How harmful is Roundup?

[Janelady]

Neighbours are suggesting we use roundup in the garden to tackle some invasive weeds. I’ve never used toxic weed killer and don’t like the thought of it plus we have 3 young kids and a dog. We’ve always encouraged wildlife into the garden and have spotted hedgehogs and newts so obviously i wouldn’t want to cause any harm to any wildlife but research on how toxic and harmful it is seems to really vary!

You can buy Roundup gel, it comes in a dispenser a bit like a cream deodorant. You click to get some gel then wipe it on the specific weed rather than having spray which can go anywhere. It solved our bindweed problem very quickly!

You can’t get this anymore.
A tip another mumsnetter gave me was mix liquid roundup with powdered wallpaper paste and paint on the weed.
I wouldn’t use weedkiller in an area a pet can access but I have had to resort to this on shoots from neighbours bamboo. Had it dug out but new shoots come up and nothing but glyphosate kills them. As bamboo can damage property I have no choice.

I'm using it on brambles currently. They spread halfway across the garden and still stick shoots up.
I'm using a stuff you can spread on the leaves directly. I do that once a week then dig the root out the next week and continue. If a root breaks then I spread the gel on the end.

Finally seem to be winning against it.
Just cutting back only stimulated growth.

We don't have small children, but we do get a lot of wildlife, which doesn't seem to have been effected.

If you don't want to use glyphosate you have three alternatives that are non-harmful and just as effective;
Hand weeding.
Steam or boiling water.
Vitax SBK Brushwood Killer, which uses a plant hormone.

I bought some in a garden centre last week, it must have been old stock I guess. A few places online also have it still.

Couldn’t find any online when I looked recently. Well done on finding the last ones!
The wallpaper paste combo seems to work though.

Honestly, it’s much easier and safer to stay on it by hand. I trained my kids to spot it, so I got told at the first sign. Pull it up repeatedly and it will stay gone. Pick an area to let it flourish, as it’s great in among hedges.

I have an obsessive licker (dog!) so where I’ve used it today, I’ve covered it with pebbles and very carefully dribbled it into a crack where my patio knife couldn’t get the root out between paving slabs. I’d be very wary.

Ebay shops still have a few but I will be trying your wallpaper trick when I run out!

Anything you can buy from the shops will be rubbish. You need to get some ammonia sulfamate. Officially it is a compost accelerator as it was banned as being advertised as a weedkiller by the good old EU. Its basically a concentrated salt and should kill most weeds

If you make sure the roundup only goes on the plant, doesn't get into the soil, and doesn't get on your hands, you should be okay, though bindweed is extremely persistent and you may need to repeat for several years.

But it's quite scary stuff, implicated in Parkinson's disease among other things, and until recently (maybe still) used extensively in agriculture to kill off the top growth of things being harvested, to desiccate cereal crops before harvest, etc. The more I learn about it the more I'm inclined to buy organic.

This is effective on patio weeds that come up in small cracks, but not bindweed which is pretty much bulletproof except to glycophosphate

Yes, things with extensive root systems that will regenerate from tiny fragments need something systemic that the plant will transport down. Digging is fairly disastrous because it can turn one plant into dozens. Bindweed, Ground elder, Russian vine - all candidates for Glyphosate.

They have changed the formula of Roundup and it no longer contains glyphosate.

Also seems to no longer work very well (smells of vinegar, maybe that's what it is now?)

I saw some doctor say it was the one household chemical that everyone should stay away from. Company that makes it currently involved in multiple class actions from people who say it’s caused their cancer.

I successfully eradicated bindweed over 2 or 3 years using glyphosate in a safe way.
I gathered together all the bindweed I could, without snapping it, wrapped paper towels round it and put it in a carrier bag (with no holes) then sprayed the glyphosate into the bag, enough to wet the paper towels. I resprayed into the bags (there was more than one area) on a weekly basis until I could see that all the plants growing into the bag were dead, then let it dry out before removing.

The bits that were wholly within my garden, needed very little the following year. The greaater amount, that was also growing next door took longer, at least 3 years, it may even have been 4. I can't fully remember now because it was well over 10 years ago and it has never come back.

I wouldn't use glyphosate indiscriminately but I do think it has it's place.

I am currently struggling with a huge crop of buttercups but am painstakingly picking and digging it out. It's a thug but not on the scale of bindweed

Thank you, didn't know that! I'm occasionally diverting a neighbour opposite's encroaching brambles, ivy and bindweed who compete with each other to invade other gardens including mine. I just turn them back around into his garden. The poor man is housebound so don't want to moan & at least not bamboo or knotweed. I see the new roundup contains ferrous sulphate instead of glyphosate.

They are rumoured to have paid out millions of dollars to stop it getting to court

https://www.lawsuit-information-center.com/amp/roundup-lawsuit.html

if it’s safe then I doubt they’d have settled an 11 billion class action!

Just buy the glyphosate free roundup? 🤷‍♀️

@TheSandgroper that sounds very sneaky

Bindweed you have to stop letting it get established, every week or so get out there on your hands and knees and pull any fresh shoots, as long as you break the stem at ground level, it has to start again and eventually gives up.

Brambles if cut as close to the ground, and the stump sprayed with sbk brush killer (small amounts) has worked for me.

I don't like using weed killer. It can be very effective to bake away plants using black plastic over an area for a few months if its an area that isn't supposed to have anything growing in it like on our gravel if this is an option?

Roundup doesn't have glyphosphate any more I think? To get rid of bind weed, coil it into a sandwich bag spray herbicide into bag, put a brick on it. It soaks in and goes down to root.

I used glyphosate on bindweed - very carefully, painting it into the leaves in an area of otherwise fallow ground - and it has got rid of the bindweed.
However, I then planted rows of identical plants in the flowerbed after the bindweed was eradicated, and in the area in which the bindweed was treated the plants are not growing well so I think that it does affect the soil and subsequent planting.

I also painted it on to bindweed growing next to a honeysuckle, again, very carefully, and the very established honeysuckle is now dying.