How Does Roundup Kill Weeds?

What is Roundup?

Roundup is a popular herbicide used specifically to kill weeds in gardens and on lawns. Monsanto, the company that produces Roundup, held an active patent on its active ingredient, glyphosate, until 2000. In that year, the rights to the patent were released, and although Roundup remains the leading brand of weed killer, more than 7 million pounds of glyphosphate are now applied to lawns every year under several different product names .

Glyphosphate

The active ingredient that allows Roundup to kill weeds is glyphosphate--more significantly, the isopropylamine salt of glyphosphate. Glyphosphates work by interfering with the synthesis of the essential amino acids that are needed for the plant to grow.

EPSP Synthase

For plants to grow, they need the enzyme EPSP synthase. This enzyme helps synthesize the proteins tyrosine, tryptophan and phenylalanine. Once glyphosphate interrupts this enzyme and prevents it from working correctly, the plants can no longer build peptides. Without these peptides, a plant slowly browns and dies.

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Is Roundup Toxic?

Since human beings do not use the same enzymes that glyphosphates interrupt in plants, Roundup is not as toxic to humans as it is to plants. However, some of the other ingredients in Roundup can still cause serious health problems or allergies if they are ingested or if someone is exposed to and excess of it. Animals are safe as long as they do not ingest Roundup directly.

Uses

Roundup is effective in killing broadleaf plants, grasses, weeds and woody plants (Greenpeace 2007). However, Roundup has also been known to kill plants that gardeners and homeowners did not want affected. Homeowners should be careful in the use of Roundup around other plants they do not wish to get rid of.

Container Vegetable Garden Ensures That You Can Garden Without Owning A Plot Of Land

The good news is that it is possible to grow vegetables without even owning a yard or plot of land. There is the container vegetable garden that can help you do this and as long as you are able to identify the right vegetables you should not have any difficulty in growing a wonderful container vegetable garden. Obviously, you need to try and ensure that you plant only those vegetables that require minimal space and examples of such vegetables include the carrot, radish as well as lettuce; or, you can plant crops which are given to bearing fruits over longer periods of time of which peppers and tomatoes are best examples.

Size Of Container

How much or how little vegetables you end up growing in your container vegetable garden is decided by the size of container used plus your imaginative. An option such as the summer salad container can be used with good effect in any container vegetable garden and in addition you would also do well to plant tomatoes, cucumbers as well as chives and parsley which will grow well in your container vegetable garden and they each have the same kind of requirements in terms of how much sunlight and water is needed for them to grow.

You need to select the containers for your container vegetable garden with some amount of care; though almost any kind of container can prove to be useful is it a flower pot, bucket, wire basket or bushel basket or even wooden boxes you will do well to consider available space and the needs of certain vegetable plants. Next, you need to ensure that your container vegetable garden is well drained and so you need to ensure that the container has holes drilled in their bottoms from where the excess amount of water can drain out.

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Other considerations that can help to make your container vegetable garden a success include deciding on the color of containers and how well they can absorb heat and of course you will need to use the right size of container. In addition, you have to select the right kind of soil plus best quality of fertilizer and finally, you need to pay special heed to watering the plants so that the vegetables remain wet enough to properly germinate.

It is also a good idea to consider making use of an indoor vegetable garden. In these gardens you can grow various houseplants and also maintain cuttings for the coming season and there is also good scope for growing herbs as well.

Coming up With an Effective Small Vegetable Garden Layout

 

If you are just getting started with a vegetable garden layout idea, and have little to no gardening experience, it is going to be best for you to stick with a small vegetable garden layout. This way it will be easier for you to get around in the garden and not only that but there will not be so many plants for you to take care of that you are going to find it overwhelming.

Coming up with a small vegetable garden layout is certainly going to require some time and planning on your part, but it will be more than worth it in the end. The only gardens that are going to be able to survive year after year are those that have had effort put into them and which have been planned out, and never those that are just thrown together on a whim.

If you are interested in coming up with a small vegetable garden layout, there are a few things that you are going to want to keep in mind and which will help ensure that you have the most success.

Size of Your Yard

One of the most determining factors on how small the layout of your vegetable garden is going to have to be is the size of your yard. After all, you are going to need to have your vegetable garden in one area and then still have room to get around it and extra room left to walk around in your yard.

Obviously then the larger your yard is in total, the more options you are going to have and the larger your vegetable garden will be able to be.

Raised or Not?

You are going to have to make a few different decisions when it comes to making a small vegetable garden layout, one being whether to go with a raised vegetable garden bed or not. The advantages of a raised vegetable garden bed are that it generally warms up quicker in the spring and that it has better drainage.

These are things that you are going to want to keep in mind when trying to make this decision. There are a few disadvantages to the raised vegetable garden bed as well, including that there is a cost of constructing the sides of the bed initially, including the additional dirt that is going to be necessary to fill the upraised plot.