Please don't use Round Up on your disc golf course! Or anywhere...

From Monsanto: The makers of "Agent Orange." For those too young to know the US military used it in Vietnam to kill off foliage, the jungles of Vietnam to get at the 'enemy.' Great stuff!

 

WASHINGTON -- The chemical at the heart of the planet's most widely used herbicide -- Roundup weedkiller, used in farms and gardens across the U.S. -- is coming under more intense scrutiny following the release of a new report calling for a heightened regulatory response around its use. Critics have argued for decades that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and other herbicides used around the globe, poses a serious threat to public health. Industry regulators, however, appear to have consistently overlooked their concerns.

 

A comprehensive review of existing data released this month by Earth Open Source, an organization that uses open-source collaboration to advance sustainable food production, suggests that industry regulators in Europe have known for years that glyphosate, originally introduced by American agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto in 1976, causes birth defects in the embryos of laboratory animals.

 

 

[Joshua Knutson]

Wow, Round Up is PACKED full of surfactants.  If you don't know what a surfactant does, it basically makes it easier for all the other chemicals to penetrate cell membranes and do their jobs, in the case of Round Up, that would be interfering with the synthesis of amino acids.  And looking at the list, at least two of those amino acids are vital chemicals produced by the brain to regulate mood, sleep, etc.  That doesn't mean Round Up will make you depressed and mess with your sleep - any exposure to a chemical that can cause any kind of neurological disturbance is like a game of slow motion Russian roulette you don't know that you're in.

[Joshua Knutson]

I need to clarify my first post, I was going off memory, MPTP isn't a major ingredient in cyperquat, it metabolizes into MPP+ within the brain.  MPP+ is the cyperquat ingredient.

[Yeddie VanHalen]

The problem with these poisons is they rarely stay put. If it rains, the stuff goes flowing all over the place. Down the street. Into the sewers, etc.

I dont use any chemicals in my yard. I'm not going to win any contests from Better Home & Garden. But I'm on well water & I dont want to comtaminate the ground with poison.

No shortcuts. Pull the weeds by hand or use hand tools.

[Joshua Knutson]

Great point. well I ranted with more useless info but it got lost somehow, was really weird.  Anyways, smart to play it as safe as possible.

[Disc Player Sports]

[Disc Player Sports]

I grew up in the summers in the Poconos in Pennsylvania.... 

working on my grandparents family farm.

Monsanto, all these biggies are destroying our food!

This is not anarchy talk, seen it myself.

Please, everyone as a consumer can make a difference. 

Try to buy chemical free food, stay away from chemicals, it will eventually kill all of us if we don't!

[Joshua Knutson]

The natural gas companies are ecologically destroying that area with hydraulic fracturing. The largest deposit in the country, the Marcellus Shale, is gigantic and covers most of PA. What's even crazier is that the EPA said it was safe. If you watch the film 'Gasland', you will clearly see it is not.

[Disc Player Sports]

[Jim Coonradt]

Roundup won't kill cocklebur anyway. That stuff is tough. I am voting for the vinegar, salt and dish soap as a better alternative. We sprayed the cocklebur with Roundup for a couple of years now but in the end we just pull the stuff out when it sends up its big stalk. Roundup is not effective on cocklebur. I will be buying a gallon of vinegar this week I think. Does anyone know how much salt to use?

[Jamie 'gr8rocshot' Ruane]

Yeah...DPS, I believed learned about the homemade concoction from myself and the guy that actually found the resource for the formula. I'm the guy that actually used it at our course specifically for poison ivy...it works pretty good. I now use it on weeds that grow between my pool deck pavers

 

The recipe called for 1 cup of salt to 1 qal of vinegar and 8 drops of liquid laundry detergent.

 

I couldn't find my wife's stash of homemade laundry detergent...so I substituted dish soap. Dish soap is commonly added to fungicides, herbicides and  homemade gardening formulas.  It's there to aid in the contact time on leaves and stalks. So I just squirted about a tablespoon into it.

 

The recipe also recommends heating the vinegar with the salt so it mixes well. I just poured it all into a home garden sprayer at once.... shook the piss out of it...let it sit in the Florida sun for about an hour or so..than shook the piss out of it again.....and again during application.

What is important to know...is this formula will kill just about any plant/weed...so if you don't want to kill it...don't spray it. Plus....while the Vinegar and soap are  biodegrade...the salt remains in the soil. Making it not a good idea to use it in planting beds....salt in the soil is not good for things you are trying to grow.....most of which will not tolerate an extremly high salt content in the soil.

 

Also, I believe, I read on that site that had the info....it was in the 'paranoia disclaimer' part of the page....that salt (sodium chloride) being caustic ....is considered one of those things you aren't supposed to contaminate ground water with....so in a sense you could feasibly get in the same trouble as if you were dumping toxic chemicals and waste.....something about using it in accordance with state and federal laws.....blah,blah,blah

[Jim Coonradt]

We have battled the cocklebur for a couple years now and it keeps coming back unabated. The only real way to get rid of it is to yank it out of the ground before it blooms. It also helps if the ground is wet because cocklebur has a giant tap root. There is already quite a bit of it on the course. And it hasn't rained at all this year. So I'm not sure what we will do. Salt really isn't the best thing for soil. Plants don't like to grow in salty soil. Maybe after treatment with the salt and vinegar mix you need to remove the plant debris as a way of getting rid of the salt. I am goping to take a good look at the course tonight and weigh our options. Sometimes the Roundup will stunt the growth of the cocklebur so that it deosn't get to the flowering stage. But it is already almost July and that stuff is getting quite big.

 

Time to Google "How to kill cocklebur" and see what comes up.

[Jim Coonradt]

Just learned that seeds buried in the ground for 16 years still had a 15% germination rate. This stuff is tough!

 

And the recommended way to get rid of cocklebur is, you guessed it, pulling them out of the ground.