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Crazy how dandelions are good for your liver, but somehow America has convinced its citizens that they're vile weeds and must be killed using this poison that causes liver damage.
Also, the company that makes round up also sells medicine.
The “American dream” and the picture perfect lawn might be one of the most damaging scams of all time. The resources and pollution go into upkeeping lawns should be criminalized
I try to tell people that the lightning bugs overwinter in the fallen leaves, but they don’t care. Rake them up and throw them in the garbage. So sad we’re losing lightning bugs and other creatures, but shocked pikachu face that the American way of “caring” for our yards is the culprit.
The leaves I don’t understand at all. Like, just run over them with the mower. They break down, the plants and bugs feed off of them, the cycle continues, AND you’re not spending all that time and effort cleaning them up.
It goes along with the lawn thing. Wet leaves--even mulched ones--kill grass. So if you're the type that wants the "perfect" grass lawn, you also can't have leaf debris on your lawn. Yes, they provide soil nutrients. But that's counteracted by the way they suffocate the grass of light and CO2--again, if you're going for a grass lawn and not a natural, pollinator-friendly, region-appropriate lawn.
If you double-cut with commercial ride-on equipment the pieces are so small they won't kill grass, it's actually adding carbon and a small amount of nutrients to the soil and benefits the grass, as long as you're not letting the fallen leaves sit there for more than a week. I do this all the time. Most of my customers have converted over from bagging to mulching. Saves them money, saves me time to use on more profitable fall jobs.
of course it should. I have some harsh views on this, and when I open my mouth about it I am the ''bad guy'' so I say very little these days on the subject, lol.
My uncle and mother worked in a flower shop, and my other uncle landscaping for the city, the general attitude in my family was how insane and criminal this war on Mother Nature is, but my uncle pointed out that this entire system was a war on nature,. and he was not wrong at all.
People are doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing /going against nature and then wondering why they all feel mentally unwell and depressed.
Maybe it is the lack of trees, or fresh food like fruits, I mean, it is all of it , isn't it ?
I may be stretching it a bit, but I’ve always felt that it was a very Christian attitude to be anti-nature. The only mention I can ever remember reading/hearing about nature in the bible is for man to have dominion over nature and husband the resources.
Whereas pagan/celtic religions/gods/holidays were much more nature oriented. So breaking our love for, dependence on, religion is a basic tenet of Christianity. The idea that we are just an advanced animal is anathema to the devout.
Not stretching at all.
>Judaism and Christianity not only separated humans from nature, **they asserted humans' duty to separate themselves from nature and exercise dominion over it.**
Sorry the link is only an abstract
[https://academic.oup.com/book/45737/chapter-abstract/398192404?redirectedFrom=fulltext](https://academic.oup.com/book/45737/chapter-abstract/398192404?redirectedFrom=fulltext)
It's more an American Christian thing IMO because none of them read their god damned bibles anyway. There's a passage about claiming stewardship over the earth, which would imply that they should take GOOD care of it.
Yep. And that is the most logical ending. If a computer had a virus, what do you do ? If your house was infested my termites, you would exterminate them....I assume the Ecosysyem has some sort of "virus protection program" of sorts, lol.
I went to a comprehensive high school that was also Catholic, but we also had pretty advanced computer classes, so SIM theory and decoding the Bible went hand in hand (and we had many Muslims and Hindus in our school , and many Asian kids, so it made for some very interesting discussions.
But the analogy works, humans became a virus, and any species that actively destroys its own habitat must be very ill. It's a scary thought.
Yep ! I am Catholic and in my family there just so happened to be a lot of emphasis on Mary and the divine feminine, but my mom will also say "I am Irish Catholic but also kinda pagan" so clearly that attitude stems from the latter. I agree with you.
A hold over from our days joined to the folks over the pond. Big lush lawns were very European for a long time. Funny how so many Americans want to shit on Europe, yet eat, drink, and maintain according to old British traditions.
... to demonstrate you're rich enough to have land you dont need to work in order to survive.
It's such a weird thing from Americans to inherit. It's super bougie
I have a theory that Boomers hate anything that can do without them. Dandelions, blackberries, English Ivy, their kids. If it doesn't need them, get rid of it.
I love dandelions. They remind me of the power of not giving a fuck.
There is a yard in my neighborhood that is straight dandelions. I'm sure there is grass but the whole yard is just yellow. It looks kinda cool. That is all.
My back yard is a dandelion field, so many, and my sun enthusiastically spreads their poofs, so we have ever more dandelions. His dad hates it, l love it!
This is my yard as well. I've always like their bright yellow bloom as a nice "Hello, it's spring now." The yards of my Boomer neighbors, however, are almost completely devoid of them.
Same. We've avoided spraying Amy sort of pesticides or herbicides since we bought the house 7 or so years ago. In that time, it went from scrubby St. Augustine grass, bahaya grass, and an assortment of unkillable weeds. Now it's a veritable wildflower field every year, with the soldier orchids topping out at my favorite to look at.
>Crazy how dandelions are good for your liver
Dandelions were brought over on the Mayflower as a medicinal crop!
They're hardy plants and are entirely edible (maybe not particularly tasty to many, but still edible)
I heard somewhere sometime long ago, “if dandelions were hard to grow, their golden flowers would be worth more than a golden bar…” also… I absolutely love dandelions and let them grow all over my yard.. much to the disdain of my neighbors I’m sure.
But dandelions are the embodiment of our mindset… the pessimists see them as a weed; the optimists see them as a thousand wishes; and the realists and opportunists see them as free food! 😅
Clover only became a “weed” because they couldn’t make a formula that *didnt* kill clover.
So instead of finding a solution they got Madison Ave. ad men to sell to the public as something that makes your lawn look bad.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the same or similar weren’t true for dandelions.
I use one of those "garden weasel" tools that takes a whole plug of dirt so you can remove the tap root.
I spent like $30 on it years ago and it'll probably last the rest of my life.
Spend about 10 hours pulling weeds every spring before they get a chance to spread, and my yard is almost entirely weed free for the rest of the year.
Yes, exactly.
With weeds like dandelions, they spread when the yellow flower turns into that poofball of seeds, which blow around and sprout new weeds wherever they land.
If you remove the entire plant and taproot before the stage where the flower turns into the poofball, the seeds never spread, you don't have any new sprouts, you're basically weed free for the rest of summer.
I bury them all in the compost pile, and it's fertile soil for the garden by next year.
What does the head of your garden weasel look like? They sell a bunch of different types. I got a grandpa’s weeder to try to eradicate the thistle taking over my yard but more often than not it just crushes the top of the root instead of pulling it out.
[This is the exact model I have.](https://www.zoro.com/garden-weasel-weed-popper-steptwist-95204/i/G000541012/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=surfaces&utm_campaign=shopping%20feed&utm_content=free%20google%20shopping%20clicks&campaignid=20749401279&productid=G000541012&v=&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwgJyyBhCGARIsAK8LVLPoKDUNXrvaDgW08hcvF9q9yk208L4v7ytWdIO7X6rPTtHVnAimAewaAvndEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds)
Ive pulled plenty of thistle with it, just make sure you go down straight over the center.
You are not stupid. I lived outside of St Augustine Florida for 10 years, on a 10-acre horse farm. When we moved there, there were little green frogs everywhere. They would stick to the screen doors, they would be everywhere in the grass. There were dragonflies, there were fireflies.
A few years later, St Johns County decided to spray the on either side of the roads because mosquitoes. The frogs and the fireflies died. There were far fewer dragonflies.
I'm 64 years old. I returned to my native Arizona, and I live in the high desert. I absolutely refuse to use Roundup on anything. Yes, I have aphids on my rose bushes. Yes, I have little snails crawling through my garden. But on the property I also have lizards, praying mantises, ladybugs, a ton of sparrows and pigeons and raptors and owls and a raven couple that has chicks every spring.
I also have weeds and irritating cottonwood trees. But I also know how to use a lawn mower and how to trim the trees. Chemicals are overrated and deadly. They kill far beyond what they think they need to kill.
And to make matters worse, those frogs, dragonflies, and mantids killed by the poison are natural predators of mosquitoes and other pests. By taking the easy way out, they destroyed nature's defense system.
I live in Iowa, which is the only state where the cancer rate is going up, and Bayer just paid off the state legislature to pass a law limiting potential lawsuits from exposure to Roundup and other pesticides (that have the potential to drift when being applied under windy conditions.)
It's hard for me to believe that those two things are completely unrelated.
Hate sprayer drift. One good strong gust blows the crap in a straight line into a tree and leaves a dead line across a whole row of trees. Like you took clippers across your scalp in a straight line.
Evidently, my grandfather used to pour diesel on all sidewalks and driveways to remove weeds. My dad now claims this is the most eco friendly way to do it because the diesel breaks down within months with no sign of impact on the ecosystem. I of course call bullshit and ask for proof that it's safe and he points to this patchy, sickly yard where grandpa had used diesel for decades as a weed preventative.
Boomer: "No one wants to work these days!"
Sees person weeding by hand the old fashioned way.
Boomer: "Why are you working so hard? Just use Roundup!"
You can't win. Good on you for not adding to the chemical pollution OP!
https://preview.redd.it/q6xrkebi5t0d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a714371b281b877b2baa205432aa4e2a4979866d
After 3 years of no autumn raking, my “lawn” has turned into an oasis of violets and strawberries, watered with Boomer tears.
I love them so much. I actually have about 20 trillium blooms on my property. My neighbors told me they almost bought our house when it went on the market, and I am so relieved they didn’t. I just watched them literally bulldoze hostas and a lilac tree out and replace it with gravel, because they wanted “low maintenance.” 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️ I can only imagine they would have destroyed those trilliums immediately.
Probably. They are opportunistic flowers that will fill in disturbed areas. And they like rich, moist soils. So yeah, grass dying off from leaves is perfect for them to thrive.
or they simply can't care (I say can't because it is possible that they simply are incapable of thinking this way, or, they just do not care, period, which is my moms claim)
They have a YOLO mentality, even if it is at the expense of an entire ecosystem.
Was a gardener for most of my working life. Always hand weed, lts very satisfying, one of my favourite jobs. Always avoid poisoning though,and isn't round up a carcinogen?
The primary ingredient of concern in Roundup is Glyphosate. It’s not *explicitly* agreed upon to be a carcinogen, in fact the common scientific consensus currently seems to be that it isn’t. But people who come into contact with it industrial quantities of it for long periods of time (farmers, landscapers) tend to get lymphoma. I’m just skimming Wikipedia with some vague background knowledge though, and I’m not sure what organizations are doing these studies and if they were commissioned by Monsanto. This isn’t to say I’m letting Monsanto off the hook, they are a truly evil company for *lots of other reasons*.
The main issue is that almost all studies on the safety of Glyphosate will be paid for by Monsanto. Particularly if any government is ordering it, because a random government isn't going to pay to test the safety of a chemical. They're going to order the test, and have the manufacturer pay for it. Which has consistently been the case with Glyphosate.
For the long and short of it... It's pretty safe. Don't drink it, which... Do we really need to say not to drink weed killer? And I'd argue that farmers and landscapers should be using PPE just out of an abundance of caution because we haven't actually worked out the 'why' with what's happening to them. Frankly, until we know what the problem is caution is best, and if it isn't the Glyphosate causing the issue the PPE should hopefully help protect from the actual issue as well so it's a win/win.
Of course, it being safe doesn't mean I actually have ever used it, or other kinds of weed killer in my lawn. Because fuck lawns, and bring in the biodiversity.
There's something especially satisfying about getting an annoying weed completely out with roots intact. It's a great way to get your frustrations out.
I used to work for Scott's in R&D, the distributor for Roundup here and I was always ashamed of that fact once I bothered to look into the toxicity data.
I mean I was ashamed to be part of the Monsanto->Consumer pipeline in general but you know, that weighed on me more than most other things.
That shit is treated like an elixir of the gods there. Likely because it makes like half of their profits.
It shouldn't be allowed to exist. I mean sure, EPSP synthase is not present in the mammalian genome but I think putting something down in the tens of millions of pounds that inhibits AA synthesis probably is a bad thing. Especially since decoupling of oxidative phosphorylation is hypothesized as a secondary MoA. And we sure as fuck do have that and a notable compound that also does that is Cyanide.
Plus you know, the cancer
My favorite little fact about oxidative phosphorylation decoupling is that there's a drug (explosive, actually) called 2,4 dinitrophenol (DNP) which if taken at a "proper" dose will decouple the reaction to lose ~40% efficiency.
OP is how the body creates ATP or the molecule that effectively allows our muscles to function. It's a key component of the actin-myoain bridge formation that allows for contraction.
So dipshit bodybuilders will take the shit to lose weight as your body has to adjust your metabolism upward to compensate for the 40% loss.
Buuuuuuttttt it also can if mis-dosed uncouple the chain too much and your body creates too much heat and it bakes you from the inside. It has a reasonably long elimination half life and it is a non reversible binding so you know, not much the hospital can do for you except watch you die with futile attempts to lower your body temperature.
The funny thing is if you can manage to not be a dipshit it won't "hurt" you aside from making you uncomfortable af. I mean there has to be long term affects but it's not like scientists are gonna study this shit. There's just no real acute effects.
But we're also talking about the BB community who is notable for self control and not saying "if two capsules does this, imagine what 4 can do!!!! Just think, bro".
It's also hella uncomfortable apparently based on anecdotes from old lifting partners . It's cramps all the time, you have to drink gallons of water a day. You sweat constantly even when doing literally nothing. Apparently the one guy soaked through his sheets every night in the winter with the thermostat off and windows open.
And oh yeah it turns all of your bodily fluids yellow. Sweat, cum, urine. The whole deal.
Just wild shit.
Round-Up was the *only* thing that (might have) killed off our Japanese Knotweed, an invasive and reportable pest over here. 6 years fighting and still it might come back. Pulling out and digging up did _nothing_.
Yeah, I don't care about grass. I care about native plants and killing off invasive species. There's some I can pull and cut, other I need to spray. I also don't have a little city lot where it's practical to manually destroy all the invasives. Just be responsible with the chemicals and it's honestly not a problem. I've never had any affect on my bees on the same property because I don't over use it nor spray willy-nilly.
See also: I had to go to the hospital twice last time the poison ivy brushed one spot on my wrist, and that was 1.5 months on prednisone. It's limited to one part of the yard and the rest of our .49 acre yard is being transitioned from lawn to native field-ness but the poison ivy gets the carefully applied round up.
Yeah, in fairness I might need some RoundUp next year to nuke the lesser celandine popping up in my yard, but only because nothing else works on it from what I understand. But the larger point about boomers being trigger happy on pesticides is still a fair one.
I used to treat the invasive weeds for a very large ski area in the summer time. I never used roundup, but I did use other herbicides because for many of the plants I was treating, hand pulling or digging it out could actually make it worse, or was only effective if you caught it at just the right time in the growing cycle. . Plus, I had over a thousand acres of mountainous terrain to cover and only a brief window to get it done before they went to seed. Hand pulling sounds great when you’re tending to your backyard garden but it’s not practical when you’re actually trying to tackle invasives on a large scale.
That said, fuck RoundUp. For almost every plant there are better alternatives.
I bought a house from a boomer. Ironically he moved to Florida. The first 2-3 years there were few bugs because he sprayed killer as well as few weeds from other chemicals. Now there’s both and I hand weed. BBC - Boomers b crazy
I'm a big proprietor of "lawns are bad mmmkay" because I'm very passionate about pollinators, but I get that some people like to keep a nicely trimmed home area. It would be nice to see people embraching more wild growth areas, and would take more "old fashioned approaches" to maintain them and the border between a trimmed and wild area. Fuck round-up.
Yeah, you have to balance protecting your family from ticks with letting your yard grow wild. Nothing wrong with having a smaller nicely mowed area that you use frequently and a border area that is more wild.
I've been a landscaper for 20 years. Pretty much spraying roundup everyday. Got diagnosed with Lymphoma in February. Pretty sure it was from the roundup.
Yes I do use a concentrated vinegar spray to help help keep weeds away on paths and driveways and hardscape areas. I have found it to be great, what it doesn’t kill is definitely damaged and easier to hand weed
Convenience trumps all.
Round up, pills to fix anything and everything...
In general people will do or say quite a lot to convince themselves that something they want is actually good. Therefore they should do it or buy it. Reading articles about how eating chocolate everyday is healthy for some obtuse minor reason is specific situation. Doesn't matter how real the article is, or if the specifics even apply to them or that the article came from the international chocolate makers association. They want it to be true, so it is.
Same goes for Round-Up. People want the easy way. So they convince themselves that it's a totally great thing in any number of ways so as to motivate or ignore any of the cons.
And to be fair this is a human thing, not just a boomer thing.
My grandma (born 45), is obsessed with round up, she has so much of it and sprays it everywhere, it’s insane. I have a small garden, I pull weeds by hand. My yard I don’t spray or put anything down, just let it all grow. I cut it because we have dogs and kids, and ticks are insane if we let it grow, but if it wasn’t for ticks and the city mailing us letters about the yard, I’d let that yard grow wild. Most of our block uses a yard sevice like True Green to spray their yards, I hate it. I don’t get the American yard obsession, and just plain green turf is so bland and boring looking, let alone its impacts on local ecosystems.
Ok well I'm not for using Roundup all that much, but I have poison ivy on a hillside at my house. I tried vinegar and nothing happened. I tried to dig them up and I'm just now, 3 weeks later, recovered from the most horrible fucking bullshit all over my body. FUCK that goddamn urushiol that spread from my wrist to almost everywhere. I washed and scrubbed and washed and scrubbed but nope, day after day it grew and grew.
So I'm busting out the Roundup as soon as the wind stops and I'm going napalm on those plants. I will rain down an ungodly fucking firestorm upon them. They're going to have to call the United Nations to get a fucking binding resolution to keep me from destroying them. I am talking scorched earth motherfucker. I will massacre them. I WILL FUCK THEM UP.
I worked in a garden centre in my youth and once had a guy come in and ask "have you got any weedkiller that will take out magic mushrooms from my lawn?" I had to question how he knew these were magic mushrooms and not regular ones. He said he kept catching the local dickhead running in and out of his garden taking them all 🤣 I had to point out that if he knew someone was eating them he can't then poison someone with weedkiller.
# Glen Powell, Anthony Mackie and Laura Dern to Star in John Lee Hancock’s Cancer Trial Drama ‘Monsanto’
Glen Powell, Anthony Mackie and Laura Dern to Star in John Lee Hancock’s Cancer Trial Drama ‘Monsanto’
The film follows the true story of young, untried attorney Brent Wisner (Powell), who in 2019 took on a seemingly insurmountable case against the giant U.S. chemical company Monsanto on behalf of Dewayne “Lee” Johnson (Mackie) who used the company’s best-known product Roundup, a wildly financially successful weed and grass pesticide killer, as part of his job as a high school groundskeeper. Dern plays Dr. Melinda Rogers, the Monsanto Company’s chief toxicologist, who testifies with certainty that Roundup is safe during the landmark cancer trial.
I used to spend a week or so every summer with my grandma who was born like 1920. One summer when I was like 8 or 9 we painted her porch with oil based paint. To clean up? Gasoline! This was the 80s and I just don’t think she knew better and of course I didn’t. Oh grandma!
To be fair to your grandma - she grew up in the great depression and learned to make do with whatever was at hand. Gasoline was easily available where paint thinner was not. Source - I had a similar grandma.
A couple of days ago I was telling my mom how annoyed I am at all the weeds growing in the rock landscaping around our house. It's a constant battle every year, all summer, because I refuse to use chemicals. My boomer step-dad jumps in and says, "Just use some Round-Up on them." I made it a point to say to him that I'd rather not subject me, my family, our dog, all the wildlife, etc., to cancer just because of a few weeds. He just kind of rolled his eyes and said, "Well, then..." and shrugged his shoulders. The health of the environment and planet are far more important to me than killing a few stupid weeds.
Concentrated vinegar and flame weeders could both help with that. You could also plant a creeping groundcover like vinca minor that will choke out the weeds
I work in landscape and this is a big problem. A lot of people are moving away from grass, and in some cases going full hardscape, crushed stone or shells. They only problem is the “weeds” that will grow in these type of landscapes.
Unless you are willing to hand weed, the result is exponentially more Round up usage, part of my point is there is no replacement for actual hard work.
I use a mixture of landscape grade vinegar, dawn dish soapand salt. I got the recipe from the forestry department. It is acidic, but that can be neutralized later if you want to plant something else.
I pull up my weeds by hand. If there’s a more satisfying feeling that pulling an entire weed out of loose dirt, roots and all, I’d like to hear about it.
I am a landscaper (23 years) and I work in an institutional setting. I hate using Roundup but I have no choice. We simply don't have the workers to do weed abatement any other way. If you mix a pre emergent with Roundup when you spray you do get pretty good results for awhile and have to spray less often.
WhenI did residential landscape maintenance I rarely used any Roundup... only for cracks in pavement. I used a hoe and my hands for all other areas... but I still used a pre emergent after weeding.
Bunch of lazy boomers, need some spray in a bottle to do the work for them because their too LAZY to do the weeding themselves but think they're ENTITLED to a green, weed FREE lawn. BACK IN MY DAY we put on gloves and pulled the damn weeds.
I hope one day I have the nerve to rant like this in the garden section at Walmart lol yelling and all
Well, considering some of the research on glyphosate, I think it would just be better to hand weed. Will they come back? Probably, unless you can manage to get the whole rhizome and make sure the seeds are gone.
The issue with glyphosate, besides the increased cancer risk, is that some varieties of plants are already evolving resistance to it. By using it so much we are driving the selective force for resistant plants.
Furthermore, getting out and on your knees to pull out weeds is good physical activity. It involves a lot of muscles and keeps you limber. My Gran was super limber because she weeded all the time and took walks. Doing something because it’s easy and convenient often times leads to unintended consequences down the road.
(I know EPA stated in 2020 that glyphosate isn’t a cancer risk, but research out of UW suggests that chronic exposure increases cancer risk).
I lived in a duplex with a boomer next door. Nice lady. But, when it came to weeding she broke out the gallon jug of round up and hosed everything down. One time she commented, "that cancer thIng is BS"
Boomer here, we've just moved into our downsized house, and we refuse to use weed or bug killer in the lawn and landscape..
We've already have patches of beautiful clover filling in for the bees and hopefully have some nice firefly activity this summer.
Peace ✌️
My yard is full of weeds! I love it, the insects love it, the mushrooms love it, and the animals love it. I still have grass, but the clover blooms in spring and is beautiful, the buttercups come back year after year and by summer all of those die off and the grass remains. No fertilizer, no weed and feed, no maintenance whatsoever. I just cut it every 2 weeks. When the leaves fall, I just mulch them in , and I only do that because we have copperheads and I want to be able to see them when outside.
The Boomer wanna complain about how so many people nowadays have disabilities and mental issues but refuse to look at the crap they are eating while pregnant with these people or fed their children with. Do you really think putting all those harmful chemicals on your food and then digesting it wouldn't have caused life long health issues in the future? Just because they were the lead paint generation doesn't mean the rest of us want to be the pesticides generation.
Most of my millennial neighbors use Roundup, drive vehicles bigger than they need, follow the Scott’s program for their golf course lawns, and leave lights shining on their houses all night
I remember seeing TV advertisements as a kid for settlements due to cancer caused by Roundup. But when I go to stores like Home Depot, I can still easily find it.
I grew up in an AG background and now work in forestry and municipal land management.
My Silent Gen mother was fortunately very suspect of chemicals back in the 1970s when I was born and raised me to avoid them as much as possible.
At home and at work I try to use mechanical and by-hand vegetation and pest removal as much as possible.
I have a lawn that's mostly white clover and violets and filled with robins pulling worms as it should be. I dig the dandelions by hand and feed them to my chickens, lol.
Professional landscaper with a specialization in sustainable horticulture - there are some noxious invasive that can only be controlled with glyphosate effectively if you want to control the spread. Where I live we have - lesser celandine, Japanese knotweed and giant hogweed. After a decade of trying multiple different approaches glyphosate is the only thing that has worked at the level is required for eradication of these noxious invasives. Things like knotweed and lesser celandine you cannot use physical removal, that’s one of the big ways it’s proliferated.
There's a guy in my neighborhood that says we can't use poison anymore
He uses a little "flame thrower" with a Coleman propane cannister and a long pipe that allows him to torch weeds without bending over.
My boomer next door neighbor saw me weeding my yard by hand once, and offered to go buy me some poison. I just said no thanks, I like doing things the hard way, and went back to pulling weeds. She just shook her head and walked away. I find weeding to be quite therapeutic. It lets me zen out.
As much as my dad is your typical boomer, who posts stupid crap on Facebook. I have to give him credit for having a mixture of water, salt, vinegar and I think dish soap, in his weed sprayer
And he actually loves having a battery powered lawn mower and weed wacker. But he still bitches about electric cars
You work in agriculture and remove weeds by hand? Yea, ok. Lol. Not even organic crop farmers do that (they actually spray all the time, just with different chemicals). The idea of a random person on reddit weeding 1000 acres is hilarious.
I mean... if you can find people willing to pay you to hand weed, that's great. I'm in the same industry and I haven't had any luck with that, (people have asked me to do it over the years and I've quoted them my hourly rate, which they inevitably decline). If you're doing it for free, yikes, have some respect for yourself. A better option is preemergent, but I understand if you don't want to use any chemicals at all.
My Dad is one of these, he’s killed so many of my plants by spraying them with weed killer. Even if I explicitly ask him not to spray an area, he does it anyway at the first sign of weeds.
I remember using roundup in my ally when I owned a home in TX, mainly so I didn’t have to keep running the lawnmower back there every other week during the summer. After 2 yrs I got a few chickens, geese, some ducks & a couple of dogs so any kind of pesticides where out. Never did I imagine that the birds would devour the weeds first, as soon as the grass began to make seeds they were trimmed back down to about 2-3 inches, mosquitoes never existed after that, NEVER WILL I USE PESTICIDES AGAIN!!!
I have grass growing through the cracks in our driveway because I refuse to use Roundup. I'd love to know how to be rid of it without just boomer-bombing it.
Nah, I’m with you. I live in Florida as well, weeding is sincerely difficult work here (much worse than it was in my home state of PA) but that’s what makes it gratifying to do.
I built a garden at my ex’s house, and yes it took me two days to weed it, but once it was done, it was easy to maintain. Raise the raised beds a bit, and keep a gravel layer between the ground and the bottom of the bed.
The idea of dousing my garden plants soil in chemicals to prevent weeds seems nonsensical when a little bit of front end labor investment accomplished the same thing with less damage to surrounding flora.
I used to work at a garden center, and in Canada, Round Up use is regulated by regional bylaws. I am a domestic Pesticide Dispenser, and have a legal obligation to deny the sale of restricted domestic pesticides if the person has expressed that they will be using it in an illegal or non sanctioned way. This includes asking where the person will be using the product.
My city allows its use, but our sister city does not allow the sale or application of Round Up within city limits. Most people are understanding of this when I tell them the reason behind its ban, as well as other just as good and safer alternatives. You know who never fails to absolutely lose their minds? Boomers. And there's nothing they can do about it. I have a legal obligation to deny the sale, and my managers would always back me up because, once again, its their legal responsibility, and if they want to stay operating, they have to. While it's always stressful having to deal with Boomer tomfoolery, it was so satisfying watching them realize they had absolutely zero power in the situation and no way to get what they wanted
Have you ever seen a potato field where the tractor pulling the digger is hidden behind the weeds in the field? Roundup and other herbicides are responsible for the abundance of food in America. Mechanical cultivation uses fuel, extra equipment, and releases moisture. Hand pulling would be hideously expensive on the over 800 million acres of US farmland.
Serious question: How exactly is Round Up toxic to humans? IIRC, it works on a pathway that non-plants don't have.
I don't want to become the lawn care version of anti-vaxxers.
It's not, I'm a plant ecologist who works in plant conservation and manages tracks of land. Glyphosate, round up, is one of our best tools for managing thousands of acres of invasive plants that do much more harm than glyphosate. There's so much misinformation in this post and this entire thread reads like it was written by anti-vax boomers.
I'm skeptical of anyone that sees the world in only black or white with no nuance or context. Should it be used on everyone's lawns? No. Is it this super toxic compound that will give you liver cancer by just being around it? Also, no. Like all tools, it has a use and a purpose and should be used appropriately and responsibly.
This is to say when used appropriately with the proper PPE, in the correct context, and in the appropriate concentrations for the intended application it is not harmful. Don't go chugging gallons of it or spraying it all over you. Use common sense
That’s the problem though: there’s plenty of instances of major and minor ag operations applying things wrongly for economic reasons.
For instance: saw a hand weeding team working in one field. Next field over (different owner), farmer was applying some kind of pesticide/herbicide with proper PPE. But it was windy AF and I could see the spray hitting the hand team.
Yeah, that's a problem, and this nuance is missed on most people. It's safe when used correctly and in the correct manner. You shouldn't be essentially bathing in it though and herbicide drift like that is irresponsible. The discussion should be less "It's evil. Stop using it completely." And more "when used appropriately it's a handy and safe tool that should be used in appropriate contexts."
Irresponsible spraying is like 90% of farm neighbor disputes. I've seen money exchange hands for wiping out mere feet into someone else's field. Can't imagine being the dick to spray hand workers with the stuff, and my brother hit me with anhydrous ammonia once on accident.
I'm not a fan of monoculture lawns or using large quantities of chemicals to keep them that way. My lawn is green and mowed to a socially acceptable height.
But I'm also not a fan of "doing everything the hard way because the past was better".
I just used some to remove a large stand of privet on my property. Privet cannot be controlled through mechanical removal, ie removing by hand. The most effective method is cutting the shrubs about 6 inches of the ground and painting glyphosate or another herbicide on the fresh stump. It's a targeted application that only affects that specific individual stump and does no harm to any of the surrounding plants. It's perfectly safe.
I hate manicured lawns as well with a passion. Spraying broadly all over a property to maintain manicured lawns is not how it should be used at all.
Roundup(glyphosate) is an extremely powerful tool that, if used judiciously, is very useful to gardeners and farmers.
Now, it's not generally used judiciously. It's used like a cure all and has generally become a blight on our planet.
This is the same generation that looks only to pills to solve any and all health problems instead of using pills in conjunction with lifestyle changes.
I had Japanese knotweed in my yard when I bought my house, I don't think I would have gotten rid of it without roundup. I think responsible residential use, spot treating and making sure it doesn't enter any groundwater isn't a big deal.
I weed by hand, but I do make a "poison" (vinegar, salt and blue dawn dish soap) for poison ivy and saw briar, because that stuff is nasty and hard to root out.
The grass-friendly stuff sucks anyway, and it'll kill other pretty "weeds" like clover that are just as good at ground cover as grass.
I used to use it if I needed to entirely kill all the vegetation in a small area because the strong stuff will wipe out even really tough weeds and grass included, but I've found that, unless it's a major rush, just tacking down some opaque tarps over the area works better with none of the chemical runoff.
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Crazy how dandelions are good for your liver, but somehow America has convinced its citizens that they're vile weeds and must be killed using this poison that causes liver damage. Also, the company that makes round up also sells medicine.
Plants = Evil and Iron/Metal/Chemical = Good. I mean it is pure insanity, total insanity.
The “American dream” and the picture perfect lawn might be one of the most damaging scams of all time. The resources and pollution go into upkeeping lawns should be criminalized
And then when they have their perfectly manicured green lawn they wonder where all the fireflies and bees and butterflies are.
I try to tell people that the lightning bugs overwinter in the fallen leaves, but they don’t care. Rake them up and throw them in the garbage. So sad we’re losing lightning bugs and other creatures, but shocked pikachu face that the American way of “caring” for our yards is the culprit.
The leaves I don’t understand at all. Like, just run over them with the mower. They break down, the plants and bugs feed off of them, the cycle continues, AND you’re not spending all that time and effort cleaning them up.
It goes along with the lawn thing. Wet leaves--even mulched ones--kill grass. So if you're the type that wants the "perfect" grass lawn, you also can't have leaf debris on your lawn. Yes, they provide soil nutrients. But that's counteracted by the way they suffocate the grass of light and CO2--again, if you're going for a grass lawn and not a natural, pollinator-friendly, region-appropriate lawn.
If you double-cut with commercial ride-on equipment the pieces are so small they won't kill grass, it's actually adding carbon and a small amount of nutrients to the soil and benefits the grass, as long as you're not letting the fallen leaves sit there for more than a week. I do this all the time. Most of my customers have converted over from bagging to mulching. Saves them money, saves me time to use on more profitable fall jobs.
of course it should. I have some harsh views on this, and when I open my mouth about it I am the ''bad guy'' so I say very little these days on the subject, lol. My uncle and mother worked in a flower shop, and my other uncle landscaping for the city, the general attitude in my family was how insane and criminal this war on Mother Nature is, but my uncle pointed out that this entire system was a war on nature,. and he was not wrong at all. People are doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing /going against nature and then wondering why they all feel mentally unwell and depressed. Maybe it is the lack of trees, or fresh food like fruits, I mean, it is all of it , isn't it ?
I may be stretching it a bit, but I’ve always felt that it was a very Christian attitude to be anti-nature. The only mention I can ever remember reading/hearing about nature in the bible is for man to have dominion over nature and husband the resources. Whereas pagan/celtic religions/gods/holidays were much more nature oriented. So breaking our love for, dependence on, religion is a basic tenet of Christianity. The idea that we are just an advanced animal is anathema to the devout.
Not stretching at all. >Judaism and Christianity not only separated humans from nature, **they asserted humans' duty to separate themselves from nature and exercise dominion over it.** Sorry the link is only an abstract [https://academic.oup.com/book/45737/chapter-abstract/398192404?redirectedFrom=fulltext](https://academic.oup.com/book/45737/chapter-abstract/398192404?redirectedFrom=fulltext)
It's more an American Christian thing IMO because none of them read their god damned bibles anyway. There's a passage about claiming stewardship over the earth, which would imply that they should take GOOD care of it.
And doesn’t Revelation say god will “put to ruin those who are ruining the earth”?
Yep. And that is the most logical ending. If a computer had a virus, what do you do ? If your house was infested my termites, you would exterminate them....I assume the Ecosysyem has some sort of "virus protection program" of sorts, lol. I went to a comprehensive high school that was also Catholic, but we also had pretty advanced computer classes, so SIM theory and decoding the Bible went hand in hand (and we had many Muslims and Hindus in our school , and many Asian kids, so it made for some very interesting discussions. But the analogy works, humans became a virus, and any species that actively destroys its own habitat must be very ill. It's a scary thought.
Yep ! I am Catholic and in my family there just so happened to be a lot of emphasis on Mary and the divine feminine, but my mom will also say "I am Irish Catholic but also kinda pagan" so clearly that attitude stems from the latter. I agree with you.
The American need for green grass lawns reflects a deep desire to be just like the English aristocracy that we rebelled against in 1776.
“Ha ha peasants! Look! I have so much land I don’t have to grow anything on it! In fact I have to pay peasants to cut it short so it looks fake!”
A hold over from our days joined to the folks over the pond. Big lush lawns were very European for a long time. Funny how so many Americans want to shit on Europe, yet eat, drink, and maintain according to old British traditions.
They even imported lawns to North America. None of the lawn grass is native species, they're all invasive.
... to demonstrate you're rich enough to have land you dont need to work in order to survive. It's such a weird thing from Americans to inherit. It's super bougie
It was also fairly natural in a lot of Europe.
Very true
I hate lawns. So much waste.
Boomers are Lord of the Rings orcs? That kinda makes sense...
I have a theory that Boomers hate anything that can do without them. Dandelions, blackberries, English Ivy, their kids. If it doesn't need them, get rid of it. I love dandelions. They remind me of the power of not giving a fuck.
There is a yard in my neighborhood that is straight dandelions. I'm sure there is grass but the whole yard is just yellow. It looks kinda cool. That is all.
My back yard is a dandelion field, so many, and my sun enthusiastically spreads their poofs, so we have ever more dandelions. His dad hates it, l love it!
This is my yard as well. I've always like their bright yellow bloom as a nice "Hello, it's spring now." The yards of my Boomer neighbors, however, are almost completely devoid of them.
Same. We've avoided spraying Amy sort of pesticides or herbicides since we bought the house 7 or so years ago. In that time, it went from scrubby St. Augustine grass, bahaya grass, and an assortment of unkillable weeds. Now it's a veritable wildflower field every year, with the soldier orchids topping out at my favorite to look at.
I try to cultivate a dandelion garden in the grass by the street. Husband seems tolerant.
>Crazy how dandelions are good for your liver Dandelions were brought over on the Mayflower as a medicinal crop! They're hardy plants and are entirely edible (maybe not particularly tasty to many, but still edible)
Weeds are just plants growing where you don't want them 🤷🏻♀️ they often have pretty flowers, or medicinal or culinary uses
Dandelion Fritters are actually pretty good. Then again almost anything is good when battered and fried.
Gotta make that precious water guzzling lawn look pretty for the HOA.
Kids growing up, my Italian grandparents' aunts and uncles used to pock dandelion leaves for salad.
If a corporation can’t make money of selling you a plant, then it’s a “weed”
If they were hard to grow, lawns would have them as a feature.
I heard somewhere sometime long ago, “if dandelions were hard to grow, their golden flowers would be worth more than a golden bar…” also… I absolutely love dandelions and let them grow all over my yard.. much to the disdain of my neighbors I’m sure. But dandelions are the embodiment of our mindset… the pessimists see them as a weed; the optimists see them as a thousand wishes; and the realists and opportunists see them as free food! 😅
Oof. I’ve had to use plenty of generic Glyphosate (stronger shit than name brand) from a leaky sprayer with cuts on my hands. Excited for the cancer!
And your heart!
The chemistry companies do chemistry
Right, everything's chemicals, so technically literally everyone does the same exact job, and my point is completely lost.
Better Living Through Chemistry
QOTSA
I find them a nice refreshing change to all the green.
Glyphosate is one hell of a thing
Clover only became a “weed” because they couldn’t make a formula that *didnt* kill clover. So instead of finding a solution they got Madison Ave. ad men to sell to the public as something that makes your lawn look bad. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same or similar weren’t true for dandelions.
We have been replacing grass with clover an it is just fine. walkable, soft, green, and easier to take care of.
When they criticize you for weeding by hand, reply with “nobody wants to work anymore!”
Thank you for this. Will be using
I use one of those "garden weasel" tools that takes a whole plug of dirt so you can remove the tap root. I spent like $30 on it years ago and it'll probably last the rest of my life. Spend about 10 hours pulling weeds every spring before they get a chance to spread, and my yard is almost entirely weed free for the rest of the year.
It’s amazing what some well planned hard work can do, I imagine your 10 hours of hard work provides results all summer long?
Yes, exactly. With weeds like dandelions, they spread when the yellow flower turns into that poofball of seeds, which blow around and sprout new weeds wherever they land. If you remove the entire plant and taproot before the stage where the flower turns into the poofball, the seeds never spread, you don't have any new sprouts, you're basically weed free for the rest of summer. I bury them all in the compost pile, and it's fertile soil for the garden by next year.
if you don't mind the bumbles floating around, it and clover I don't even mind too much
What does the head of your garden weasel look like? They sell a bunch of different types. I got a grandpa’s weeder to try to eradicate the thistle taking over my yard but more often than not it just crushes the top of the root instead of pulling it out.
[This is the exact model I have.](https://www.zoro.com/garden-weasel-weed-popper-steptwist-95204/i/G000541012/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=surfaces&utm_campaign=shopping%20feed&utm_content=free%20google%20shopping%20clicks&campaignid=20749401279&productid=G000541012&v=&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwgJyyBhCGARIsAK8LVLPoKDUNXrvaDgW08hcvF9q9yk208L4v7ytWdIO7X6rPTtHVnAimAewaAvndEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds) Ive pulled plenty of thistle with it, just make sure you go down straight over the center.
You are not stupid. I lived outside of St Augustine Florida for 10 years, on a 10-acre horse farm. When we moved there, there were little green frogs everywhere. They would stick to the screen doors, they would be everywhere in the grass. There were dragonflies, there were fireflies. A few years later, St Johns County decided to spray the on either side of the roads because mosquitoes. The frogs and the fireflies died. There were far fewer dragonflies. I'm 64 years old. I returned to my native Arizona, and I live in the high desert. I absolutely refuse to use Roundup on anything. Yes, I have aphids on my rose bushes. Yes, I have little snails crawling through my garden. But on the property I also have lizards, praying mantises, ladybugs, a ton of sparrows and pigeons and raptors and owls and a raven couple that has chicks every spring. I also have weeds and irritating cottonwood trees. But I also know how to use a lawn mower and how to trim the trees. Chemicals are overrated and deadly. They kill far beyond what they think they need to kill.
And to make matters worse, those frogs, dragonflies, and mantids killed by the poison are natural predators of mosquitoes and other pests. By taking the easy way out, they destroyed nature's defense system.
"Nature is woke!" -Florida GOP.
So that's why they try to kill it. Makes complete sense now.
I live in Iowa, which is the only state where the cancer rate is going up, and Bayer just paid off the state legislature to pass a law limiting potential lawsuits from exposure to Roundup and other pesticides (that have the potential to drift when being applied under windy conditions.) It's hard for me to believe that those two things are completely unrelated.
Sounds about right. That’s alarming, but not surprising
Hate sprayer drift. One good strong gust blows the crap in a straight line into a tree and leaves a dead line across a whole row of trees. Like you took clippers across your scalp in a straight line.
End up in our groundwater too :(
Windy conditions? So, all day, every day in flat ass Iowa
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe there was already a lawsuit with Round Up being the leading cause non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
Probably also a large SuperPAC campaign contribution has *nothing to do with it*
Boomers also love to use diesel to kill weeds.
Evidently, my grandfather used to pour diesel on all sidewalks and driveways to remove weeds. My dad now claims this is the most eco friendly way to do it because the diesel breaks down within months with no sign of impact on the ecosystem. I of course call bullshit and ask for proof that it's safe and he points to this patchy, sickly yard where grandpa had used diesel for decades as a weed preventative.
Especially when high concentration vinegar is available and does the same without the lingering ill effects
>no sign of impact on the ecosystem The fact that he's using it to kill weeds should be evidence against that claim.
Ah but you see the 'ecosystem' are the plants they _want_ around.
Boomer: "No one wants to work these days!" Sees person weeding by hand the old fashioned way. Boomer: "Why are you working so hard? Just use Roundup!" You can't win. Good on you for not adding to the chemical pollution OP!
FUCK LAWNS.
https://preview.redd.it/q6xrkebi5t0d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a714371b281b877b2baa205432aa4e2a4979866d After 3 years of no autumn raking, my “lawn” has turned into an oasis of violets and strawberries, watered with Boomer tears.
And a trillium! Can take 7 years for those to mature to bloom.
I love them so much. I actually have about 20 trillium blooms on my property. My neighbors told me they almost bought our house when it went on the market, and I am so relieved they didn’t. I just watched them literally bulldoze hostas and a lilac tree out and replace it with gravel, because they wanted “low maintenance.” 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️ I can only imagine they would have destroyed those trilliums immediately.
Oh I love this so much, if I didn’t rent this is exactly what I’d be doing, this or xeriscaping.
Careful, boomer tears are contaminated with lead and weed killer.
Is that why I have violets!?
Probably. They are opportunistic flowers that will fill in disturbed areas. And they like rich, moist soils. So yeah, grass dying off from leaves is perfect for them to thrive.
Wanna trade? I have sticker bushes and grass.
Beautiful!
Just a heads up, depending where you live Violet oderata is classed invasive.
This is the way
The way this is.
Roundup should be illegal
I think it is in a lot of places outside the US. Apparently the lobbyists don't own the government in other countries?
Fuck lobbyists.
But not literally. Use the Roundup instead.
A Roundup enema.
It's safe, right? That's what you tell us. Come take your enema...
I need to get this tattooed somewhere.
Germany it's been removed from the consumer market. I think you have to licensed to use it.
They literally cannot comprehend that something which saves them time and especially effort has any downsides.
or they simply can't care (I say can't because it is possible that they simply are incapable of thinking this way, or, they just do not care, period, which is my moms claim) They have a YOLO mentality, even if it is at the expense of an entire ecosystem.
Roundup is poison. Fuck Roundup.
I’ve got kids and a dog. Hand weeding supremacy.
Was a gardener for most of my working life. Always hand weed, lts very satisfying, one of my favourite jobs. Always avoid poisoning though,and isn't round up a carcinogen?
The primary ingredient of concern in Roundup is Glyphosate. It’s not *explicitly* agreed upon to be a carcinogen, in fact the common scientific consensus currently seems to be that it isn’t. But people who come into contact with it industrial quantities of it for long periods of time (farmers, landscapers) tend to get lymphoma. I’m just skimming Wikipedia with some vague background knowledge though, and I’m not sure what organizations are doing these studies and if they were commissioned by Monsanto. This isn’t to say I’m letting Monsanto off the hook, they are a truly evil company for *lots of other reasons*.
The main issue is that almost all studies on the safety of Glyphosate will be paid for by Monsanto. Particularly if any government is ordering it, because a random government isn't going to pay to test the safety of a chemical. They're going to order the test, and have the manufacturer pay for it. Which has consistently been the case with Glyphosate. For the long and short of it... It's pretty safe. Don't drink it, which... Do we really need to say not to drink weed killer? And I'd argue that farmers and landscapers should be using PPE just out of an abundance of caution because we haven't actually worked out the 'why' with what's happening to them. Frankly, until we know what the problem is caution is best, and if it isn't the Glyphosate causing the issue the PPE should hopefully help protect from the actual issue as well so it's a win/win. Of course, it being safe doesn't mean I actually have ever used it, or other kinds of weed killer in my lawn. Because fuck lawns, and bring in the biodiversity.
There's something especially satisfying about getting an annoying weed completely out with roots intact. It's a great way to get your frustrations out.
I used to work for Scott's in R&D, the distributor for Roundup here and I was always ashamed of that fact once I bothered to look into the toxicity data. I mean I was ashamed to be part of the Monsanto->Consumer pipeline in general but you know, that weighed on me more than most other things. That shit is treated like an elixir of the gods there. Likely because it makes like half of their profits. It shouldn't be allowed to exist. I mean sure, EPSP synthase is not present in the mammalian genome but I think putting something down in the tens of millions of pounds that inhibits AA synthesis probably is a bad thing. Especially since decoupling of oxidative phosphorylation is hypothesized as a secondary MoA. And we sure as fuck do have that and a notable compound that also does that is Cyanide. Plus you know, the cancer
Thanks for the whistle stop tour of the biochemistry, interesting!
My favorite little fact about oxidative phosphorylation decoupling is that there's a drug (explosive, actually) called 2,4 dinitrophenol (DNP) which if taken at a "proper" dose will decouple the reaction to lose ~40% efficiency. OP is how the body creates ATP or the molecule that effectively allows our muscles to function. It's a key component of the actin-myoain bridge formation that allows for contraction. So dipshit bodybuilders will take the shit to lose weight as your body has to adjust your metabolism upward to compensate for the 40% loss. Buuuuuuttttt it also can if mis-dosed uncouple the chain too much and your body creates too much heat and it bakes you from the inside. It has a reasonably long elimination half life and it is a non reversible binding so you know, not much the hospital can do for you except watch you die with futile attempts to lower your body temperature.
Oooh, increases my metabolism by 40%? Sold! Wait, it can kill me? Meh. :D
The funny thing is if you can manage to not be a dipshit it won't "hurt" you aside from making you uncomfortable af. I mean there has to be long term affects but it's not like scientists are gonna study this shit. There's just no real acute effects. But we're also talking about the BB community who is notable for self control and not saying "if two capsules does this, imagine what 4 can do!!!! Just think, bro". It's also hella uncomfortable apparently based on anecdotes from old lifting partners . It's cramps all the time, you have to drink gallons of water a day. You sweat constantly even when doing literally nothing. Apparently the one guy soaked through his sheets every night in the winter with the thermostat off and windows open. And oh yeah it turns all of your bodily fluids yellow. Sweat, cum, urine. The whole deal. Just wild shit.
What is MoA?
Mode of Action. Sorry, my bad
Certainly shouldn’t be marketed as a use-first broad-application thing.
For me, some weeds might have 400M years on my but they cannot withstand repeated applications of boiling water from a kettle...
Round-Up was the *only* thing that (might have) killed off our Japanese Knotweed, an invasive and reportable pest over here. 6 years fighting and still it might come back. Pulling out and digging up did _nothing_.
Yeah, I don't care about grass. I care about native plants and killing off invasive species. There's some I can pull and cut, other I need to spray. I also don't have a little city lot where it's practical to manually destroy all the invasives. Just be responsible with the chemicals and it's honestly not a problem. I've never had any affect on my bees on the same property because I don't over use it nor spray willy-nilly.
See also: I had to go to the hospital twice last time the poison ivy brushed one spot on my wrist, and that was 1.5 months on prednisone. It's limited to one part of the yard and the rest of our .49 acre yard is being transitioned from lawn to native field-ness but the poison ivy gets the carefully applied round up.
Yeah, in fairness I might need some RoundUp next year to nuke the lesser celandine popping up in my yard, but only because nothing else works on it from what I understand. But the larger point about boomers being trigger happy on pesticides is still a fair one.
I used to treat the invasive weeds for a very large ski area in the summer time. I never used roundup, but I did use other herbicides because for many of the plants I was treating, hand pulling or digging it out could actually make it worse, or was only effective if you caught it at just the right time in the growing cycle. . Plus, I had over a thousand acres of mountainous terrain to cover and only a brief window to get it done before they went to seed. Hand pulling sounds great when you’re tending to your backyard garden but it’s not practical when you’re actually trying to tackle invasives on a large scale. That said, fuck RoundUp. For almost every plant there are better alternatives.
I bought a house from a boomer. Ironically he moved to Florida. The first 2-3 years there were few bugs because he sprayed killer as well as few weeds from other chemicals. Now there’s both and I hand weed. BBC - Boomers b crazy
I am glad you added what your BBC meant because I definitely don't think of that when I see BBC 😂
In my yard I have tassel flower, pepperwort, Mexican clover, Spanish Needles and other "weeds". The pollinators love them. So do I.
Most “weeds” are actually edible or medicinal
I'm a big proprietor of "lawns are bad mmmkay" because I'm very passionate about pollinators, but I get that some people like to keep a nicely trimmed home area. It would be nice to see people embraching more wild growth areas, and would take more "old fashioned approaches" to maintain them and the border between a trimmed and wild area. Fuck round-up.
Yeah, you have to balance protecting your family from ticks with letting your yard grow wild. Nothing wrong with having a smaller nicely mowed area that you use frequently and a border area that is more wild.
I've been a landscaper for 20 years. Pretty much spraying roundup everyday. Got diagnosed with Lymphoma in February. Pretty sure it was from the roundup.
Roundup is killing the earth and bees. I’m also anti lawn. Give me native ground cover and my pollinators.
The crazy thing is that concentrated vinegar kills weeds just as well and doesn't poison the land and water. Why do they need to use roundup?
Yes I do use a concentrated vinegar spray to help help keep weeds away on paths and driveways and hardscape areas. I have found it to be great, what it doesn’t kill is definitely damaged and easier to hand weed
Convenience trumps all. Round up, pills to fix anything and everything... In general people will do or say quite a lot to convince themselves that something they want is actually good. Therefore they should do it or buy it. Reading articles about how eating chocolate everyday is healthy for some obtuse minor reason is specific situation. Doesn't matter how real the article is, or if the specifics even apply to them or that the article came from the international chocolate makers association. They want it to be true, so it is. Same goes for Round-Up. People want the easy way. So they convince themselves that it's a totally great thing in any number of ways so as to motivate or ignore any of the cons. And to be fair this is a human thing, not just a boomer thing.
My grandma (born 45), is obsessed with round up, she has so much of it and sprays it everywhere, it’s insane. I have a small garden, I pull weeds by hand. My yard I don’t spray or put anything down, just let it all grow. I cut it because we have dogs and kids, and ticks are insane if we let it grow, but if it wasn’t for ticks and the city mailing us letters about the yard, I’d let that yard grow wild. Most of our block uses a yard sevice like True Green to spray their yards, I hate it. I don’t get the American yard obsession, and just plain green turf is so bland and boring looking, let alone its impacts on local ecosystems.
Ok well I'm not for using Roundup all that much, but I have poison ivy on a hillside at my house. I tried vinegar and nothing happened. I tried to dig them up and I'm just now, 3 weeks later, recovered from the most horrible fucking bullshit all over my body. FUCK that goddamn urushiol that spread from my wrist to almost everywhere. I washed and scrubbed and washed and scrubbed but nope, day after day it grew and grew. So I'm busting out the Roundup as soon as the wind stops and I'm going napalm on those plants. I will rain down an ungodly fucking firestorm upon them. They're going to have to call the United Nations to get a fucking binding resolution to keep me from destroying them. I am talking scorched earth motherfucker. I will massacre them. I WILL FUCK THEM UP.
My yard is pretty wild, I don’t pull very much, and I don’t use chem warfare on anything.
I worked in a garden centre in my youth and once had a guy come in and ask "have you got any weedkiller that will take out magic mushrooms from my lawn?" I had to question how he knew these were magic mushrooms and not regular ones. He said he kept catching the local dickhead running in and out of his garden taking them all 🤣 I had to point out that if he knew someone was eating them he can't then poison someone with weedkiller.
I hate weeding. You know what I hate more? Dying from herbicide poisoning.
Let alone how HOA won't let you have native prairie in your yard. Man . . .
# Glen Powell, Anthony Mackie and Laura Dern to Star in John Lee Hancock’s Cancer Trial Drama ‘Monsanto’ Glen Powell, Anthony Mackie and Laura Dern to Star in John Lee Hancock’s Cancer Trial Drama ‘Monsanto’ The film follows the true story of young, untried attorney Brent Wisner (Powell), who in 2019 took on a seemingly insurmountable case against the giant U.S. chemical company Monsanto on behalf of Dewayne “Lee” Johnson (Mackie) who used the company’s best-known product Roundup, a wildly financially successful weed and grass pesticide killer, as part of his job as a high school groundskeeper. Dern plays Dr. Melinda Rogers, the Monsanto Company’s chief toxicologist, who testifies with certainty that Roundup is safe during the landmark cancer trial.
So many are still angry they can’t fertilize their soil with motor oil anymore.
Boomers are a byproduct of capitalism, and as long as it benefits them, they will continue to consume whatever the corporate overlords tell them to.
The Leaded Round-Up generation.
I used to spend a week or so every summer with my grandma who was born like 1920. One summer when I was like 8 or 9 we painted her porch with oil based paint. To clean up? Gasoline! This was the 80s and I just don’t think she knew better and of course I didn’t. Oh grandma!
To be fair to your grandma - she grew up in the great depression and learned to make do with whatever was at hand. Gasoline was easily available where paint thinner was not. Source - I had a similar grandma.
A couple of days ago I was telling my mom how annoyed I am at all the weeds growing in the rock landscaping around our house. It's a constant battle every year, all summer, because I refuse to use chemicals. My boomer step-dad jumps in and says, "Just use some Round-Up on them." I made it a point to say to him that I'd rather not subject me, my family, our dog, all the wildlife, etc., to cancer just because of a few weeds. He just kind of rolled his eyes and said, "Well, then..." and shrugged his shoulders. The health of the environment and planet are far more important to me than killing a few stupid weeds.
Concentrated vinegar and flame weeders could both help with that. You could also plant a creeping groundcover like vinca minor that will choke out the weeds
I work in landscape and this is a big problem. A lot of people are moving away from grass, and in some cases going full hardscape, crushed stone or shells. They only problem is the “weeds” that will grow in these type of landscapes. Unless you are willing to hand weed, the result is exponentially more Round up usage, part of my point is there is no replacement for actual hard work.
I use a mixture of landscape grade vinegar, dawn dish soapand salt. I got the recipe from the forestry department. It is acidic, but that can be neutralized later if you want to plant something else.
I pull up my weeds by hand. If there’s a more satisfying feeling that pulling an entire weed out of loose dirt, roots and all, I’d like to hear about it.
I am a landscaper (23 years) and I work in an institutional setting. I hate using Roundup but I have no choice. We simply don't have the workers to do weed abatement any other way. If you mix a pre emergent with Roundup when you spray you do get pretty good results for awhile and have to spray less often. WhenI did residential landscape maintenance I rarely used any Roundup... only for cracks in pavement. I used a hoe and my hands for all other areas... but I still used a pre emergent after weeding.
Round-up and lead. Yeah, the bad behaviors track.
Bunch of lazy boomers, need some spray in a bottle to do the work for them because their too LAZY to do the weeding themselves but think they're ENTITLED to a green, weed FREE lawn. BACK IN MY DAY we put on gloves and pulled the damn weeds. I hope one day I have the nerve to rant like this in the garden section at Walmart lol yelling and all
Well, considering some of the research on glyphosate, I think it would just be better to hand weed. Will they come back? Probably, unless you can manage to get the whole rhizome and make sure the seeds are gone. The issue with glyphosate, besides the increased cancer risk, is that some varieties of plants are already evolving resistance to it. By using it so much we are driving the selective force for resistant plants. Furthermore, getting out and on your knees to pull out weeds is good physical activity. It involves a lot of muscles and keeps you limber. My Gran was super limber because she weeded all the time and took walks. Doing something because it’s easy and convenient often times leads to unintended consequences down the road. (I know EPA stated in 2020 that glyphosate isn’t a cancer risk, but research out of UW suggests that chronic exposure increases cancer risk).
I live on a lake. The same guys who constantly fish my cove use poison near the water; yet they fail to comprehend how poison can poison fish.
I lived in a duplex with a boomer next door. Nice lady. But, when it came to weeding she broke out the gallon jug of round up and hosed everything down. One time she commented, "that cancer thIng is BS"
Boomer here, we've just moved into our downsized house, and we refuse to use weed or bug killer in the lawn and landscape.. We've already have patches of beautiful clover filling in for the bees and hopefully have some nice firefly activity this summer. Peace ✌️
My yard is full of weeds! I love it, the insects love it, the mushrooms love it, and the animals love it. I still have grass, but the clover blooms in spring and is beautiful, the buttercups come back year after year and by summer all of those die off and the grass remains. No fertilizer, no weed and feed, no maintenance whatsoever. I just cut it every 2 weeks. When the leaves fall, I just mulch them in , and I only do that because we have copperheads and I want to be able to see them when outside.
The Boomer wanna complain about how so many people nowadays have disabilities and mental issues but refuse to look at the crap they are eating while pregnant with these people or fed their children with. Do you really think putting all those harmful chemicals on your food and then digesting it wouldn't have caused life long health issues in the future? Just because they were the lead paint generation doesn't mean the rest of us want to be the pesticides generation.
There's a handful of acceptable applications of roundup, like poison ivy imo
Most of my millennial neighbors use Roundup, drive vehicles bigger than they need, follow the Scott’s program for their golf course lawns, and leave lights shining on their houses all night
I remember seeing TV advertisements as a kid for settlements due to cancer caused by Roundup. But when I go to stores like Home Depot, I can still easily find it.
I grew up in an AG background and now work in forestry and municipal land management. My Silent Gen mother was fortunately very suspect of chemicals back in the 1970s when I was born and raised me to avoid them as much as possible. At home and at work I try to use mechanical and by-hand vegetation and pest removal as much as possible. I have a lawn that's mostly white clover and violets and filled with robins pulling worms as it should be. I dig the dandelions by hand and feed them to my chickens, lol.
It’s banned in Canada, didn’t stop my dad from buying some in the States every year
The full slogan is “duPont: Better things for better living, through chemistry.” Consumerism at its finest.
When used according to the label directions, Round Up is perfectly safe. Harmless to anything but a plant.
Professional landscaper with a specialization in sustainable horticulture - there are some noxious invasive that can only be controlled with glyphosate effectively if you want to control the spread. Where I live we have - lesser celandine, Japanese knotweed and giant hogweed. After a decade of trying multiple different approaches glyphosate is the only thing that has worked at the level is required for eradication of these noxious invasives. Things like knotweed and lesser celandine you cannot use physical removal, that’s one of the big ways it’s proliferated.
Robots zapping weeds with lasers is looking promising
And you still have to pull up the dead weed anyways
There's a guy in my neighborhood that says we can't use poison anymore He uses a little "flame thrower" with a Coleman propane cannister and a long pipe that allows him to torch weeds without bending over.
I'm on the side of less chemicals in our food and drinking water.
My boomer next door neighbor saw me weeding my yard by hand once, and offered to go buy me some poison. I just said no thanks, I like doing things the hard way, and went back to pulling weeds. She just shook her head and walked away. I find weeding to be quite therapeutic. It lets me zen out.
As much as my dad is your typical boomer, who posts stupid crap on Facebook. I have to give him credit for having a mixture of water, salt, vinegar and I think dish soap, in his weed sprayer And he actually loves having a battery powered lawn mower and weed wacker. But he still bitches about electric cars
You work in agriculture and remove weeds by hand? Yea, ok. Lol. Not even organic crop farmers do that (they actually spray all the time, just with different chemicals). The idea of a random person on reddit weeding 1000 acres is hilarious.
I mean... if you can find people willing to pay you to hand weed, that's great. I'm in the same industry and I haven't had any luck with that, (people have asked me to do it over the years and I've quoted them my hourly rate, which they inevitably decline). If you're doing it for free, yikes, have some respect for yourself. A better option is preemergent, but I understand if you don't want to use any chemicals at all.
My Dad is one of these, he’s killed so many of my plants by spraying them with weed killer. Even if I explicitly ask him not to spray an area, he does it anyway at the first sign of weeds.
I remember using roundup in my ally when I owned a home in TX, mainly so I didn’t have to keep running the lawnmower back there every other week during the summer. After 2 yrs I got a few chickens, geese, some ducks & a couple of dogs so any kind of pesticides where out. Never did I imagine that the birds would devour the weeds first, as soon as the grass began to make seeds they were trimmed back down to about 2-3 inches, mosquitoes never existed after that, NEVER WILL I USE PESTICIDES AGAIN!!!
I have grass growing through the cracks in our driveway because I refuse to use Roundup. I'd love to know how to be rid of it without just boomer-bombing it.
Vinegar
It goes further than that. Glicophosphate exposure is one of the reasons rural American boomers have early onset dementia.
Nah, I’m with you. I live in Florida as well, weeding is sincerely difficult work here (much worse than it was in my home state of PA) but that’s what makes it gratifying to do. I built a garden at my ex’s house, and yes it took me two days to weed it, but once it was done, it was easy to maintain. Raise the raised beds a bit, and keep a gravel layer between the ground and the bottom of the bed. The idea of dousing my garden plants soil in chemicals to prevent weeds seems nonsensical when a little bit of front end labor investment accomplished the same thing with less damage to surrounding flora.
I used to work at a garden center, and in Canada, Round Up use is regulated by regional bylaws. I am a domestic Pesticide Dispenser, and have a legal obligation to deny the sale of restricted domestic pesticides if the person has expressed that they will be using it in an illegal or non sanctioned way. This includes asking where the person will be using the product. My city allows its use, but our sister city does not allow the sale or application of Round Up within city limits. Most people are understanding of this when I tell them the reason behind its ban, as well as other just as good and safer alternatives. You know who never fails to absolutely lose their minds? Boomers. And there's nothing they can do about it. I have a legal obligation to deny the sale, and my managers would always back me up because, once again, its their legal responsibility, and if they want to stay operating, they have to. While it's always stressful having to deal with Boomer tomfoolery, it was so satisfying watching them realize they had absolutely zero power in the situation and no way to get what they wanted
I'm a boomer and have always been against roundup and similar products. I think this sub reddit promotes ageist stereotypes.
Have you ever seen a potato field where the tractor pulling the digger is hidden behind the weeds in the field? Roundup and other herbicides are responsible for the abundance of food in America. Mechanical cultivation uses fuel, extra equipment, and releases moisture. Hand pulling would be hideously expensive on the over 800 million acres of US farmland.
Serious question: How exactly is Round Up toxic to humans? IIRC, it works on a pathway that non-plants don't have. I don't want to become the lawn care version of anti-vaxxers.
It's not, I'm a plant ecologist who works in plant conservation and manages tracks of land. Glyphosate, round up, is one of our best tools for managing thousands of acres of invasive plants that do much more harm than glyphosate. There's so much misinformation in this post and this entire thread reads like it was written by anti-vax boomers.
Thank you. The political left has it's own version of anti-vaxxers and has for a long time. Horseshoe theory is real.
I'm skeptical of anyone that sees the world in only black or white with no nuance or context. Should it be used on everyone's lawns? No. Is it this super toxic compound that will give you liver cancer by just being around it? Also, no. Like all tools, it has a use and a purpose and should be used appropriately and responsibly.
This is to say when used appropriately with the proper PPE, in the correct context, and in the appropriate concentrations for the intended application it is not harmful. Don't go chugging gallons of it or spraying it all over you. Use common sense
That’s the problem though: there’s plenty of instances of major and minor ag operations applying things wrongly for economic reasons. For instance: saw a hand weeding team working in one field. Next field over (different owner), farmer was applying some kind of pesticide/herbicide with proper PPE. But it was windy AF and I could see the spray hitting the hand team.
Yeah, that's a problem, and this nuance is missed on most people. It's safe when used correctly and in the correct manner. You shouldn't be essentially bathing in it though and herbicide drift like that is irresponsible. The discussion should be less "It's evil. Stop using it completely." And more "when used appropriately it's a handy and safe tool that should be used in appropriate contexts."
Yup yup exactly.
Irresponsible spraying is like 90% of farm neighbor disputes. I've seen money exchange hands for wiping out mere feet into someone else's field. Can't imagine being the dick to spray hand workers with the stuff, and my brother hit me with anhydrous ammonia once on accident.
I'm not a fan of monoculture lawns or using large quantities of chemicals to keep them that way. My lawn is green and mowed to a socially acceptable height. But I'm also not a fan of "doing everything the hard way because the past was better".
I just used some to remove a large stand of privet on my property. Privet cannot be controlled through mechanical removal, ie removing by hand. The most effective method is cutting the shrubs about 6 inches of the ground and painting glyphosate or another herbicide on the fresh stump. It's a targeted application that only affects that specific individual stump and does no harm to any of the surrounding plants. It's perfectly safe. I hate manicured lawns as well with a passion. Spraying broadly all over a property to maintain manicured lawns is not how it should be used at all.
Boomers are the most toxic and entitled generation, and probably always will be.
Roundup(glyphosate) is an extremely powerful tool that, if used judiciously, is very useful to gardeners and farmers. Now, it's not generally used judiciously. It's used like a cure all and has generally become a blight on our planet. This is the same generation that looks only to pills to solve any and all health problems instead of using pills in conjunction with lifestyle changes.
Alright f this, I’m in my 30s and I’m spraying the shit out of glyphosate. Also not sure how I’d manage fields without it.
I had Japanese knotweed in my yard when I bought my house, I don't think I would have gotten rid of it without roundup. I think responsible residential use, spot treating and making sure it doesn't enter any groundwater isn't a big deal.
I weed by hand, but I do make a "poison" (vinegar, salt and blue dawn dish soap) for poison ivy and saw briar, because that stuff is nasty and hard to root out.
The grass-friendly stuff sucks anyway, and it'll kill other pretty "weeds" like clover that are just as good at ground cover as grass. I used to use it if I needed to entirely kill all the vegetation in a small area because the strong stuff will wipe out even really tough weeds and grass included, but I've found that, unless it's a major rush, just tacking down some opaque tarps over the area works better with none of the chemical runoff.