful to aquatic animals.

I guess I will have to go read that article, but if you could post a link it would be helpful.

Glyphosate breaks down pretty fast into degradates that are relatively harmless to humans. So if something is binding up all the metals in the soil - which I kinda doubt just on the face of it - it's not going to be glyphosate itself because it doesn't hang around that long.

Here's the article referred to by pnbrown in the Florida Gardening thread:

http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/7527208/1124554296/name/ag+chemical+and+crop+nutrient+interactions+2.txt

It's from Purdue Univ. but undated.

It does say glyphosate itself is a strong chelator, which is entirely possible looking at its chemical structure.

However, as I said, it breaks down rather fast, so I don't see it permanently tying up minerals. :-\

The article says farther down that it is 'not uncommon' to see lingering mineral deficiencies in treated soils. However, this particular fact is not accompanied by any references, in contrast to many of the other statements in the paper.

One thing about compost is that it both provides and holds on to a LOT of minerals and makes them available to plants. How does organic matter (and soil) retain minerals and nutrients? By chelation, of course. Chelating agents have different strengths (or amount of 'stickiness'). Glyphosate may be a strong one for the short time that it persists.

If you don't overuse glyphosate and have a healthy soil with plenty of organic matter, it's hard to see the problem.

I use it to edge around my mulched beds and where my trees mulch circles are, I haven't experienced any noticable problems where any plants are. Well, anyway, I won't worry about it then. I don't usually use lots of the stuff on each area.

I'm thinking that if it ruined the soil, I wouldn't have to keep putting Roundup on the same places to control weeds, year after year.

Good point,toxcrusadr.

I do what I can. :-]

I looked into the idea that glyphos. ties up nutrients many months ago and found that it does have the potential to tie up some micros.. Sadly I forget the many details I learned. It didn't lead me to believe the end of the world would occur with continued glyphos use, just something to be monitored.

To get back on point of the question, we are spinning off in many different directions. There is no way that just spraying round up on weeds can make soil barren of nutrients.
If you had a yard and all you did to it was just spray round up on the soil, you would have less growth of weeds. Over a long time the soil would become more barren due to lack of plants growing and dying on your soil. However, if you have a garden and you are adding compost your soil will not be barren. If you just had weeds in your yard and did nothing you would just have a yard of weeds. If you did nothing to the weeds you could have a fire hazard which would be worse then using round on the weeds.

I don't need to use it round up, as I don't have weeds as I garden. Round up does not leave any trace in the soil after the weeds are gone. If your soil was barren that means you failed to add compost, not that the round up caused your soil to become barren. Assign blame where blame is due.

When I moved into the new house with a garden of all weeds, I used round up to get rid of them, then I used compost for 20 years, and my soil is not barren. I would still use it on weeds that are growing from under the fences of other yards in which I can't dig up the weed. It is better to dig up the weed if you can, instead of using round up.

I tend to think that the truth of the matter concerning glyphosate is not quite as bad as some think nor quite as good as some think.

I just wanted to add, I would not have used round up when I was first starting out, but the ground was rock hard due to lack of compost. I could not dig out all the weeds. Now if I was starting out, I would probably have the top layer of hard soil what was infested with weeds removed and have some weed free soil brought it. Once the weeds have gone to seed it takes years to get rid of them. They will keep coming back and preen is actually harmful to the soil and plants. Round up is fairly non offensive compared to preen. If you do use round up in an area with some plants, there is a damage risk for those plants. I am only speaking of barren areas in which you have nothing but weeds there and you want to make a fresh start.

I know what to think about that, because I heard round up does go away a quickly, but I have also heard horror stories about if you use round up under a tree to weed for years, you can kill the tree over time. This conflicting information, but I would not use round up to weed under a tree. I would use compost to soften the soil and get the weed out by hand. But lots of people think round is really bad. I have friends that just live with all weeds and won't use round up, because they are scared away by horror stories. I just get so sick of the misinformation out there. If one is handicapped and can't hand weed round up is ok. It is not a demonic product.

I mulch under my trees and don't have alot of weeds, but dandelions are hard to get the whole root out. I have tons of worms and soil tests say all is well, but around the edge of the big mulch circle I use round up. I guess if the soil is depleted in the thin circle around my trees it won't make much of a difference. I have at least 30 trees and I think it would take me forever to pull by hand. Last year we got so much rain I had to do weed patrol twice a week. I will still use it, if it were that bad we would see problems with our plants. Thanks for your input everyone.

As I stated in a earlier post, a gardener use round-up to weed his garden while the vegetables are growing.
He has done this for about 20 years, in the same plot.
I can not see any set back in his garden over the years.
I am from the show me school.

It is hard to say. Maybe the people who's tree died, it was not from the round up but from other causes. Even if one used round up around a tree and it later died, how can it be proven that the round up was the cause of death? If you add compost all around, the weeds are easy to remove. I have a street that is a really pain. The compost keeps washing away, the weeds in the soil are terrible. This is one problem that I can't even solve with compost, but it's only one tree. I can remove as much bad soil as I can, add more compost, but it washes away and all the soil on every level is all weed seed infested.

I use it in places that are difficult or impossible to weed: between the stones on my patio, the gravel driveway, and the cracks in the sidewalk. On the patio, pulling weeds pulls up the sand from underneath and makes a mess. The driveways are rock hard and impossible to pull weeds from and get the root.

Everywhere else, I either pull, weedwhack, mow or let them be. Glyphosate is a specialized tool I use when I really need it.

All I can think to say about the vegetable garden is if the soil is really filled with compost, you can pull the weeds out as if they were nothing. I use a steak knife or other thing. If you spray around your crops, you risk hitting them by accident. Then you have to flush them out with water, which may or may not save them. Round up needs warm sun to work. In fact, the bottles says 70 degrees. If you use round up you can't water the crops for a while. It seems like round up would be more work in a vegetable plot then just hand removal. If the weeds are tiny and often right next to the stem of the good plant, you can't use round up. So, some hand weeded is needed anyway. If you seriously growing food you check the plants daily and can remove small weeds at this time. There is no need to delay until they get so big that you can't remove them.

tox, You talk my language. I wouldn't want to use Roundup in the garden except to perhaps get rid of Canada Thistle once and for all....that is one bugger of a plant! I don't mind some weeding and try to keep weeds from seeding so that weeds are not that big of a deal for me usually. Actually, it is the volunteers like ground cherry, tomatoes, and lettuce that seem to be the worst.

The ads tell you that the glyphosates kill weeds dead. But more and more needs to be used to control the same weeds more often. A story this morning opn NPRs Morning Edition talked about Pigweed, one of the "Amarathus spp", is so resistant to the glyphosate that it is not even slowed down anymore.

They'll just have to sell us a New, Improved example of Better Living Through Chemistry.

For anyone interested in further exploring glyphosphate and Monsanto, and some of their interactions with farmers in various countries, I saw a documentary entitled "the Future of Food". Interesting stuff.

I don't know that I take much comfort in the idea that "that guy over there uses glyphosphate all the time for years, and he has a great garden." What about if I told you "my mom smoked two packs a day and enjoyed many a cocktail when she was pregnant with me, and I made it through college just fine." Would this be enough for you to tell your daughter to go ahead and light up and your grandchildren would be fine?

My father like many people smoked for 63 years, before smoking killed him.
How many people have died from using round-up.
Guns,fire ,cars,knives,horses,cows, airplanes are proven to kill in the wrong hands.
I have yet to find one death from eating fruits from plants
with glyphosphate traces.
Sounds to me the smoking & cocktail may have hurt you, even with College, in IMO.

Yes, there is increasing resistance to Roundup. Nature seems to be working in this direction with resistant strains of bacteria too. Should we then give up all antibiotics?

Usually the resistant weeds likely can be killed, but after reaching more than 4 inches tall, they are getting to be more difficult to kill in certain areas. Like for antibiotics, the scientists hunt for new strains of killers.

The great debate might be this: Should farmers go back to more tillage, row cultivation, and umpteen compacting passes over the fields? A few might say: Farmers have no right to farm except by environmental fiat.

I don't think personal insults are necessary here.

I didn't say glyphosphate has directly killed or even harmed anyone. I was using that statement as an example of flawed logic. Anecdotal "evidence", either for or against something, does not do a whole lot for me. On the other hand, I also am skeptical of "scientific" studies, since somebody had to fund it, and that person or group likely had something to gain or lose from the endeavor.

No doubt glyphosphate can kill weeds more cheaply than alternative methods, at least in the short term. But it is also possible that there are longer term effects that we have yet to fully discover or understand. When someone says, "it's worked for person A for X years," in my opinion it does little to negate that possibility.

The environmental lobby no doubt hates Monsanto and will do all it can to discredit them, and no doubt Monsanto will accentuate the positive, and leave out the negatives, since they are driven by profit. The truth is somewhere in between. The motives of anyone who takes an extreme position on either side should be questioned.

That great garden thing bothered me also. If this garden is so great using round up all the time, I would like to see photos of that, instead of just "so and so said". I would like to hear from that person. I did lose a plant to round up once, because I was trying to kill weeds that grew under the fence, that I could not dig up. I swear I never hit the plant with round up, but it declined and died nothing could save it. It may have sucked up the round up from the ground. So many weeds grow too close to plants, you can't use round up for all weeds.

I am sorry, I lost me head(to be fair, you open that door).
I still think you were saying that round up is worse then it has been proving to be.
Your example of cocktails & smoking is the leading cause of birth defectives & one of the few that could be wiped out by the mother.
To compare that with your dislike of a big bad company & it's product is extreme IMO.

If I could get the whole root of Dandelions out of my rocky but loamy soil I would pull weeds. I did have a tree succumb to borers and cankers, I had goutweed around it and only sprayed around the outside of the "living doilly" of goutweed, if I knew the roundup stressed it I would try another way to weed. Smother dandelions with rocks til they shrivel up from lack of light? Does vinegar work? I will probably use it again (roundup) but I am going to try vinegar if I can find the undiluted vinegar, if it works it should be cheaper if not safer. Groundcovers are a major helper in my beds, but need help before they get thick.

"To compare that with your dislike of a big bad company & it's product is extreme IMO."

Not in my opinion. All one need do is Google Monsanto Anniston Alabama to get an eyeful of just how big and bad Monsanto really is.

"How many people have died from using round-up."

Like smoking and other birth defects it will likely be a while before the truth is allowed out.

tj

Here is a link that might be useful: First Fruits

Poaky, you can also try boiling water on weeds. A small amount right on the center of a dandelion plant will most likely be a severe detriment to its evil schemes!

I'm staying out of the rest of this, it's strayed way too far from 'glyphosate tying up nutrients' and gone right off into la-la land. :-\

That whole article first fruits is talking about big scale use of round up. I don't think it is correctly anyway, but regardless, it won't destroy your garden if you use round up on a few weeds here and there. If you super soak your garden in round up, that would be a bad idea.