Re: CULT: Stopping Roundup

I have been following this thread with interest and wish to share my two experiences.  This is a long story so if you're not interested hit that delete key now <GRIN>.

Back in 1991 one of the old timers in our area was telling us that you could spray roundup right over the iris without damage as long as it was after bloom.  Spraying them before bloom would cause the bloom to be damaged.  It would come back the next year just fine but, that years bloom would be bad.  

We respected this gent's opinion and decided to try it.  We designated one small area of left behind iris that we were going to dig and trash anyway and sprayed them.  Not just once but about every month or so for most of the season.  In the fall they looked as good as any of the others so we concluded the ol' gent was right.

Next season, I threw out my back and couldn't get out and weed like I should.  The weeds got ahead of me and the place was looking pretty bad.  After some discussion we decided to spray all the beds (about 600 varieties) with roundup and knock those nasty weeds down.  The results from this spraying were over 100 dead iris!!!  The medians and arilbreds were hardest hit but even the TB's suffered losses.  I don't know for sure what the difference was as I didn't dare repeat the experiment but we have guessed that the variety we tested on was one of the tough ones and we just got lucky.  

The second "experiment" was actually an accident.  While preparing a tank of roundup for edging beds with, the tank blew up and covered my husband in roundup.  We rushed him in to the house and a shower and he suffered no ill effects.  Hours later we realized that the tank of roundup had blown up not only on him but on an entire raised bed of arilbreds.  Not knowing enough at the time to wash them down, we lost every arilbred in the drift area!!  

Over the years since then we have had the occasional drift problem with roundup.  It causes a temporary setback to the plant or malforms a bloom but because we gave up the idea of spraying over the top of the iris we have not lost another iris to roundup.  

Just my 2 bits worth.
 
Dana Brown
ddbro@sbcglobal.net
Malevil Iris Gardens & Kennels
www.malevil-iris.com

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