Glyphosphate

bouicca21

Money will be staying a long time then

Davesnave

Ectophile wrote: »

You can get rid of it organically, provided you have a lot of patience and can find an organic backache remedy!

We bought our 5.5 acre plot from an organic smallholder. There's a wonderful picture somewhere of my family standing in a sea of nettles, comfrey and couch. Behind them is a brown swathe of seeded docks and behind that a white line of thistles, blowin' in the wind. At the very back, another line of yellow marks the area on the top field where the ragwort were in bloom.

Now I know most organic holdings are not as uncontrolled as ours was then, but when something has gone that far, it's way beyond the ability of most humans to rescue it by physical means.

Today, almost seven years on, our chemical bill is very small. Most of the control can now be achieved by grazing sheep instead of horses, and taking summer hay. We retain a large number of wild flowers, because we've never blanket sprayed, but without a chemical means of gaining this control, I fear we'd have given up long ago.

No, second thoughts, we'd have given it all a miss!

stumpycat

As from getting ill from eating *chemical* (!) - sprayed wild foods.

I think I'd take my chances with a bit of glyphosate over a whole host of other chemicals.
Rather than have vague health worries, why not read up on the chemical pathways in the plant which are disrupted by glyphosate?

I think 2 issues are being conflated here. There *are* some health concerns over eating food crops liberally sprayed with glyphosate. These crops have been modified so that they do not react to glyphosate, but neighbouring weeds die.
This leads to healthy-looking crops, coated in glyphosate residue.

Used as a weedkiller on normal plants, glyphosate makes them shrivel, go brown and not look very yummy at all. You really wouldn't want to eat them. As the plant dies/withers, bacteria & fungi start to decompose it (this also breaks down the glyphosate - so you may need more than 1 application to completely kill the plant.

It's the only weedkiller I'm prepared to use as I believe it is safe. It is used where I can't howk everything up and get rid of the weeds, it gets painted on/ target sprayed & the offending plant is covered with a poly bag & left to die.

walkers-crisps_are_evil

I think chatting with neighbours is a good tactic to ensure no fall outs.
I wouldn't bother spraying ivy or bramble with glyphosate. It will work in time but ivy in particular needs repeated spraying as the spray runs off waxy leaf coating. Pull out what you can and use secateurs to cut main stems and paint stalk with neat glyphosate this will kill off an area. Laborious but works well. Inevitably some will pop up in area again, cut and paint. Avoids danger of spray drift as well.

DaftyDuck

An alternative -still labourious, but effective, is to dunk tendrils in jars of the stuff. If you do this, you can use it at half strength for best effect. Leave tendrils in for an hour or so, and they transpire loads. Works with ivy, bramble, bindweed, all sorts. If done before digging breaks roots, it can be phenomenally successful.

bouicca21

actually I think I've found the granddaddy of the bramble - and it's huge. Cant dig it out because it is too close to the yew tree. I think I will wage a war of attrition.

A._Badger

Whatever you are going to do, do it fast. According to the press today our masters in the EU parliament (an organisation renowned for its botanical and horticultural knowledge) are trying to ban it.

bouicca21

Just for interest, I have put two photos of the area I have sprayed into photobucket. Pretty much solid bramble and ivy, though to the right there is a forsythia struggling to survive.

I've also put up a picture of what seems to be the origin of the bramble, though tbh it could be that the larger stump just happens to be so close to the bramble that I can't distinquish one from t'other.

http://s304.photobucket.com/user/Bouicca/library/?sort=3&page=1

And yes I saw that bit of news. I might have to stockpile ...