Herbicides.

[Trailoftears]

Interested to hear other forum members opinions on this much vexed subject.

Over the Years I've used many different chemicals-paraquat-the liquid hoe-never on veg.areas for me tho.Pathclear-diquat/paraquat and amintrazole (I think),Sodium chlorate-the bomb makers choice.

Now for simplicities sake+its biodegradable properties my weapon of choice is glyphosate-generally the generic versions due to monsanto losing their exclusive patent plus them being an evil company.I still get pushback from various customers due to their not unreasonable aversion to any chem.application.However,given many of them have 800 metre hardcore drives+extensive areas/sweeps of huge car-parking areas,I often have to gently point out to them that the days of employing multiple youths on their knees painstakenly manually removing individual weeds at sixpence a month+a bowl of gruel daily are long gone now!Thoughts!?🙄

[Peter 1955]

As an ex farm worker, I've used more chemicals than I can remember. A couple you didn't mention were Simazine and Atrazine, they were fierce! I think I've got something in the shed along similar lines! My brother's neighbour once said the he must know a lot about chemicals, because he'd noticed that anything my brother sprayed soon died, and stayed dead. My brother had the immortal response- " I know nothing about chemicals, but I know a man who does ". 😂

My honest opinion is that they're somewhere between a necessary evil, and an awesome tool, and quite possibly still being a sword of Damocles. 

[Doug Tait]

I don't spray for work but for my own stuff when I have to I'll use glyphosate spray although it doesn't feel the happiest choice to make.

For a while I used an old parafin flame gun, liked it a lot but it was thirsty for parafin and often quite dramatic. Best thing about it was it killed seeds in gravel as well.

Was at its best doing an open area like an overgrown vegetable garden or driveway. Was a lot more expensive than the sixpence youths to run though!

 

[openspaceman]

Sodium chlorate was banned because of its toxicity as well as being a powerful oxidant but I have a horrible feeling the organic compounds that replaced "simple" herbicides will have far longer term deleterious effects from use and production.

[openspaceman]

1 minute ago, Doug Tait said:

For a while I used an old parafin flame gun, liked it a lot but it was thirsty for parafin and often quite dramatic. Best thing about it was it killed seeds in gravel as well.

I use boiling water but my garden is mostly weeds

[Doug Tait]

2 minutes ago, openspaceman said:

I use boiling water but my garden is mostly weeds

 

Mine is just left to nature mostly, nettles etc. Whatever is there, weeds and overgrown mixed field hedging, I've a lot of nature using it. Apart from cutting back hard occasionally then the front driveway and paved bits are all I tend, should really try your boiling water suggestion.

[openspaceman]

16 minutes ago, Doug Tait said:

should really try your boiling water suggestion.

I used to use a kelly kettle on top of woodchips burning top down but latterly with a surplus of electricity I use that.

 

I still think a steam injection would be useful to kill off deep rooted rhizomes, I advocated this for JKW.

[Trailoftears]

Crazy,when I think back over my career the stuff you used without thinking about it.Looking back when I managed a an old Mansion property re-purposed as a high class Country House Hotel with extensive Rose gardens.My scary chemical of choice was dimethoate-a seriously heavy systemic insecticide than came in a v.impressive metal flask!The logic for using it back in the day with my limited knowledge-?Efficiency plus you didnt have to completely saturate all the total bulk of rose bushes+yourself with shedloads of inneficient 'contact' insectides like pirimic arb/pyrethrum etc.Even more chillingly,back in the days when I 'helped' at shearing/dipping as a young kid in the Elan valley when we dipped a couple of thousand sheep over two days-the very best job as a kid was to be allowed to 'dunk' the sheep as they hurtled endlessly and splashed the fekk out of us all day in a solution of undoubtedly a cocktail of industrial systemic chems!

[Trailoftears]

All that being said, I've come to terms with my extra leg now-I fondly call him Sid....

[Stere]

Personally I don''t use any chemicals

 

Spraying imo seems abit pointless, & short term fix  as it just creates bare soil which weeds will re-seed back into if you don't solve the underlying problem of soil getting mixed in with the hardcore gravel etc.

 

 

Gravel is sold as low maintenace but i reckon its the opposite.

 

I think regular raking  works pretty well for gravel  but once to much soil gets mixed in not much you can do..

 

 

Wonder if its ever worth getting in a digger  & some screening system-  maybe a   trommel  rotary sieve to revive old gravel/hardcore thats got mixed with soil.

 

Probably its not economical?

 

 

Drives often get redone &  the old hardcore is just dumped alongside  or removed off site & fresh stuff put down...

 

Also drainage needs to be sorted