Calling all gardeners - stopping weeds forever.

[stona]

I'm a bit of a gardener, the chap I used to work with definitely wasn't. His answer to any gardening issue was concrete.

We used to have a not so lovely concrete back patio, now long gone. The weeds had overcome it. I imagine it had taken decades, but they won.

[Guest]

My sister has plastic grass so she wouldn't have to cut the grass anymore, ironically she now washes and hovers it (vacuums it) as its not biological nothing degrades on it!!! Bird droppings and the like
seems like a step forward to me!

We used to have a not so lovely concrete back patio, now long gone. The weeds had overcome it. I imagine it had taken decades, but they won.

Oh how could you both think that :loudly-crying: would like to see what a group of Starlings think to the plastic lawn when they are looking for leather jackets ! It's nearly as bad as not liking Marmite ! :smiling3:

[Peter Gillson]

My sister has plastic grass so she wouldn't have to cut the grass anymore, ironically she now washes and hovers it (vacuums it) as its not biological nothing degrades on it!!! Bird droppings and the like
seems like a step forward to me!

One of the problems with plastic grass is in relation to the way it wears and children playing on it. If children play on it (rolling around etc) there is the possibility ov them inhaling the very small particles of plastic the break off the matting. The long term effect is not yet known but I would not have artificial grass and young children.

Peter

[Peter Gillson]

Does anybody have a problem with a weed called horsetail, or marestail? The problem with this weed is that it is very deep rooted and the leaves are thin and waxy so any weedkiller just runs off before doing sny good.

i have found a solution - don't laugh as you read it.

you need a systemic weedkiller such as glysophate and mix up a solution as per the instructions. Then using this solution, add it to wallpaper paste to make a paste solution, which is then applied to the horsetail using a paintbrush, (i hold a small bit of plywood behind the horsetail to make 'painting it' easier.

being a past it sticks to the horsetail allowing the weedkiller to be absorbed into the plant and down to its roots.

unfortunately for me glysophate is not legal in Guernsey so I have to experiment with non-glysophate which I doubt will be as good.

[Mini Me]

So yer tellin' us that as soon as the powers that be, found out that glysophate chemicals work on weeds, it was banned? Sounds a little counter productive if you ask me. In the U.S. all the Blue states ban everything except your Grandmothers Knickers and the Red states allow it, but it is so watered down and it costs a fortune to buy it that it is insane....example: just purchased a 2 gallon jug of Roundup concentrate. $129.00 USD. Oh, forgot to mention 50 percent of the product is inert fillers, emulsifiers, etc. When I was a youngster I remember mixing up 2-4-D concentrate....the mix ratio was 1 tablespoon to a gallon of water.......todays mix ratio is 3 to 4 ounces of concentrate to a Gallon of water.......Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm! :thinking:

[stona]

unfortunately for me glysophate is not legal in Guernsey s

Why is that?

Organisations like the US Environmental Protection Agency, European Chemicals Agency, Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency, European Food Safety Authority, the Joint Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization (FAO/WHO), and the German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health all state that it does not pose a risk to humans. Is it a concern for wildlife?

[Tim Marlow]

So yer tellin' us that as soon as the powers that be, found out that glysophate chemicals work on weeds, it was banned? Sounds a little counter productive if you ask me. In the U.S. all the Blue states ban everything except your Grandmothers Knickers and the Red states allow it, but it is so watered down and it costs a fortune to buy it that it is insane....example: just purchased a 2 gallon jug of Roundup concentrate. $129.00 USD. Oh, forgot to mention 50 percent of the product is inert fillers, emulsifiers, etc. When I was a youngster I remember mixing up 2-4-D concentrate....the mix ratio was 1 tablespoon to a gallon of water.......todays mix ratio is 3 to 4 ounces of concentrate to a Gallon of water.......Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm! :thinking:

Some of that is so the manufacturers make more money…..less active ingredient means more sales to get the same effect…..chocolate bar manufacturers have had that market cornered for years…..

Glyphosate issues arise from how it’s formulated for use. The raw chemical was tested in isolation, and was found to be pretty much non toxic and have little environmental impact. The trouble is, it is then added to various other chemicals to generate the required delivery effect, and that’s when the trouble starts. The various chemical combinations and contaminants arising from manufacture haven’t been properly tested, and can cause some extremely nasty problems, including toxicity to aquatic life forms and reduction in biodiversity. It also has persistent links to some types of cancer. The problem is that though short term impacts are relatively minor, it has a high LD50 value for example, long term impacts are not particularly well known.

All of this has been exacerbated by the manufacturers using lawyers to intimidate release of independent scientific studies rather than to use reputable independent scientific studies to refute the findings. Very much repeating the tobacco companies playbooks of the sixties and seventies to muddy the waters around health impacts so they can continue to push their product independent of consequences.

There also seems to be little correlation between US and European safety standards regarding safe exposure limits. This, in itself, points to insufficient scientific data being available to support these limits.

Lastly, there are more and more weed species becoming resistant to glyphosate, so its day is probably close to being done anyway…very like the overuse of antibiotics bringing in the era of superbugs.

[minitnkr]

Love Canal.

[Mini Me]

So the answer is to rip of the consumer to pay for all the industrial waste created while producing products that are no longer effective for their intended purpose......sounds logical to me :thumb2:

[Peter Gillson]

Why is that?

Organisations like the US Environmental Protection Agency, European Chemicals Agency, Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency, European Food Safety Authority, the Joint Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization (FAO/WHO), and the German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health all state that it does not pose a risk to humans. Is it a concern for wildlife?

A mixture of the two - concerns about human safety and wildlife safety. An additional complication is that all of Guernsey's drinking water supply is from rainwater, via surface run-off into streams and to the reservoirs, and there were concerns about it in the water. Very oddly, commercial use by trained and certified people can still use it so the ban affects home use mostly.

as Tim said, at the moment there is a real mixture of evidence for and against the product.

peter

[Tim Marlow]

as Tim said, at the moment there is a real mixture of evidence for and against the product.

peter

……and that’s despite it being in large scale commercial use for at least fifty years. The basic chemical seems pretty innocuous when used as instructed, so why use aggressive litigation to close down scientific debate? Makes me wonder why the manufacturers have not just done the science. I would expect an investigation like that to take a couple of years and cost a few million. They must have made billions from this stuff, so that’s pretty small beer in global chemical terms. If the results were positive this would then reopen the markets that are currently closed off.

My personal conclusions are that they probably already know the investigations will bring out something they don’t want aired, or that they have already investigated and are sat on the results to keep them from becoming widely known. This is very much how the tobacco industry acted to keep lung cancer out of the public eye for as long as they did.

[Mini Me]

Hmmmmmmm.......Covid comes to mind as well. But let's not go down that rabbit hole.

[Tim Marlow]

Hmmmmmmm.......Covid comes to mind as well. But let's not go down that rabbit hole.

Not going to debate this any further, it’s not the place, but I’m really not sure what you mean Rick???

[Mini Me]

Vaccine research my friend.

[Ian M]

And back to the weeds please.

Round up in Denmark concentrate is banned but you can get it pre mixed. For now. It is also limited where you can use it. Water testing is finding glysophate in the ground water.
As is normal its the townies with their fifth floor flat and window boxes have kicked up the most fuss. Countryside dwellers with large gardens are expected to hand weed....lol.
.Home remedies such as the salt and vinegar are forbidden but work great. In the short term. (Or so I'm told ...).
There are slowly appearing more and more ecologically friendly weed killers.