The Agent Orange Stuff they used in Vietnam would probablly have worked better.

Good lord Tomacco, if you start like this you will have a nervous breakdown by August. Just wait until the soil has warmed up good, then put down cardboard with mulch on top. You will still have to weed where you have cracks (near the veggies). Or put down NOW black plastic (I use garbage bags) around veggies that like it hot, and cardboard around veggies that like it cool, in all cases covered with mulch.
Make sure water has a way to get through the plastic (a few pitchfork stabs will suffice).

Then, if you want to save your back and not pull any weeds, buy the tiniest bottle of Roundup, and a small (kid) paintbrush. Use that to apply one drop of straight Roundup on any weed that makes it past your weed shield. I have a ten years old bottle of it, half full, and I use it every year.

I always prefer to wait to put down mulch, until early June in Michigan. The soil will warm and the weeds will spend some energy growing, before being smothered. The weed will then try to grow along existing recent growth, which is laying horizontally under the mulch, when it should in fact send up a new shoot vertically.

I highly agree with Glib for the black plastic.

I absolutely love the stuff, and makes gardening almost 100% weed free.

The only mistake I made last year with it, was using it around cold weather veges (Spinach, Lettuce, etc). This year, ever inch of my garden will be covered with black plastic - except the cold weather veges :)

This obviously depends on your weather area - for me, it never really gets too hot for the warm weather (tomatoes, peppers, melons, squash etc), so I don't have to worry about over heating.

Also - a lot of people worry about drip irrigation etc underneath the plastic - while that would be nice, it's really isn't necessary. A pitfork or any other sharp utensil (I just use a cultivator, or a small rake) jamming holes where puddles form is plenty good enough to get water through!

2 yrs ago, we had alot of weeds in a cabbage patch. So bad, could barely find the cabbages. I had alot of 1-3 gal pots, so we covered the cabbages plants with the pots and then sprayed with the roundup stuff. Left the pots on overnight, maybe a couple of nights. After we took the pots off, we could tell where we sprayed, then all we had to weed was near the cabbages. I'll use it again, if need be. Same pots that I use for the really large plants before they go in the garden. I wait til the next year before I use the pots again, to make sure that all the spray is gone.

We used Roundup once early last spring. Still had tons of weeds. Not worth the bottle it came in, if you ask me. Cardboard, now, that's a whole 'nuther story. People at work think I'm nuts, but it's the best gardener's friend I've ever found.

Tomacco, what makes you think that if you spray Roundup on your garden you won't have to worry "about weeds much for years." Even the Roundup people don't claim to kill weeds for years at a time. You're fine to think "chemicals are bad" because usually they are! Google for all the health problems related to Roundup use. Liver or kidney problems especially, I forget which.

Marcia

Roundup used in the way I'm gonna describe has saved my back for years now. A fine southern "lady" in her mid 80s turned me onto this method over 20 years ago.

Cut out the very bottom portion of a 1-gallon bleach bottle. Remove the cap from the top and throw away both the jug-bottom and the cap.

You'll need one of those cheap handy-dandy pump-up sprayers like the pest control guy uses (Walmart has really cheap ones). Insert the tip of sprayer nozzle about 2 inches, into the hole where the cap used to be. Tape the spray wand and jug neck so that the wand stays put. I have never been able to do a very neat job taping the wand to the jug mouth.

Here's the picture (since I cannot post a photo here). You set the the bleach jug on top of the target weed with a good seal against the ground. Give the trigger one little pfssst!! Wait a few seconds for the mist inside the jug to settle-down to the ground. No over-spray to harm your beneficial plants. All of the Roundup stays inside the confines of the bleach jug.

Prior to inserting the tip into the jug, set the nozzle tip to spray a "fan" or "fog" pattern. You may want to test your spray pattern when finished assembling it, by spraying onto a concrete driveway or sidewalk. Adjust accordingly.

For larger areas, like pathways with bindweed taking over, I've used a large box with the top and bottom removed and sprayed RoundUp within the box. Never did damage any of my vegetables.

I think the use of RoundUp really depends on what else you've tried. For most of us, it's a last resort. A lightweight weed-wacker does the job on taller-growing weeds, not the roots but at least the tops that can develop seeds. Sometimes that's good enough.

I have access to cardboard and plan to put it on the ground around tomato, peppers and vine crops. I am a little concerned about using it for the vine crops as it might keep the soil a little cooler and vines love hot soil.

Planting and harvesting is easy, keeping the weeds out can be 95% of the work.

JMO, I would never use round up after watching this.
http://wideeyecinema.com/?p=105

Damon

"roundup" is now out from under Monsanto's control and in the market as generic formulations.

People still pay way too much for the name-brand stuff, though.

Heck, people still buy name-brand asprin.

Roundup *must* be applied while the plant is in active growth or it's useless.

RU or it's generic versions will NOT keep weeds from coming back. it kills teh active plant, and the seeds still germinate. every time you hoe/till/etc and disturb teh soil you will bring fresh weed seeds up and they will germinate.

my question is, if you don't have the time to fool with it, why do you have a 2000 sq ft garden? don't get me wrong, mine is 10,000 sq ft and i don't have time to keep up like i should. but i know that going in and i don't panic when the weeds get out of control. i keep the weeds off my toms, and let the beans and melons fend for themselves as the weeds don't really bother them much.

if you do try to use RU, make sure there is absolutely no wind. i killed a large portion of my garden last year spraying RU in the ditch 100 yards away. the

A lot depends on what kinds of weeds you have. My vegetable garden in infested with Johnson grass,it's like Bermuda grass on steroids. The only way I have found to control it is to spread black plastic over the entire garden area. I have wood chips on my paths and grass clippings & mulch where I plan to plant. I have drip irrigation with each large plant having it's own emitter. For areas that have more plants closer together, such as beans or lettuce, I use the micro spray emitters and punch holes in the plastic. Because I live in the Sacramento Valley where it really gets hot, I am sure to cover the plastic well, with 3-4" of mulch. I am hoping that after a few years, the weeds will have all died out. For now, this is what works.
Donna

Just read about this in the news this morning. Seems like a good reason to skip the RU and just go staight to the hoe. (unless they find some way to make the resistant amaranth a useful food crop)
"For years, weed scientists in the South have warned that using a sole herbicide in Roundup Ready cropping systems would inevitably lead to a resistant weed boom. It was preordained by nature, they insisted. And, as more weeds were selected out for resistance, the scientists were proven correct."

"Having developed an abundance of resistant pigweed and resulting problems, Georgia was the resistance trip-wire. But it turns out Georgia doesnÂt have that much of a head start on the Mid-South. The increasingly common sight of chopping crews hoeing their way across Mid-South fields is testament to that."

Here is a link that might be useful: Resistant pigweed 'blowing up' in Mid-South

The only chemical that will keep your weeds from coming back is a defoliant. Use that, and you will have bare ground that nothing will grow on for atleast a couple years. NOTHING not your veggies either. One drop of round up on an existing weed will not kill it, unless it is in the seedling stage. a 10-60% coverage needs to happen - specially if you want the root to die. Learned lots in my applicators licensing test I did! Corapegia is 100% keerect! Weeds are becoming resistant to our pesticides as viruses and diseases are becoming resistant to our antibiotics. There are so many chemicals in our water now that we are breeding it into their genetic makeup. Scary chit!! Good luck TiMo

I used roundup, than a layer of cardboard and than gardenmix in my raised beds. It is the best way to kill bermuda grass. I tried not using roundup and the grass just kept coming. I cannot go the plastic covers but it gets to hot in my area and it would heat up my garden and kill everything. You really need to look at your area, climate and needs to decide what is best for your garden space.

Roundup would have been a big help to me because I was tilling up active and healthy lawn where the garden is. The soil of the entire garden is chock full of roots from that grass, bermuda, crab, etc. that formed a six inch thick tangle of biomass that is very difficult to hoe (like along the edge of my asparagus bed - ARG).

I had two resonable options if I don't want to cover the entire thing in plastic (and I don't... call me a hippie, I like dirt or organic matter on the ground in my garden): roundup, scrape the grass layer off and most of my good soil with it, or rake out the grass. Of these options, roundup would have worked the best to kill the grass.

I'm not looking for ALL weeds gone, but if I leave the garden alone, the grass will completely over-run it and re-establish a lawn in only a few weeks.

I had a false idea in my head that roundup would be dangerous. You can see that kind of uninformed attitude in the 'agent orange' post above. I did the homework. Roundup used on lawn before tilling for a garden is safe. There is no question on that matter, it is thoroughly researched. Using roundup would have been the most effective way to get rid of the grass. And so I regret not using it.

As to why does someone with so little time have a 2000 sq foot garden: its not that I don't have any time. Its that I'd rather be spending it productively. I could be tilling the earth for 10K square feet of sunflowers, or I could be hoeing all the time. The more efficient my gardening, the more I can do. It was actually a ton of work getting the soil ready, building an 8 foot fence (first plantings were deer eaten), raising seedlings, etc. and I've much more work to do for my sunflower crop, so why waste time hoeing when you could be working productively if the roots were dead?

The chemical was the smart choice for me, but I didn't even consider because of false propaganda. I do regret it.

As to mulch... I'm finding that 2-3 inches of pine bark is completely ineffective on my path, so I think I'll have to rake it aside and plastic/newspaper. I just hate doing that, covering the earth in plastic seems... un-holistic. As to cardboard... I'm not wasting time looking for that much of the stuff.

At this point, I may do plastic between rows and newspaper on them. Although with the wind blowing like it is... I can barely keep pinestraw on the 3' landscape clothed weed barrier around the garden.

Roundup is really great stuff.

...but it's being overused.

...BUT it's impact of being overused isn't felt widespread (yet).

...and it doesn't help that the company that developed this very quickly broken down mostly-harmless chemical is pretty much the poster-boys for agribusiness jerks who love that profit margin.

As far as "stuff you can dump on stuff and make it die without having to suit up in a hazmat suit" goes...Roundup is some amazing stuff, though.

The black plastic won't heat up your plants if you cover it with a good layer of mulch to keep the sun from baking it. The mulch will also prolong the life of the plastic if the sun can't shine on it. I use about 4"-6" of mulch on my plastic. I live in the Sacramento Valley and it gets really hot here. The plastic/mulch combination keeps the moisture in the soil and the heat out.
Donna

tomacco

Too bad the electrified plow never took off and come into common use. We wouldn't be having such weed problems: Monday, Aug. 01, 1927

Husbandmen of northern New York State await, with an interest more vicarious than immediate, the results of an expensive experiment reported last week at the farms of Donald Woodward, gentleman farmer of Le Roy, N. Y. Mr. Woodward had his fields plowed by a share charged with 103,000 volts of electricity. Inventor Hamilton L. Coe of Pittsburgh had told Mr. Woodward that the current would electrocute weeds, grubs, soil bacteria. Crops, he said, would spring from the volt-purged ground in record time and abundance.

Time Magazine

I agree with you tomacco, you should have used Round Up. I had bermuda grass once and the only way I found to deal with it is Round Up. Make sure you get a good kill the first time with complete coverage. It is harder to kill if you only kill it part way. The generic stuff is just as good and less than half the price.

Zeuspaul

Any option is better than using roundup. There are other time-tested ways around this problem which don't enrich hegemonic chemical companies. They do require more effort , but the effort is well worth it. Sometimes the effort is what makes it worth it.

I'm not trying to make a political statement with my garden.

I'm trying to scale it up to a small farm efficiently. I want to grow all my own food and keep fit doing it. So I don't care that Monsanto is evil. Exxon is evil and I put their gas in my car yesterday. Boo hoo, the world is a morally precarious place if you are whatsoever engaged in it.

What irks me is that people saying roundup was dangerous weren't being honest. They were making a political statement. It happens all the time on this forum. "Want to start a garden? Pile up leaves for a year, and plant next year!" instead of something direct that will work immediately. Life is too short for that mess and not everyone shares the same views.

Anyway, I'm not thrilled about putting money in Monsanto's pocket, but I've got to earn a living and I have a lot to do, so roundup is the best option going for me. I've got 2.5 gallons of concentrate in the back of my truck thats gonna make 60 gallons to treat 15K square feet before I have it plowed and tilled for sunflowers and corn. How much cardboard would it take to cover that? :) I'll not make the same mistake twice.

Side note: I'd have loved to by non-monsanto roundup, but I couldn't find concentrate made by anyone else.

I used to buy 2.5 gal of Glystar at Agri Supply. Now I see they don't ship to California. Then Lowes started selling 2.5 gals of the generic stuff. Last time I checked they only had RoundUp.

Glyphosate in the ebay search engine turns up a bunch of glyphosate products.

Zeuspaul

Here is a link that might be useful: Glystar

Your comment that "uninformed thought" says chemicals are bad is, quite frankly, uninformed. You go on to mention you don't have any spare time in your life.

Welcome to life in the 00's, dude. And be happy that you have a job, as millions of Americans would be happy right now to not have any spare time in their lives.

I work in the film industry in NYC. I GUARANTEE that I work more hours every week than you do. And I happen to follow those whose thoughts are "uninformed".

There is always an organic choice in any gardening situation. Maybe it involves using a spade instead of sprinkling poison on a weed. If your busy life dictates that the solutions you decide on means polluted water sources, due to your use of chemicals, maybe you should get another hobby.

Or maybe you can just buy a spade...

We all make choices, my friend. I have kids. I have not inherited this earth from my ancestors. I have borrowed it from my children. I take steps to make sure they get a decent future.

How about you?

couldn't have put it better largemouth. I follow organic practices too, I would like to leave this earth a better place than I found it for my children and my family. I go to college full time for civil engineering, I also work over forty hours a week supervising road crews, yet I still find time to not use round up or any other chemical, I don't care how safe they say it is. I use boiling water, and while that may not be an option for you, because of your gardens size, maybe you should have just raked out the stuff like you mentioned earlier. It would save you some money too, you wouldn't have to buy all that weed killer.

Also, if your goal is, "I want to grow all my own food and keep fit doing it." You could get more fit if you picked up that spade, or actually covered that whole garden in cardboard, or raked up the weeds...Think about how much exercise that work is, and how great it is for you when you're trying to keep in shape. Much better than round up for you, anyways. Don't give up on organic thoughts yet, they do work, and it might take a little extra effort, but once you succeed, it feels really great when you put that food on the table.
Good luck
Holly

You can't lump "chemicals" into 1 broad stroke.

RoundUp isn't safe enough to drink, but it's impact on your soil is next to nothing after a matter of hours...not weeks or months.

It's like spilling alcohol on your driveway and being worried about it a week later...

...also...not everyone here is fully able bodied and RoundUp is a very important part of some of these people's gardening experience because they can self-manage a much larger stretch of land.

Is RoundUp overused? yes. Are there concerns about plant resistance to it? yes...but that shouldn't bother the non-chemical users.

The real kicker is these people taking that "chemical shortcut" are the ones you'd actually want using RoundUp because of it's minimal-time impact on the soil and because you don't have to worry about it in your water table.

Don't feel bad tomacco a first year garden is always horrible with weeds I used round-up and the grass was brown before I tilled there were still horrible weeds round-up isnt evil use what you need to I will not use ant in the garden this year but I always trim my trees in the yard with it

It's not to late either you can still spray useing some of the methods above or you can apply with a paint brush old string mop gloved hand and large sponge.Roundup is taken in though the leaves and works its way to the roots don't use the extended control where you will plant though it might work on the pathway just follow the instuctions and get those weeds before they seed out Then get some Preen and apply before they sprout again that can be had in organic or chemical versions

By the way if you get it at a farm co-op it is half the price and they are extremly well trained in its use

Now if you could only get Homer to send you that nucular waste(:

So we have a company called Monsanto, documented to be a liar, that tells us that glyphosate is biodegradable. Why does it show up in drinking water?

http://www.organicconsumers.org/foodsafety/glyphosate051503.cfm

"When we spray glyphosate on the fields by the rules it has been shown
that it is washed down into the upper ground water with a concentration
of 0.54 micrograms per litre. This is very surprising, because we had
previously believed that bacteria in the soil broke down the glyphosate
before it reached the ground water."

If more farmers use round up ready GMO crops not only will we allow Monsanto a monopoly on all seeds with their terminator technology but we will be bathing in this chemical. If it is all because of a few weeds, we deserve what we get. Fat, lazy and soon to be extinct.

I work with a garden landscape crew when I'm not in my own gardens. Before adding soil to any new bed, we completely remove the sod layer using either a sod cutter or if the area is small, using hand weeders. We compost the grass sods and use it a year or so later, buy then the grass is dead and we have clean soil to use. Dumping soil on existing sod to which you've applied a chemical will be quicker in the short run but won't work in the long run. We actually spent several days applying RU to 3 different gardens infested with Canada Thistle. It killed the tops of the plants but since this stuff runs around with very deep roots, it was back the next year. We've decided to just keep pulling the stuff and eventually, the roots will die from lack of food.

By the way, I read about this study several years ago. There are many links to this information and some of them are to organic sites. I don't think it's overblown. Just remember when 'they' tell you something is SAFE, they might be keeping secrets because it would hurt the industries which employ many of us.

Here's historical proof that 'they've' done it in the past.

http://www.chemicalindustryarchives.org/dirtysecrets/hairspray/1.asp

Here is a link that might be useful: non hodgkin's lymphoma

I find that the use of herbicides is a very effective way of starting a new garden where sod currently exists. I use whatever brand is cheapest bought as a concentrate. However, I do not til afterwards. I just dig holes where I am planting and then cover the whole thing with an attractive mulch. The old sod rots in place, adding to the tilth of the soil and actually acts as a weed block. And I have time to enjoy a good book.

With good weeding and mulching practices ~and a good edging each spring~ there should be no need to repeat the process.

Lucky for me, I do not find the responsible use of herbicides and pesticides to be morally objectionable. Working outside the home, I must obtain most of my food at the grocery store. I could not do this if I felt the same way about it as Largemouth.

Kay

I do find pesticides and herbicides morally objectionable. Sorry, but that's just how I feel. I don't like to see creatures hurt, like the bald eagles were when farmers were spraying DDT, which I bet you they thought was "safe" at the time. I know they say round up is biodegradable, but I don't trust it because their main goal is to sell us this stuff, they don't care about my family or your family. I too obtain most of my food at the grocery store, I don't like it, but I just cant realistically grow everything I need. I know things like round up can be real life savers for people who are physically challenged, but I still think people should use these types of things as little as possible.

Here is a link that might be useful: bald eagles

...terminator technology is not in the market.

This debate was shelved in 1999 and again in 2006. The misinformation hasn't been sheveled, though.

Monsanto didn't develop it...they do own the company that did develop it (with the help of the US government). This technology has a very low chance of seeing the light of day in the marketplace. There is huge opposition from all ends, including agribusiness.

I can't believe I'm in a position to defend chemicals...I'm not a huge fan of them myself.

That said...the water table in the Land-O-Dutch is VERY shallow. They have so many banned pesticides there it's not funny. In fact, they have to use natural field rotations for their crops for nematode control probably more than any other country out there because of pesticide restrictions.

While it is surprising there has been a little (very little) runoff of RU in their water supply, it's not shocking given how very shallow their top water table is.

For most of us in most of the world this isn't an issue.

Below are pictures of what I'd rather be doing than weeding, in my spare time ;) Call me crazy, I like to spend my time productively.

As to the roundup debate, I read primary sources as to its safety and I'm very comfortable using it. I doubt most people in this thread have. Thats what I mean by uninformed. Lumping 'chemicals' into one group and saying they're bad is uninformed. That was as far as my analysis had gone when I decided not to use it on the vegetable plot. If I'd done my homework, I would have concluded it safe enough to use. I won't try to sway your decision one way or the other, because for many of you this is literally a religious debate, and not a scietific one.

I roped my truck into a corner staking off the field :(

{{gwi:42644}}

Better living through chemistry:

{{gwi:42645}}

New vs Old Garden:

{{gwi:42646}}

Putting sunflowers and corn/beans on that plot, running the beans up the corn. And no, I will not be weeding it except between rows with a tiller. :)

Gonna give it a week and see what dies off, then hit it again if I have to, then wait a couple weeks and plot/till and plant. The farmer down the road has a tractor, but not a proper plow and he recommended I use one because the weeds are 3-4" thick and amazingly tough, so he's not sure if his aggressive harrow will do much good even with multiple passes. Hopefully the roundup will kill some of those roots and they'll break down some.

Hi tomacco,

Many of the people that object to its use provided references . I posted one that shows actual results that are counter to conventional wisdom. Wrong once means one can be wrong twice. I also doubt most of the people that use pesticides or herbicides even know what it is. Its easy to wipe out weeds. Just weed cloth it for a while. I even look forward to finding some weeds since they are great green manure and ferilizers.

http://purecajunsunshine.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-to-make-free-fertilizer-from-weeds.html

Everything is a chemical thus its absurd to lump together all chemicals as bad. Plants produce chemical defenses like alkaloids. What is stupid is mono culture and cultural practices that rely on a single measure and the quick kill. Even if round up were non-toxic it would simply breed weeds that will develop immunity to it and simply waste the resource. The best chemicals are the ones produced by plants that always gravitate toward suppression. I don't mind using
pyrethins judiciously because it is something that follows this pattern where it knocks down and suppresses without killing and altering the attacking species. It is also a naturally occurring chemical that does break down in sunlight. Quick break down is essential to prevent dilution and attenuated exposure to build resistance.Thats probably why nature made it that way. We have one person with a spray bottle so we can have buildings full of lawyers and accountants doing nothing.

They were spraying DDT around as if there was no consequence, same with agent orange. We have seen this attitude before of spray and pray and it nearly killed off the national symbol.

Newer research does not look so good to me. .

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/DMPGR.php
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/180255-Death-by-Multiple-Poisoning-Glyphosate-and-Roundup

That's funny tomacco...while looking at your pix, and reflecting on the topic of this thread, all I could see was a red fuse across your whole property- connected to that pump bottle/bomb plunger box, and you sitting there pushing the plunger and...well...your imagination can take the conclusion in a number of chemical- or non-chemical conclusions.
bwahahahah! I kill myself! It's late in the day, and I am SO not interested in sitting at this desk anymore today.

Yes, I'm using TNT instead of roundup, that red is FUSE :D

Decided to solve my gopher and weed problem all at once.

Use a nitrate-based ammonium nitrate explosive device and fertilize while you "extreme weed" your garden plot.

I see a new area of horticulture research opening up here.

I'm creating a vegtable garden where Bermuda currently is. After I spray with roundup, how long should I wait until I till the soil and plant?

grasscut, what does the label say?

the label does not address this at all.

Two thumbs up on the RoundUp. All farmers use it since the price of diesel fuel went up so high.

Shot