Roundup Revelations

Posted on Wednesday 5 July 2006 at 09:48

Hello, class. I'm here today to talk about Roundup. Roundup is also known as the chemical glyphosate. It is widely used in both commercial and home-and-garden applications for wholesale slaughter of any and every living green thing. When that's your aim, of course.

Now, I'm not 100% organic. Or I haven't been over the last five years, though I get a little more that way each season. I don't put chemical in my food space, but I have used Roundup to open new flowerbeds and such. If it has an effectiveness, that's the maximum limit of it, in my experience. I've found you might just as well till things over well and regularly, and the results will actually be better.

Below are all the reasons Roundup is not worth it as an annual cleanup of crop fields or vegetable gardens.

What happens when you use Roundup? Well, it's like this.

Phase One: Every living green thing dies.
Phase Two: Suddenly, there's a giant patch of weeds sprouting up. Huh?!? didn't we just tackle that?
Phase Three: More Roundup. Lather, rinse, repeat. Add Roundup-Ready genetically-modified crops as you see fit.

Why is it so? Because you can use whatever chemicals you want to kill weeds and suppress their seeds (pre-emergents); it's never going to totally work.

Case in point: Last year, I let my orchard go to grass - I didn't mean to, it's just that Dave had a broken neck and I never did get in there with the tiller. We got it tilled down real nicely this spring, and it's back to soil now. But in between tillings, I noticed something. Little baby quackgrass sprouts all over the soil.

Spraying down the home garden every year just wouldn't be a viable option. Do you know when it would finally succeed? Never. The viability of a wild mustard seed, I've heard (and I tend to believe it) is 100 years. Between wind, birds and dormant seed... It's just plain silly to think we can easily harness nature with a quick pre-manufactured fix. But, hey, that kind of thinking pays. Somebody.

A very intelligent farmer friend of ours, an immigrant from England, has compared trials of "conventional" farming and a 10-acre organic patch that he simply didn't get sprayed down one year. He said yields were several bushels per acre more on the organic land, and the weeds were actually less. Having made a closer examination, he believes that chemical controls don't really eliminate the weeds - they just stunt them, leaving them below the level of the crop, where they go to seed anyway. He's switching to organic.

After all, how did humanity survive for thousands of years without Monsanto?

Untitled Comment

Posted by Carol on Wednesday 5 July 2006 at 11:07 - Link

I learnt the hard way not to use Roundup. When we first moved here we had a huge weed patch on our side lawn. I thought I'd try Roundup - well you are right it kills EVERYTHING green, the grass included. For that summer I had a "burnt" patch. The next year we had more weeds than ever in that one spot!!!! I've never used any chemicals in our garden, we garden organically. I hoe, shovel and pull weeds. Roundup is a curse word for me. Our neighbour thought he would use Roundup to kill the weeds in his garden last fall. He now has more weeds than he ever had.
~carol