Glyphosate is discussed as a herbicide in many articles on this site, and because it can be highly detrimental if used incorrectly or if accidents occur with its usage, it was very worthwhile to include an article on Glyphosate on this site also.
Glyphosate is a broad spectrum herbicide.
This means that Glyphosate has the very high possibility of killing any plant it comes into contact with, which is of course its very intention and what it was created for. Glyphosate is the most popular and most important herbicide in use across the world, used in every conceivable instance where weed control is required.
This can include all forms of agriculture, at homes, and by governments in managing weed control on public lands and open spaces. This herbicide is in use absolutely everywhere, and while debate rages as to its safety to health, the environment and to animals and wildlife, this article is not intended to cross over to such issues, only to outline its usage at our homes.
Glyphosate Warnings
Let’s start with the obligatory warnings.
Glyphosate is a serious poison, so all use of it at our properties should be undertaken with extreme caution, being aware of habits of children, people, and pets. In other words, if we’re going to use this chemical, we must be responsible that people and pets are not exposed to it. This means safe storage of the chemical itself, and to ensure that no people or pets or other animals can come into contact with the spray once its been applied to any weeds on our property.
Glyphosate will kill almost any plant it comes into contact with. This means that if we spill some on the lawn, that area of lawn will die. This also means that if we spray Glyphosate on a windy day, then any plants that are hit with any overspray will also most likely die in the worst case scenario or become very sick for a long time in the best case scenario.
Needless to say that ingesting of this chemical could be deadly or highly life threatening.
Care should also be taken to not have it come into contact with the skin.
Extreme care must be taken whenever we use Glyphosate.
Glyphosate For Home Lawn and Garden Use
The only use we’d have for Glyphosate at home would be to kill weeds by spot spraying or spot painting them selectively. This could be done with individual weeds in our lawns or otherwise to weeds in pathways and paving, or even in garden beds.
If treating individual weeds on lawns, we would want to only have a very small container of diluted herbicide for use. We would carry that small container on some type of larger tray or larger container onto and off the lawn for use, which will ensure that we don’t spill any Glyphosate onto any lawn areas. Then taking that container or tray right up to the weed itself we would then use a small paintbrush to carefully paint the weed with the herbicide. 100% coverage of the weed is not necessary for the herbicide to do its work.
Alternatively we could wear a rubber glove to dip the tip of a finger into the poison and then wipe it onto the weeds needing removal.
Using any type of spraying device for Glyphosate anywhere near lawns is obviously not recommended, as the overspray will likely kill areas of the lawn it comes into contact with.
Glyphosate can also be very useful if we’re wanting to remove old lawns, or old lawn areas which have been overcome with weeds. Whereby we would spray the entire area with Glyphosate for the purpose of killing off all the old lawn and all weeds present so that we could later put down new turf. Though a more environmentally friendly method can be to lay down tarps and old newspapers onto that area to suffocate and kill any old lawn and weeds in an area to be later renovated with new lawn.
Do I Really Need To Use Glyphosate
With Glyphosate being a risk for use in many ways for the homeowner, and with its environmental footprint being constantly questioned, then we too should ask ourselves if we really should be using this chemical ourselves.
Path weeds that grow in-between cracks in paving can be understandable. We keep hitting them with the line trimmer and they just keep growing back, and a little spot spray can do the trick wonderfully for us in these cases.
However most of us really have no valid reason to be using Glyphosate in our gardening or yard and lawn maintenance.
In almost every single instance, weeds are best hand pulled with the help of a little gardening tool, whereby we take out the weed, and its crown and roots instantly, and we’re done. Garden areas can generally be hoed over and then raked in no time at all.
And if we do face an abundance of weeds in our lawns, then there are many selective herbicides that can be sprayed directly onto the lawn to kill those weeds.
There are some tough weeds to get rid of with pulling from our lawns, including when wild Kikuyu for example can invade our home lawns like Buffalo, then spot spraying with Glyphosate is sometimes the best option available to us.
Personally, this author does not keep Glyphosate nor any other herbicide at all, I hand pull weeds, and I keep on top of weeds whenever I see them, it’s really quite easy and not at all time consuming. I can say though that if my lawn became invaded with Wintergrass then I would indeed buy and use a suitable herbicide for this problem as hand pulling really is not an option to properly control this weed over time.
The lawn care chemicals I do have and use are fertiliser and a fungicide. Nothing else.
The last two times that I did use Glyphosate was for the purpose of lawn removal, to kill off the old lawn, and to kill off an abundance of weeds which had infected the lawn area very badly, particularly Oxalis which is a very difficult weed to kill and which is best removed entirely before a new lawn goes down. And in both these instances new lawns were put down in these same areas.
Always give careful thought before buying or using Glyphosate, it can seem like a miracle weed killer, but it is a poison and is dangerous as such. It can also have severe consequences should we have any spills or over-sprays onto other lawn or garden plants, wherein such an accident could kill or severely damage the health of the lawn or plant affected.
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