Roundup Made With Vinegar (Rather Than Glyphosate) Is Now Available .

Roundup Made With Vinegar (Rather Than Glyphosate) Is Now Available . Roundup is a pesticide (a weed-killer or herbicide) containing the active ingredient glyphosate. It is a controversial herbicide that is the most heavily used pesticide in the world. And since the introduction of Roundup Ready crops that have been genetically modified to survive repeated Roundup applications, the use is only increasing on farms. Several posts here, here, and here have discussed research and controversies with Roundup, and the numerous health concerns (including that it is a "probable carcinogen"), as well as the residues that are in our food (and allowed to be there). A new product called Roundup, but containing acetic acid instead of glyphosate, is now available at garden centers in Austria. The product is called Roundup AC is being manufactured by Scotts (the name is licensed from Monsanto), and it uses 10% acetic acid in place of glyphosate. To use ordinary vinegar as a weed-killer: Use on a hot sunny dry day. Just spray or pour some on the offending weeds - and whatever the vinegar touches will soon die. Unfortunately the weeds may come back after a week or two (the root systems may not be killed off) - so just reapply vinegar. Or can make the effects of the vinegar stronger by adding one cup salt to a gallon vinegar or a little (a teaspoon or more) dish detergent to the vinegar. Or combine all three ingredients when needing permanent removal of vegetation from an area such as sidewalk cracks or gravel driveways. Roundup Made With Vinegar (Rather Than Glyphosate) Is Now Available .

How to use vinegar as a weed killer.

How to use vinegar as a weed killer.Vinegar is a natural product, usually derived from grain, apples or grapes. It is distilled through a fermentation process. The vinegar you buy is typically labeled at 5% acidity. This means it contains 5% acetic acid, the active ingredient.

 Acetic acid is what makes vinegar a weed killer. Actually, it makes vinegar a plant killer. Acetic acid, from any source, will kill most vegetation because it draws all the moisture out of the leaf.Vinegar can also be used to promote growth of plants in drought regions. It is fast.

 Spraying full strength vinegar on a plant in full sun will often result in a withered, brown plant in only a few hours, for sensitive weeds, or by the next day in tougher plants.  This is because it is non-selective, meaning it might kill everything it touches.


This limits the usefulness of a vinegar weed killer, to the extent that you are able to control over-spray that would get on desirable plants.

How to make money holding grain. #‘Money to be made holding grain’

How to make money holding grain. #‘Money to be made holding grain’ On-farm grain storage can improve harvest efficiency but also aids marketing. There’s money to be made by holding grain,” says Weakley County, Tenn., farmer Jason Yarbro. But that’s not the only reason Jason, his brother James and their two sons built facilities with storage capacity of 915,000 bushels of corn, soybeans and wheat and why they are looking to add more capacity. The main storage facility,designed by GSI, handles 915,000 bushels, says Jason, 50. Jason said these bins perform increasingly important roles on the corn, soybean and wheat farm. For one thing, on-farm storage improves harvest efficiency, allowing combines to continue running while a fleet of trucks haul grain and beans the short distance to the bins. “We also harvest corn at 25 percent moisture and dry it to 16 percent in the bins,” Jason says. “We get better yields by harvesting at higher moisture.” He explains that shelling the corn early decreases late-season field losses. “Our final yield is better because of the ability to harvest early, dry and store it.

How to generate clean energy/electricity from water hyacinth.

How to generate clean energy/electricity from water hyacinth. Biogas is a clean and environment friendly fuel produced through the anaerobic digestion of organic wastes such as: cow-dung, vegetable wastes, municipal solid waste and industrial wastewater . It is increasingly be-coming important in domestic and industry as fuel due to its costs and cleanliness. The main component of the gas is methane, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen and hydrogen sulphide [3]. Water hyacinth can be used as a potential feedstock for biogas production due to its abundance and high carbon-nitrogen ratio. This study aims at evaluating the potential of utilization of water hyacinth for biogas production.

Poultry litter digestion: how to turn poultry waste to wealth.

Poultry litter digestion: how to turn poultry waste to wealth.The anaerobic digestion of animal and organic wastes has long been known to reduce odors and to have the capability of CH4 production, with the subsequent conversion of the CH4 into electricity, bioCNG or heat. This has been accomplished on thousands of digesters utilizing cow, pig, and human wastes throughout the world. DVO has developed a digester system that uses the processed waste (digestate) after the digester, and after this digestate has gone through a solids separation system. The solids separation system reduces the total solids content of the digestate so that this effluent water is suitable for dilution of the high solids content poultry manure. The practice of solids separation is well-proven on DVO digesters.

How to turn chicken waste to clean energy.

How to turn chicken waste to clean energy. For years, poultry farmers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed have trucked manure to fields where it is used as a fertilizer. But a great concentration of animals means excess nutrient runoff that goes into streams and rivers and eventually ends up in the Chesapeake Bay. These nutrients increase the growth of algae and deplete oxygen that disrupts the aquatic ecosystem, making it difficult for marine life to survive.

 In an effort to reduce the nutrient load that drains from a 64,000-mile area into the Chesapeake Bay, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandates an annual cap restricting the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous that can enter each tributary. And many states are challenged to stay beneath the cap. Here’s how Bühler Aeroglide supported a project that reduces the nutrient load by refining chicken manure into valuable products at the same time.

To address nutrient load, one of Pennsylvania’s largest egg production businesses partnered with EnergyWorks North America in Annapolis, MD. The result is a bioenergy program that uses gasification technology to transform egg layer manure into renewable energy and mineral byproducts, processing manure produced by five million layer hens. 

A Bühler Aeroglide high performance conveyor dryer is a key part of the process, used to reduce the moisture content of the manure prior to its gasification.

Turning chicken poop and weeds into biofuel.

Turning chicken poop and weeds into biofuel. Chicken is a favorite, inexpensive meat across the globe. But the bird’s popularity results in a lot of waste that can pollute soil and water. One strategy for dealing with poultry poop is to turn it into biofuel, and now scientists have developed a way to do this by mixing the waste with another environmental scourge, an invasive weed that is affecting agriculture in Africa. Poultry sludge is sometimes turned into fertilizer, but recent trends in industrialized chicken farming have led to an increase in waste mismanagement and negative environmental impacts, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Droppings can contain nutrients, hormones, antibiotics and heavy metals and can wash into the soil and surface water. To deal with this problem, scientists have been working on ways to convert the waste into fuel. But alone, poultry droppings don’t transform well into biogas, so it’s mixed with plant materials such as switch grass. Samuel O. Dahunsi, Solomon U. Oranusi and colleagues wanted to see if they could combine the chicken waste with Tithonia diversifolia (Mexican sunflower), which was introduced to Africa as an ornamental plant decades ago and has become a major weed threatening agricultural production on the continent. The researchers developed a process to pre-treat chicken droppings, and then have anaerobic microbes digest the waste and Mexican sunflowers together. Eight kilograms of poultry waste and sunflowers produced more than 3 kg of biogas — more than enough fuel to drive the reaction and have some leftover for other uses such as powering a generator. Also, the researchers say that the residual solids from the process could be applied as fertilizer or soil conditioner.