Here’s how bad RoundUp can be… I asked my husband to buy some Marsh Hay (no seed heads) to cover my strawberry bed garden for the winter. Instead, he brought home “ditch straw” that a friend of his cut from his hobby farm. That ditch straw received years of overspray from the farm fields and became immune to RoundUp and all other weed killer (general use and farm use).
The ditch straw that my idiot-husband put in my garden completely ruined it. It is a raised garden bed that had been filled with a clean, weed-free garden soil and was basically weed free for over 10 years. That ditch straw seeded itself, we could not get rid of it by any means… pulling it, various types of weed killer, the vinegar/salt/dishsoap killed the leaves but not the roots. We even covered the garden in heavy black plastic for a year to try and bake it out. I battled those farkin’ weeds for over 5 years and they only multiplied every year.
We finally had to remove all the soil and haul in new soil.
My brother has had bee “colony collapse” twice with his bee hobby hives, the problem was his neighbor using RoundUp; once my brother talked to the neighbor and the RoundUp use was eliminated, he hasn’t had a problem the last three years.
My mother grew up on a farm (1940’s) and she raised me to be natural (“semi-organic”) as well. As a little girl in the summer, I took the nightly dishwater out to pour on the weeds growing in the cracks of the sidewalk or driveway. She gardened the same way her father farmed, very few chemicals were used. In my cheapness, the only chemicals I use in my garden is fertilizer.
This isn’t political, it’s using common sense. Think back to when you were growing up, there was a lot less “stuff” out there that now pretends to make our lives easier. I’ve been making a lot more items myself the last few years, including windshield washer fluid, washing machine detergent (powdered), glass cleaner, stinky shoe refresher balls, etc. I never set out to be a “granola cruncher” but when I saw how few cents it takes to make my own cleaners that work just as well as the $$ stuff, I don’t look at myself as “granola-y” but more as a smart consumer saving money and the environment.
