Wednesday, May 07, 2014

Killing Weeds Safely or No More Glyphosate (RoundUp)

As every gardener knows only too well, weeds are a bitch. Unless you have hours a day to devote to keeping them under control you are likely to lose the battle. Since the 70's Monsanto has made billions of dollars selling the herbicide RoundUp (glyphosate) and all the RoundUp ready GMO seed. Who actually knows how many gallons of the stuff has been sprayed around in the last 40 years.

Now that Monsanto's patent on glyphosate has expired the stuff is coming out under house brands such as HDX from Home Depot and what's worse these new ones are actually more concentrated that the old RoundUp so they are that much more troubling. If you want to read the horror stories just Google "roundup herbicide" and you'll get an idea of why this stuff needs to go away forever.

Yes is does kill weeds but the collateral damage to the environment and you and your family and neighbors is way, way too high.

The thing is a lot of stuff will kill weeds and a lot of them are completely harmless to anything but plants. Some like orange oil are very effective but a little expensive. I prefer to make my own out of cheap ingredients and it is effective on most weeds.

Here is the formula:
One gallon of white distilled vinegar
2 cups of Epsom salt dissolved in the above
1/4 cup of Dawn dish detergent to make it stick to the plant leaves.

Just put this in your sprayer and go to town. Just soak the leaves well and hope it doesn't rain for 24 hours.

This stuff really works and you can see the results in 24 hours. It won't take out everything but neither will glyphosate. Give it a try.

4 comments:

2karmanot said...

Great tip! Thanks

trekrider said...

dumb question you are referring the the leaves of the weeds not the good plants in the garden?

fallenmonk said...

Yes, just the weeds. This will kill the veges if it gets on them.

Sheryl McCumsey said...

Thanks for promoting safer ways....