it took me a few seconds to understand the title.. hilarious ....

the portability of the container is the key ... i wear a chem kitchen glove if i am doing a lot... clip with my right.. drip with the left ... and i swear.. i cant do anything left handed... lol ..... [i figure is the glove is good enough for old fashioned oven cleaner.. RU isnt going ot get thru] ....

i carry the mustard bottle in a plastic coffee can ....

i bet Qtips will tear up pretty fast ... but then you need an open container.. mine tips over.. and nothing comes out.. a small ramican/dipping bowl .... will spill...

no real answer on how far it will kill.. but surely.. if you cut a sucker.. you aint gunna kill momma.. if you dont drip her also her ... unless it is a $200 plant.. then it will commit suicide at the mere threat .... lol ...

i dont know why you would wait until fall .. some suggest.. that fluids move up and down trees... and that by the time the leaves turn color.. they are done making and storing energy in the root system ... pushing vital juices down the tree ... so it is questionable.. how much will be sucked down into the roots... others suggest.. that sounds great.. but not proven ....

one thing for sure.. if you drip.. and they pop back out.. you can do a second kill in late sept....

i dont know how much mustard is in canada... but you know.. you could have just wasted the $1.78 of mustard ... lol ... i have never been able to figure out how to make mustard soup ....

i think i hit them all.. off to the marching band premier show.. a week of 12 hour days... culminating is the SHOW OF SHOWS....

finally ... you can do 10 minutes every night after dinner.. there is no reason you need to make a 5 hour one shot project out of this .... just get after them ... you will win ....

ken

Thanks Ken - and I will admit that I didn't eat the mustard just now, I found the empty container in the basement.

Alternately, mix lots of mustard with garlic and rosemary and slather on a pork roast - that will help to empty the container lol.
I'm off to do battle, right after I do Japanese beetle patrol.
Jan

One thing, if you are using RoundUp itself, or the generic version, it usually says to apply when the plant is actively growing. I think that means you gotta do it before the leaves fall off, and it shuts down for the winter.

And the gloves are super important. I had some one time, very nice chemical resistant gloves. They were too big for me. I was spraying rusty lawn chairs with ChemPrime and the big gloves unscrewed the lid of the ChemPrime bottle and the whole thing dumped into my extra big gloves. Up to the wrist. Well, I washed off quickly, but the damage was done. I had gotten into poison ivy that day (I never was allergic to it, did not know what it looked like).....and then I'd broken blisters on my hands from digging in the garden. So I became sensitized to chemicals of all kinds, and became allergic to poison ivy to boot. I was such a mess. Swollen like a balloon hands and feet etc, couldn't drive, couldn't wear shoes, I was in agony.

Make sure YOUR gloves FIT.

My DH is a Certified Crop Advisor - a professional licensure required by our state for those who deal in agricultural chemicals. He has been selling Roundup for years.

Moccasin is right. Roundup must be applied to actively growing foliage so it will be absorbed into the plant. I use an old paintbrush to apply it to the green foliage. Don't cut the plant to a nub and then paint the nub. You won't get very good results.

Also, if Roundup falls to the soil, it becomes an inert agent. It is not residual - in other words, it won't remain in the soil and then later affect other plants to grow in that spot.

Glyphosate (Roundup) is only absorbed through foliage or through green new trunk or branch growth. Over spray will not harm mature bark covered limbs.

The bark is a protective cover and does not absorb glyphosate. Perhaps it might be possible to drench the bark and introduce some harm. I think this would have to be done purposely and very difficult to do. The foliage of trees is just as susceptible as any other plant, and contact should be avoided.

Jon

I think some of the confusion is coming from how Roundup is traditionally used and how brush killer chemicals are used.

Roundup, as has been described, is usually used in a low-concentrate form... it is absorbed through leaves and carried down into the roots. It is not a highly effective herbicide for woody plants.

Brush killers like 2,4-D (commonly used still legal half of the original lethal cocktail Agent Orange) are often applied to the cut ends of woody plants. Unfortunately, there remain a lot more toxicity concerns for brush killers.

Some folks have had some success using concentrated Roundup- solutions with far more than the recommended concentration - on woody plants. I don't know if it works on cut ends, but it could... it wouldn't really work on the bark - the idea would be that a freshly cut woody stem would have xylem-phloam (I forget which goes up and which goes down) vessels that would suck the poison in.

It is a matter of faith in the US that Roundup is "safe" because it becomes inactivated when it hits soil. This is kind of true and does apply in the typical home garden... but this process is not "magic." There is a chemical process that involves, I believe, the microbes in the soil for the chemical to breakdown and become inactive When the Roundup chemical is in higher concentrations, it isn't an instananeous thing...

and Roundup has been banned in some European countries. Studies have shown that improperly applied Roundup - wrong concentration and, especially, spray that gets directly into water sources - is not neutralized and can be found in measurable levels later.

So Jan... I was orginally with you - I love the glee with which you look forward to attacking your invaders... but the more I think about it, the more I think you are looking to use the wrong product and you might want to research how to kill woody plants safely.

Roundup actually sells a different product, combining its basic glycophosphate with a brush killer... and there are other products like Brush-B-Gone... that are what you want to learn how to apply safely...

Tordon is the brand name of brush killer that is popular in my area. It's intended more towards woody plants - it's used when clearing saplings, bushy shrubs, etc. It is NOT intended for use on grass.

Tordon can be used by dribbling it or brushing it on freshly-cut stumps. Maybe it would be better suited for your purposes.

It's sold here (fairly concentrated) in a round plastic bottle, sized like a bottle of liquid dishwashing detergent like Dawn. And it looks kind of like Dawn, too - brilliant blue. Maybe not quite as thick.

Thanks for all the good info and advice.
I don't have much experience with garden chemicals - I use as few as possible, and of course many have gradually either been removed from the market or had their availability controlled. The round-up available here is a rather low concentrate. Some of the weed killers available contain acetic acid not much stronger than household vinegar and have had little effect for me.

I got a small amount of concentrated round-up from a licenced handler. To kill grass it would be diluted. I'm hoping that a VERY small amount of the concentrate will discourage the native tree seedlings that show up in places that are difficult to dig, and would be impossible to spray.
I do appreciate how carefully such chemicals should be handled (no matter how safe the manufacturer claims them to be).
Jan

About that Roundup gets neutralized when it hits the soil... I sprayed Roundup into the few weeds which were growing in cracks where my driveway meets the road. There are no longer any weeds in spite of seeds being blown in I am sure. So the soil must remember the Roundup.

Azaleas and Rhododendrons have shallow roots, and I killed Azaleas and rhodos by spraying Roundup on weeds growing under them, but perhaps there was some drift onto green stems. Be careful.
Right now a large rhodo PJM is dying, some Bayer Grass and Weed Killer must have drifted on it. I always thought I am careful, but sometime I am tired and it could happen. Bernd