Roundup is ate up in the soil within 24 hours by soil micro-organisms. There is no residue after that period. Whatever you do don't ever spray it on anything desirable or it will die or be damaged by drift ect.

Vera

Hi Tansy,

I remember reading somewhere a couple of years ago that when it rains now, it rains round up.So many people use it thinking it has no impact on the enviroment,i belive for every action, there is a reaction.

Maybe you have heard in the news the last couple of weeks that we are in serious trouble with out honey bees,bats,and frogs,even our butterflies are in danger.Bats are dying by the hundreds of thousands across the nation,they belive it is because we have used to much poision to kill the west nile virus,and the bats are eating the infected insects.Action-Re-action.

Have you thought of using vinegar?Get a couple of gallons and try it.I have used it with sucess in the past.Can you cover the area with plastic to kill out the weeds,use a hot weed killer[i forget the name of the thing]it is a tourch thingey. :0)

I hope others have some ideas to add,there is always an alternative to chemical use i think.

I must admit though, i really don't know that much about round-up.I know there are a couple of strenghts,my friends hubby is a farmer, and the kind he uses is very strong.He paints the area with a paint roller full of the stuff,waits a couple of weeks and then she can plant.

Carol

Hi, Carol:
I hadn't heard that about the rain, but I will check into that.
I think I better stick with cardboard and skip the Round Up just in case.
The other day I heard that soy could promote cancer which was pretty upsetting as I am a soy-eating vegetarian. But I don't see how the soy thing could be true since in other countries where soy is a mainstay there's less cancer.
So far the only chemical I am planning to use in the veggie garden is Bug-Get-A and that's because last year I simply could not get rid of enough slugs to save my vegetables. Nothing organic works for me when it comes to slugs, so I'll make sure the Bug-Get-A is in traps, safely away from everything except slugs.

You use Bug-Get-A too, right? Make sure birds can't get to the pellets!

Hi Tansy,

I know what you mean, it seems like nothing is safe any more,i think you only have to be careful with GM.soy bean products.I am not a vegetarian,but i don't eat a lot of meat because i don't like it.I don't like soy either,but my daughter eats it all the time,she just makes sure it is not Gm.

I don;t use any pestisides in my yard,execpt i do for slugs,can't remember the name right now,i will have to look into what you suggested though.

As for round-up.Like i said, my best friend,s hubby is a farmer and they use it all the time.Her plants do not grow as fast as mine do, i don't know if this is the reason or not, but she is always asking me what i use in my gardens,every thing is big and healthy,she does not believe me when i tell her nothing,ha ha
She and i have had the disscusion about round=up,and wondered if she has to much poison in her soil,we have not arrived at a good answer,some one with more knowledge than us would know.

I took the Master Gardeners Course,i did compleat the course,but every time i would mention any kind of organic gardening i was shut down,do you know what they used one time for mulch?You will not belive this,it was a veggie. garden, the veggies., when ready, we were going to donat to the senior center,well, they used Old Carpet!!!!!!!!!!!
You know how much poison is in carpeting,and to give the harvest to a senior center,thats when i quit.

Well,enough about that,do you have any Green yet?
I am going out in a little bit to check on mine.
We have sun today,and yesterday,so i am hopeful.

Carol

Just to set what I said straight. I don't condone chemical use either, but I'd grab RU before anything else for an herbicide if it really came down to it; Quackgrass is WAY hard to smother and the roots can persist forever. The problem is those people who think more is better just because it's "safer"....more is NEVER better! I say the same thing about organic products too. If only people who did use ANY chemical on the farm and garden would just read the ENTIRE label and follow all the warnings and DO's and Dont's......it's quite unfortunate that that isn't always the case.
Personally I'd rather a sit and pull weed seedlings for hours..it's relaxing to me :D

Oh Vera,

I had to laugh when you said you would rather sit and pull weeds,my daughter Loves to sit and pull Creapping Charley,do you have that where you are,it is awful, but she will sit for hours and pull, she finds it very relaxing.She can get down to the root and pull and pull for ever.

Yea, i do agree with you about people not reading the entire lable on products,and i never thought for a min.any thing you said was out of line,i'm sorry if i gave that impression,you all know way more here that i do,far be it for me to correct any one.I was just giving My opinion,thats all.

Carol

Vera: You are so right. Used correctly, sometimes RU is the best way to get back land that is under the grip of weeds. And after you get control back, it's not a problem cultivating by hand or using natural techniques.
I was outside today putting down cardboard between my raised beds. I may use RU just in the difficult areas by my driveway. Other than that, we are aiming for as organic, and low maintenance, a garden as possible.

Carol, you are so blessed to have that daughter. Creeping Charley really messed up my townhouse garden because it got into the sedums. I pulled and pulled, but it won.

LOL! Carol, me and you daughter would get along fine!! I don't have Creeping Charlie, but lots of other ones that love the areas around my beds that are gravel driveways and roads. Mostly annual weeds, poa annua (annual blue grass)and dandelion of course! I don't know what it is but I enjoy it.
I discovered my best tool for dandelions is an old long screwdriver. If the ground is most (helps to be on the sandy side) and you take that screwdriver and poke all the way down beside it and work it around you can pull up the entire tap root LOL!

Vera

Creeping Charley! I can't stand that stuff and it is taking over my yard. Here is a site I found for getting rid of it. I'm going to try it this year. If I don't get the mixture right I guess my husband will be getting that rock lawn he's been wanting!

http://landscaping.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=landscaping&cdn=homegarden&tm=28&gps=342_420_564_382&f=00&su=p284.9.336.ip_p504.1.336.ip_&tt=2&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.extension.umn.edu/info-u/plants/BG522.html

When we bought our house in 2004, we had weeds well over six feet high in every single flower bed. The elderly owner had been a serious gardener (we have an acre's worth of flower beds), but hadn't lived in the home for four years. The weeds were just unbelievable--my husband called it an urban Vietnam. I'm proud to say we didn't use a single chemical input anywhere on our 3 1/2 acres, and still haven't. We used good old-fashioned elbow grease (and electric tools!) to get those weeds out, and our property looks lovely now.

As Carol said, everything you do comes back to you. We have dogs and chickens, we feed wild birds, we have a well, and we have a creek running on our property. We opt for choices that don't endanger any of those things, and that includes *ourselves*. The hard work of weeding isn't a lot of fun, but it's very satisfying knowing that you aren't harming anything by using chemical-free weeding methods.

Amy

Tansy,

Your right,i am blessed to have such a great daughter,she is a wonderful woman,but,all the weed pulling she does is in HER garden,ha ha ha
Her yard is beautiful,we enjoy much time talking gardens and life in general.She has Fibromyalgia so she is not able to do as much as she used to,but she puts me to shame.
She can sit and pull crepping charlie for a long time,theraputic she says.

Vera, you must understand that,ha ha ha

I have it in my back yard,it is winning,i hate that weed.

Funny story,last year i went to a small nursery close by and asked if they had crepping jenny, i didn't know the B.name and they didn't know what i was asking for.They asked me if i really wanted that plant,it sounded to them that it was a relative of crepping charlie,i said yes,it is,but crepping charlie is the relitive no one talkes about,he is the bad uncle.:0)

Crepping Jenny is just beautiful in a hanging basket,very souther looking.

Amy, i envy your chickens, always wanted to have afew running around, they are great for slug control i hear,oh,and ticks.We have Koi fish and lots of frogs and toads.Isn't life grand.

Hi Hosta,

I've only had chickens for the last eight months (I have four pullets), but they're *wonderful*! They entertain us, eat lots of bugs, eat all our kitchen leftovers, and make the best eggs I've ever eaten. I think that's my only complaint about them: they've ruined me for store-bought eggs for the rest of my life. Once you taste truly farm-fresh, free-range eggs, you can't eat those two-month-old eggs from the store ever again.

Amy

Hi Amy,

I know what you mean about fresh eggs,i was buying mine from a lady who raises chickens and sells the eggs,they were really good,it's to far for me to drive now to pick them uyp,so i am looking for someone closer.

We are not zoned to have any critters,our old neighbor used to have chickens and rosters,every morning you would hear the roster crowing, what a nice thing to hear early in the mornning.They moved,someone else moved in and spoiled it out here for every one.

I have been wondering if a person could fight the zoning board now because of our econmy,you should be able to raise your own chickens.

Do you know that in some subdivdisions you are not allowed to hang your clothes out side to dry.Is that just the crazest thing you ever heard?Who comes up with these laws any way.

Well, i gotta go now, gotta run to the store and buy some of them nasty,two monthe old eggs,show off!ha ha ha

Carol

It's the homeowners associations. Those are the Devil spawn. >:(

Hi Carol,

YES, you can fight your zoning boards. I'm a member of Backyardchickens.com, a message board for, well, back yard chickens. ;-) Many of the members on the board have approached their municipalities, and some have been successful in changing the city codes (or even finding loopholes that allowed poultry within city limits). Madison, Wisconsin and Portland, Maine come to mind. The interesting thing is that, 60-70 years ago, every housewife kept a few chickens for eggs in her back yard. Many cities still have provisions that allow hens (not roosters) within city limits!

You can find local farmers (and sources of local meat, produce and eggs) by going to localharvest.org. That's how I found an organic farmer only TWO miles from my house!

Amy

Carol: I love creeping jenny too--love that color and hope mine survived the winter.
FarFar: Sounds like your weeds may have been easier to pull than what others have to deal with in uncultivated areas. I really look forward to having chickens someday--I've had a pet chicken before as a kid. But now have 4 dogs and there are a lot of hawks in my area too.
Clumsy: I agree about the HOAs. I dread them. Hope they never get them on my mountain. I want to be able to hang my laundry out someday too--if I want to, in addition to having a flock of chickens.

Just a couple more thoughts on getting weeds under control. I think it goes a long ways to understanding the specific weeds you have to eradicate them. That is, if they are annual or perennial weeds and what their spreading habit is.

For example, I moved into a country home with a realatively small meadow of wild flowers. Unfortunately, it had become overgrown with dandelions. Since dandelions are annual weeds that spread from seed. I spent 15-20 minutes each evening (well most) for several weeks in the spring to pull off the yellow dandelion flower heads. For the rest of the season when I noticed a yellow head, I'd pluck it off and dispose of it.
The following year my meadow was mostly dandelion free (do you really ever get rid of those things!).
The point I'm trying to make is that by simply plucking the seed heads, I was preventing the next generation knowing that the current generation (the living plant) would die out by the end of the season.

Generally, when I am short on time I try to at least go through my gardens to ensure the weeds that are there have not gone to seed. Don't get me wrong though, I've used my share of Roundup on the poison ivy growing on our propery. That stuff is just plain nastey!

Tansy,

Not sure of how big of an area you want to get rid of the grass in, but use some vinegar, then after a couple days, use boiling water. Boiling water does something to the plant cells and then it is kaput. It may not be effective, especially if there are plants around it you want to save.

Maybe a meadow would work. Eliminate the grass and plant a wildflower mixture?

Just a few thoughts.

Farfaraway,

You deserve a round of applause for revitalizing your property without using any chemicals. BRAVO!!!!!!!

Hi Tansy,

Ooooh no, these weeds were not by any means easy to eradicate! It wasn't a matter of just clearing a bed or two by pulling--it took us two full summers to do it, months of backbreaking labor, and as I said, many of the beds had weeds well over six feet high that had turned into what we call "weed trees" with thick trunks. Keep in mind that we live in the country, so the weeds in the beds had overgrown into the lawn and had completely taken over everywhere. It was truly miserable work; we used a chainsaw, a weed whacker, a tractor and even burned a couple areas. The property just looked like hell (turned green). I knew when we were doing this that we were trashing many lovely perennials that had managed to stay alive without being choked by weeds, but we had no choice. I'm so glad we chose to do it this way, though, and that I don't have any worries now about our dogs and our chickens playing on our property; wild birds can eat and drink here and reproduce without the repercussions of chemicals, and we have a healthy bug population. It was so worth it.

Amy

Hi Amy,

We live in the country,all around us is farm land,we are surounded by 100 acres of woods,5 of which is ours,we would love to have a few chickens,how would i go about looking into this?Finding loop holes and such?We have a very NASTY neighbor.We also have alot of hawks,we just saw one last week take a bird from the feeder,and a lot of cyoties.But i still want chickens.:0) Carol

Hi Carol!

We live in the country too--our property abuts a portion of a metropark that isn't open to the public (we love it!) but is home to coyotes and hawks. We're also surrounded by farm fields everywhere (acres and acres of GM corn and soy). Our girls do not free-range but are let out into a totally fenced run so they can't become hawk breakfast. :-)

Sorry to hear about your mean neighbor. If you want to get info on zoning I would recommend joining the BYC message board I mentioned earlier and posting about zoning issues. The people there are very knowledgeable. SeaChick (her member name, don't know her real name) from Portland, ME is very good and recently had Portland's code changed to allow poultry in back yards!

Amy

Hi, Carol,
I'm not sure you can protect chickens from hawks unless they are in a completely penned in area, including the top, or maybe have a good watch dog. If you just get hens, and not a rooster, I don't know how your neighbor would even know you had them.

I started putting cardboard down today on the weedy areas of my mountain property and covering it with a layer of leaves, and a top dressing of shredded mulch. This isn't a place where a lawn would work--very wooded, but I think most of the open areas will end up being mulch, gravel, mossy sections, and wild flower meadows.

I definitely couldn't manage to dig up these weeds, they've got to be smothered, I think. Boiling water is too dangerous for my project, but I will do some research on the vinegar to help stop the creeping charlie I saw today making a bee line for my backyard.

I'd love to be 100% organic so I'm working on getting a lot of netting and neem oil in the vegetable garden, but I know for certain that nothing organic stops slugs. I've battled them for over 10 years and had them beaten in my townhouse garden, but here they can't be stopped by organic means.

They are NOT getting my vegetables a second year! I'm going to make some Bug-Getta traps that will keep the bait out of everyone else's harms way.

Tansy, I have a question about slugs, as this will be my first year with a veggie garden. I know what slugs are, but what exactly do they do to plants? Do they eat them? Slime them? he he, just kidding

I guess what I'm really asking is, how do you know slugs have been in your garden if you don't see them? What kind of signs do they leave on your plants?

Amy

Hi, Amy, it took me a while to figure out it was slugs eating my plants and not those scary looking bugs called earwigs. It was the slime they left and keeping watch at night with a flashlight that confirmed it. Slugs devour and slime, BOTH.

If you see slime trails in the morning, that's a sure sign of them.

They start out by making small holes in the leaves, which eventually turn into giant holes. They also take out the baby plants all together. They are heavy feeders.

If you go out at night, you will see them, at which time you can pick them off with gloves. They like to hide under things like rocks and edgings, it's really hard to find them all.

If you kills any, scientists say that a hormone is released that signals the others to start reproducing like mad!

I once killed 80 in one night in my townhouse garden--and I got a break from their damage after that.

But in this new mountain garden, I've tried all my usual tricks to no avail and have to resort to poison for at least one season.

The most important thing about using poison is to keep it out of the reach of beneficial creatures, and never let rain or water get to it.

Oh my, that sounds horrible...especially the parts about killing 80 in one night AND that they signal each other to reproduce if they're killed! Disgusting!

Do slugs not have natural predators?

What's the poison you're referring to? I might as well know about it now in case this becomes a problem in my garden.

Will row covers keep them out? Where do they LIVE?

farfaraway....

If your temps are at least 40+ during the day you can lay out some small flat boards near or on the edge of a bed. In the morning pick it up and see what you find. I've been picking them off the bottom of my boards for a good 2.5 weeks now.
This is one of the reasons I try to remove the bulk of my winter mulch from the beds at this time when the start becoming active. Less cover.

Vera

Great advice Vera,

I have never looked for them this early.
Carol

I have been reclaiming major relandscaping around the protperty that was neglected for years while I attended to my double amputee father. I had to resort to using round up in order to control and remove poison ivy, crown vetch, sumac, autumn olive mainly.
Using this i can't claim to being organic, as Round Up is only approved for around buildings on organic farms and i had to use it around the flower beds. I have only used mechanical or organic weed control for veggies and fruit gardens.
Now that I have the areas around the house and pool under control each Spring, yesterday actually, I broadcast corn gluten meal as soon as the snow pack has melted and the ground is starting to defrost. Corn gluten meal is used for hog feed, competly organic and pet friendly. It inhbits seed germination, so I don't broadcast where I will be direct seeding. I noticed last year it also inhibited onion sets. I was tired of the weeds in my onion bed so I planted the sets then sprinkled on the corn gluten meal I had the worst year ever for onions last season. Corn gluten meal can be purchased at farm supply stores, in urban areas you may have to special order or query onlne. I get the cheapest, yesterday it was 16.22 for a 50lb bag or 22.00 for a 40lb bag of granular.

I hear and read about horrid slug problems about the only area Here slugs are in the french intensive planted fenced veggie area and the hostas crowded planted along the house on the east side.I only have a few that I hand pick and feed to the chickens. Slugs like moist. The other areas I use bark mulch then apply DE pool filter media on the top of the mulch not planting intensively I can't remeber the last time I saw a slug in those areas.

Meat and layer chickens would destroy my gardens if they wereleft to be completly free range. I think the year I had broilers was thefastest way to clear the garden of persistant perennial weeds to bare soil! Guineas hens, although noisy, only eat bugs and don't scratch up the ground. They are also property watchers, they will scream if they see animals or persons who are unfamiliar to thier territory. If the guineas are in the yard and a friend pulls in they are my 1/4 mile door bell, lol.

"Roundup is ate up in the soil within 24 hours by soil micro-organisms. There is no residue after that period."

This statement is totally wrong.

Roundup is extremely lethal to amphibians. "Roundup(reg) caused a 70 percent decline in amphibian biodiversity and an 86 percent decline in the total mass of tadpoles. Leopard frog tadpoles and gray tree frog tadpoles were completely eliminated and wood frog tadpoles and toad tadpoles were nearly eliminated."

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/22159.php

Not only that, everything we put on the land eventually winds up in the water we drink and the food we eat.
Have you seen the report about Prozac in our water?
Even the poor worms are taking Prozac.

Haven't we learned from the environmental degradation we are experiencing that nothing disappears? Not plastic, not Roundup, not Prozac. PLEASE do some research and educate yourself before you make the decision to use Roundup.

ellen

Hi, Farfar and Vera: The board tricks didn't work for me last year. Tried that and lots of other tricks like piles of apples and bananas to lure them off of my greens. Didn't work. Beer pans never worked--a bad old wives tale like the one about marigolds protecting plants. They don't. Also tried copper rings--expensive and don't work. Hand picking works, but then they reproduce more because of their survival hormones.

Chickens, snakes, and newts will eat them, but I only have one snake and one cute little newt so far--they are out numbered, or else prefer the crickets. I can't get chickens because I have 4 boisterous dogs and hawks overhead.

Row covers will not keep slugs out, but they are GREAT for other pests so I use them.

The slug poison that is best known is Bug-Get-A. My goal is to make a trap of a soda bottle to protect the bait from the rain, and inside that put a tuna can with the Bug-Get-A inside. Or something like that. That should keep it out of the ground water and out of the way of birds.

I agree that chemical poisons should be the last resort for getting rid of weeds, and I doubt RU is being used correctly by most of the people who buy it. I definitely know that the golf courses and certain home owners were destroying nature with those lawn chemical in Northern Virginia. I would never set foot in one of those lawns!!! Pure poison. In WV, the main culprit is the Duport factory--so I have been told.

I once visited that magical garden called Perelandra in Virginia that works with nature spirits, and it was a very strange but wonderful experience.

But I will stick with the row covers in trying to grow organic potatoes for the time being.

Prozac! Oh my, are people flushing it down the toilet and it is getting in the groundwater? I think they should just legalize pot and go back to nature.

This product will get rid of the slugs and won't poison children or pets or the earth.

ellen

Here is a link that might be useful: slug control

dirtbert -- I think dandelions are perennials, at least in my zone 6. But i'll try picking off the flowers just the same to see if it works. Although that's going to be a daily thing for months, it looks like. My mother used to hate dandelion. She would pull off the flowers and drop a lye mixture onto the plant. Wouldn't she have been surprised to learn that the picking off of the flowers would do it without using the lye?

Thanks for that link, Ellen! I'm saving that as a bookmark. I know my chickens would love to eat slugs, but the thought of collecting them for their snacking is, well, repugnant. And my chickens won't be allowed anywhere near my garden!

Thanks, Ellen:
I will try that natural Slug poison too! I just hope anything that eats the slug post mortem will be okay. But that company seems a far sight better than using anything from the local garden centers.

I accidently killed a dove once with liberal use of Bug-Getta and swore off it forever. But now that we are overrun with them, I'm so glad I can find something safer!

That's what I LOVE about this forum is there are so many green and Earth friendly people. Now I can spread the word around my neighborhood too.

I got a great tip on the Internet about natural spider mite control. I now use buttermilk inside and out and I am never bothered with them anymore!

I did have a bottle of poison around, but I just couldn't bring myself to use it, and luckily will never have to to get rid of mites!

Hopefully in the near future, everyone will begin to work with nature instead of against her.

Hi Tansy,

So what is the trick with buttermilk?I'm not aware of this one.

Did you see my question on the other thred?How did your saw work out for you?

Carol

Hi, Carol:
We haven't tried to saw yet because the weather's been wet.
The trick with the buttermilk is to paint it on with a soft paint brush and it will kill all the spider mites and their eggs.

You can also spray it, but I like the brush better. Worked like a charm!

So, how often do you do this? And do you paint it right onto the leaves of the crop? Stem too?

Just a few comments on the many topics in this thread.

I have really good results from using Escar-go or Sluggo. Both are iron phosphate, the same ingredient. I think the best control is found if, like Vera said, you start applying as soon as the soil warms to 40 degrees. They're both kind of expensive, but will work well even if sprinkled sparingly. It doesn't take much product to do the trick.

From what I have heard and read about the disappearing honey bees, I've heard that it is pesticide use, not herbicide use, that is being blamed.

Regarding the soy-cancer link: Several gynecologists have told me that it is high soy ingestion that can cause endometrial cancer. Therefore it is a risk to women who have a uterus. Some endometrial cancers are "fed" by estrogen, and soy resembles estrogen structurally. That is why it is often used as a food supplement by menopausal women. If you are a woman who has a uterus, it is worth discussing with your doctor. Well, now that I think about it, it might also be not-so-hot in terms of breast cancer, because some but not all of those are also increased by estrogen. (the breast cancer thing just fell out of my own brain, never really heard that from a doctor ).All are worth doctor consults, I think.

In men, especially pubescent boys, soy can cause feminine traits, like gynecomastia.

Speaking of poison, watch out for those food supplements. They are not FDA controlled. Many people believe them to be safe, but many can cause serious, even life-threatening side effects.

Karen

Hi, FarFar:
When I got a terrible infestation of spider mites on my deck plants last year I painted every bit of the plants with ordinary buttermilk from the store. You can water it down if you'd like, but you don't have to. It tries fast and looks spotty, and didn't bother any of the plants a bit. Buttermilk is not as thick as it looks, so the plants ended up more spotty then anything. I made sure to concentrate on the webs and under the leaves, I dabbed on some of the stems too.
first it killed the adults and later the hatchlings. The rain washed the buttermilk away by and by and these plants have never been troubled again, even though I brought them all in at the end of the season and they were even more vulnerable indoors.
They are still spider mite free and almost ready to go back on the deck.
I only had to treat them once.

Wow, I love that buttermilk trick! I'll have to remember it...gotta write it down in my journal.