I've declared war on the poison ivy growing along my running route. Yesterday I did my usual run with a pruner and a bottle of Roundup and today surveyed my results. The poison ivy is starting to wilt but I suspect that I'll have to give it a bit more doses before sending it into remission.

Roundup is pretty cool stuff. The active ingredient in it is glyphosate, which targets an enzyme in the shikimic acid pathway. The shikimic acid pathway is crucial for plants to manufacture some basic amino acids. Animals don't have this pathway and get the resulting amino acids by eating plants. That is the reason why Roundup is so great - it has a very low toxicty to animals but a high toxicity to plants.

Even cooler than roundup are the GM plants that have a bacterial gene that codes for a slightly different EPSP pathway. Bacteria has a gene that codes for a glyphosate-tolerant version of EPSP synthase and I guess Monsanto has made a grass that contains this gene. I'd love to replace my current lawn with Roundup-tolerant grass, but there are still concerns about these genes getting into the wild pool of grasses.

Until I can buy roundup-ready grass, I'm trying to get a good strategy for nuking the violets that are setting up shop in my lawn. I'm still a little confused about when to plant after using roundup. The average half-life seems to be around 40 days, but this article says I can replant after 7 days.