Vegetation Killer

fire works

You beat me to it.

Fire is the most natural, and quite frankly in my opinion that best for the environment. Any chemical induced into the soil will effect something somewhere downstream from it, even if it is supposedly "eco-friendly" Its still a human induced chemical, whereas fire happens all the time in nature to remove unwanted vegetation from the forest floor. Fire also will enrich the soil, for whatever May take the place of the "pest" vegetation.

Unfortunately, when lighting up a section to be burnt, more often than not is is accomplished with a chemical such as gas/diesel mix (Forest service), propane, magnesium, or something else. So fire is not always the "easy" answer.

(The forest service comment comes from years as a wildland firefighter, where it was my job to ignite our beautiful natural national forest on fire.) soo much fun!

Yup, big propane torch.

To rephrase an old adage:

Works Well (Fast), Environmentally Friendly (Good), or Inexpensive (Cheap)...pick any two!

Ronseto - my wife mixes me vinegar & soap

Soap helps it cling - the vinegar works, but not on the tough stuff like Poison oak & ivy

My dog has successfully killed the evergreen bush at the end of the steps simply by urinating on it 2-3 times a day.

That conjures up a rather comical vision of Ron shuffling around his back yard with his pants down around his ankles - quickly followed by the arrival of the police!

My neighbors dog is available for such services. Stop by my back yard about 2 AM. Bring along a little chloroform on a few cotton balls.

Excellent suggestion. Never heard of that before, but I can Immagine it works well.

Steam is approved for organic certified growers. BUT it also kills the soil life, not only weeds but worms, good microbes, etc.

Heavy newspaper mulch is good but slow. A plexi or plastic setup over that to trap solar would add heat and make it faster (a week, maybe?)

Of course, without knowing the scale of the problem, and the type of weed, it's a stab in the dark as to which solutions would be best for you, Ronseto.

How about a goat? Or maybe a flock of sheep.

Ironically the hotel I am in tonight has a floor closed off for a "thermal remediation" firm is working. Apparently, heating all the rooms to 135F +/- for 3 to 6 hours will kill off spiders, bedbugs, cockroaches, etc. You probably do not want to sterilize the soil. However, a fire probably will not be as hot as steam, and the time duration will be quite a bit shorter than the thermal remediation process.

If the area is not too large, and a 2 or 3 week time period is not a problem, the newspaper, corrugated board, plywood, or black plastic ground cover is a simple solution. Make sure it is secured to the ground to prevent the wind from blowing it away.

135 F will surely kill them, they'll laugh to death !!!

Yahlasit

Kudos on plow and plant. This is the best solution for annual weeds: once buried they will (a) decompose and fertilize (b) increase moisture retention in the soil and (c) help to maintain the healthy soil life that is beneficial to the crop.

Many weeds are good hosts of vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhizae (VAM) : beneficial fungi that live in symbiosis with plant roots, ensuring that they get nutrients and water for optimal growth. I personally like to have a few of the good weeds in my veggie patch to keep that community happy, and I prefer to turn them under even if they will regrow.

Plowing under and then using a weed suppressing mulch around your crop is an excellent strategy.

Specific weeds that spread by runners or from little bits of root can be a problem, though, even with mulch and even with plastic to suppress with darkness and heat. Sorrel, buttercups, goutweed are notorious - most others are manageable. A few dandelions are okay to have: their deep taproots bring nutrients up to the surface from below the usual crop root zone...

Depends on the kind of weeds. Some types seem to come back in droves when you cut them up.

I like plastic, but you have to eliminate the light. Even black plastic lets enough light through if you don't cover it up with something like mulch.

Would a domestic steam cleaning machine work?

I have a butane wand that has worked quite well in the past, the accompanying instructions claim that burning the leaves also destroys the root structure.

Soil is a pretty good insulator so I can imagine that fire would kill off everything above ground without hurting anything living in the soil whereas steam might penetrate deeper.

Would a domestic steam cleaning machine work

Possibly ( I don't think the steam pressure and penetration is strong enough to reach the weed roots). Either way I wouldn't let the wife or rental store see you using a domestic carpet steam cleaner in the garden.

In light of the two posts above, is there any significance to the end of your first link (steam+wee)? i.e. What do you make the steam out of?

What do you make the steam out of?

Tap water is fine. Don't use urine as it will damage a standard steam cleaner and also potentially result in personal injury if your caught by the wife or steam cleaner rental store.

Sheep or goats.

several people nominated steam, I just use boiling water on the weeds.

milo

what about concrete?

This reminds me of a ecology test back in college. Question was how to reduce erosion of Cape Cod. My friend answered "Cover the entire Cape with 6 feet of concrete" He di not get any credit

concrete to prevent erosion is a wrong solution. 6 ft of it was way too much of a wrong thing. :D

but in OP's case, concreting is a practical approach. makes a new pavement, while eliminating unsightly weed growth.

Cat urine works well, unfortunately.

ron might need lots of cats for his purpose, and he'll need to toilet train them to pee on the weed patches everytime.

Sorry, Dell and his family are overbooked.

Yeah, were is dell when you need him? Maybe doing the neighbor a favor.

Vegetation killer? Plant some thing more competitive and they will go. Use the by-product as mulch. Every shadow has a light. I weed my garden by eye and hand. Sometimes more sometimes less. See it as a past time and not a struggle, unless you are talking about 50km/2 like we have here in some areas.

Then let the goats in and other pests that interfere with native flora and fauna. Be vigilent but careful, one allows for the next, Ky.

If you use Roundup at the reccommended level of mix with water it becomes inactive in 30 days.

But for it to work killing grass and weed for a long period of time most farmers around here mix it 8x's stronger than recommended along electric fence rows.

I use a broad leaf spray for vines and weed and let the cows and horses on the ground after 2 weeks or 3 good rain showers. I have been killing only the weeds this way for so long I only need to spray now every 2 years or so.

diesel will kill it

_________________________________

the truth is out there

You might look at:

http://www.alldownherbicide.com/assets/AllDown-Technical-Data.pdf

http://www.ecomall.com/greenshopping/vinegar.htm

http://moscowfood.coop/archive/VinegarKillsWeeds.html

plus there's a lot more info available on the web.

Borax works really well. Now, you have to be willing to accept a barren desert for eternity, but it's cheap and not selective at all. You do need to make certain it doesn't leach.

White vinegar works good, doesn't stink and won't hurt the environment. I go thru a 4 litre jug evey month in my vegetable garden. Make sure you do it in the morning when you're expecting a sunny day. Have a beer after dinner, and the weeds pretty much fall out of the dirt.

Never tried but I am confident that cactus Juice will work. or something like tequila.

A steam generator is highly effective. Sort of like the vinegar paople I used the other side of the ph scale, 3oz Palmolive regular green dishwashing detergent and 4oz Red Devil Lye in one gallon of water. is though on weeds. Vines will need Round Up for any level of chemical control. My nieghbor clears his fences with Round up and it seems to work well. He is considering applications of sodium hydroxide to raise the ph of the soil so nothing will grow in the fence area. Interestingly he kills sand spurs with excessive fertilizer.

Posts 10 and 12 are the MOST environmentaly friendly solutions.

Yahlasit

I can tell you why dog and cat urine kills vegitation....it is very high in nitrogen, i.e. concentrated liquid fertilizer! If you want to prevent burnt spots (or dead shrubs), just water the spot after the pet is done and dilute the urine, everything will be much greener. Yes, it will kill weeds too.

You could try one of these:

Thank you all for the great tips. I am trying to control the vegetation that grow around my workshop and along fence lines. The last time I tried burning with a propane torch, the fire spread out of control and I had to call the Fire department. I'm also trying to kill popcorn trees that spring up on both sides of my driveway. They bend across the driveway and are difficult to kill. I have a drainage ditch on each side so it's hard to mow.

For fence lines and next to buildings, the pH methods (vinegar or borax/baking soda or ash) should work fine, and I think the alkaline choices should be reasonably long lasting in that context (Vinegar may encourage moss or other acid loving plants - at least, it would where I live!). Stones as suggested in #34 are a good choice to keep vegetation from growing in your fence lines.

It doesn't look promising for a non-toxic control of popcorn trees. There's a least-toxic approach described, where you cut and immediately apply herbicide to the stump itself rather than the soil. Best done in spring, don't cut when seeds are on the tree.

Until someone provides EXACT ratios for vinegar, salt-solutions, dish-detergent additives, etc, I have to strongly disagree with these "home remedies".

I googled this very topic a couple months back, and promptly filled my new 4 gallon backpack sprayer with a bucket-load of vinegar, cup of salt, dash of liquid dish soap, and went out for some good exercise.

That is ALL that it accomplished ... (exercise) !

Rather than causing any withering, browning, or dying-off, I am firmly convinced that it actually BENEFITTED the entire variety of grass-weed-scrub upon which it was sprayed.

Stuff grows *differently* here in both sout' louisiana and Mississippi than anywhere else in this part of the world, doesn't it ron...(?!)

Stuff grows *differently* here....

Context is everything. I admit I have never used any of the pH methods for weed control. I have used borax and baking soda around the house perimeter to deal with ants: both worked well for this, and it seemed to me that vegetation was discouraged as well. Maybe that is because the weeds here are adapted to more acidic conditions. Or maybe the borax was toxic to them.

Grasses tend to be very tough and adaptable. I think you get lots of rain in that area too? Which would wash away the pH effects pretty fast. I don't know if borax would kill grass. If so, the layer of stones idea would be a handy followup.

Until someone provides EXACT ratios for vinegar, salt-solutions, dish-detergent additives, etc, I have to strongly disagree with these "home remedies".

OK "Guest", I'll bite....soap to vinegar is added just to increase the viscosity - basically just adding enough to thicken the mixture a little & then your ready to spray...how much, it depends on the amount of vinegar used for the base - you just add liquid soap while stirring....why would an "exact" amount of soap-to-vinegar need to be documented....all you are trying to do is stick on the leafs/blades - the vinegar is the agent...the more the better...

I've used soap solutions in the past to kill off ants nests, I wonder what other insects this mixture will kill?

You got that right.

When I was in college, during the summer months I worked for my high school grounds crew. We would use large bags of Salt to burn lines into the football field. It would take less than 2 weeks to kill the grass and weeds.

Stones work as long as they are at least 4 inches deep. I just did an part of my front lawn that was too steep to mow safely.

When trying to control nature, nature almost always wins. ;)

Good suggestions here, though.

I read part of a book a long time ago, called, "The Secret Life of Plants". Interesting. Maybe you can scare them real good or just have a good heart-to-heart talk with them. Maybe they'll decide to leave on their own.

A shovel or rototiller are first on list, mix in rock salt for lasting effect.

I really don't understand the problem here, I manage to kill anything in my garden just by looking after it.

Safe, Environmental Green and Cheap.

I have heard that common household products work, some of which are vinegar, bleach, ammonia and muriatic acid

Just beacause they are common household products does not mean they are safe or green......do you know why they kill.

You are asking for a lot,

Have you considered a hoe?

Phoenix 911 said: Just because they are common household products does not mean they are safe or green. . . .

And oxygen is a deadly poison that will burn out your lung lining. Unless you dilute it with carbon dioxide and nitrogen; both of which will axphyxiate you.

Point being, nothing in this life is totally safe or green.

Hmmm.... how would hiring a goat not be green? It eats the weeds, and converts it to fertilizer.

And when the natural wild forest burns, like it has been sense the beginning of time, causing new life to emerge from the ashes... how is that not green. Fire is natures all natural recycling system.

Which is why I suggested goats or sheep in the first place. Post #10 I think it was.

I was responding to the post that said household stuff was dangerous.

The problem with goats or fire is, they fertilize the soil and promote new growth. Growth is what I want to stop around the edges of my shop and along fence lines.

Use a hardy non-invasive grass such as buffalo grass etc. to cover the areas.

Unfortunately you can have a goat or a garden, not both.

For small areas a targeted kill you can boil 1 gallon of vinegar and 1 cup of salt. Put in pump sprayer then add 3 tablespoons of liquid dish soap. It works good and is cheap.

Drink a carton of beer + watch a good game of football = ultimate weed killer produced after about an hour

try salt brine. I use it to kill grass around my pavers.

I tried using a strong brine solution applied with my garden sprayer with mixed results;

I was reasonably sure it would work, knowing that most plants cant take exposure to salt; about 8 hours after I sprayed the weeds, a typical Texas gully washer rolled thru, washing off the salt.

A fair portion of the weeds died after a few days, some were seemingly unaffected.

I have only tried this method once, I may try it again, adding some soap to increase 'cling'.

and where did the salt wash off to? In many western states salt contamination of waters is becoming a huge issue. Most State EPAs take a dim view on the use of salt for such applications, particularly since it is not very toxic to plants. Salt kills plants because of the osmotic pressure it exerts on the plants transpiration process (uptake) and cellular fluids. It take a very high concentration of salt to kill plants. FYI and salt does not degrade over time (and exposure to water and sunlight). There are some chemicals produced by certain plants that are alleopathic, such as eucalyptus, that could be looked into, but these might be as bad as any other solution since they have a long residence time.

The idea of a herbicide (vegetation killer) is that it actually harm the environment, at least locally. Roundup is way ecologically more firnedly then the household products you emntioned, which will all kill plants in large doses. If you really want to contaminate the site and surrounding surface waters/ground waters apply enough ammonia, vinegar or bleach to actually kill the plants and see what happens. Most of these products are not particularly toxic to plants, degrade very slowly, and migrate readily, unlike roundup which degrades through hydrolysis rapidly.

Here is a picture of the type of weeds I'm battling. I would have posted this earlier, but I just figured out how to retrieve and post a picture.

If it were my property, I would:

1. Get out the weed-eater, or DR trimmer, chop down all the weeds.

2. Pull out the rototiller and mix the rest of the plant matter into the soil.

3. Repeat the tilling 2-3 times (once a week or so) til only mostly dirt remains.

5. Cover the dirt with a tarp for a while to finish off any roots/seeds.

6. Replant the newly enriched soil with the vegetation of your choosing.

7. Maintain the weed free environment with a hoe, shovel, or hands.

I know, Its sounds like a lot of work, but I enjoy playing in the dirt. That is how I would do it. I choose not to use any chemicals on my property, and only use organic gardening methods. Its a lot more work, but it's worth it.

(hint: If you don't want to do the work yourself, hire a local hard working high school student to do it for you while you sip on lemonade (or beer) in the hammock not too far from the work site.)

(hint: If you don't want to do the work yourself, hire a local hard working high school student to do it for you while you sip on lemonade (or beer) in the hammock not too far from the work site.)

Maybe a cheerleader?

Those look like flowers. These are weeds:

1. Weed eater to get the weeds to a manageable level is a first step.

2. Pour or spray boiling water on everything.

3. Repeat after a few weeks if needed, especially to kill sprouting seeds.

4. You could spread black plastic to finally kill things off. In summer, the heat will help, as it fairly cooks the top soil.

5. Replant with what you want there, whether it be plants or concrete.

Seven Natural Vegetation Killers and How to use them

1. Boiling Water –a non selective contact killer of roots and vegetation.(cooks)
2. Bleach – Sodium hypochlorite solution is commonly known as bleach. The chlorine will evaporate or dissipate in about two days (or less), making the area safe for planting. Again, bleach will kill indiscriminately, but if you do get some on a desirable plant, just wash the plant off with water.
3. Vinegar –The acetic acid in the vinegar kills the leaves on the plant but not the root. Works best on young plants because they do not have enough carbohydrates stored in the roots to regrow their leaves. If vinegar is applied to the established weeds, successively, the plant will eventually deplete its carbohydrate reserves and die.
4. Salt –NaCL, table salt, kills plants, and will make the ground unsuitable for future plant growth. On a small scale, you can drop a small pinch of table salt at the base of the undesirable plants. It will kill the plant then dilute to harmless level in after watering or a few rainfalls. On a larger scale, you can cover your gravel driveway with a good amount of salt and nothing will grow for months.
5. Rubbing Alcohol – It draws water out of leaves, stems, and roots, dehydrating the plants.
6. Corn Meal – It just stops seeds from germinating. Corn Gluten is a pre-emergent (a seed birth-control). Corn meal scattered around an area will keep any seed in that area from growing into a plant. This means a weeds or desirable plant seeds. This method is ideal for areas where sproutings will be planted.
7. Newspaper – If killing with chemicals is not your style, you can always smother them. Laying down a layer of newspaper at least 4 sheets thick (the more the better) will go a long way towards killing the weeds underneath. The rooted weeds will die from lack of sun light and the seeds will not germinate from reduced moisture and sunlight.

These weed killers can be combined to produce synergistic results. For example, the boiling water can be mixed with the salt or vinegar (or both) for a potent weed killer. Use common sense when combining chemicals and make sure that there are no adverse reactions (no ammonia with chlorine).

You can also add a few drops of liquid dish soap to the liquid homemade weed killers for added effectiveness. The soap is not harmful to the weeds, in fact the higher the phosphate content the better it is as a fertilizer. It acts as a bonding agent and will help the weed killers to stick to the weed more effectively. Maybe this will help next spring....

If you want the vegetation killer to be ecological, I suggest using salt. It's cheap and easy to make, and most importantly, ecological. Common plants can not live in the soil with a high-desity of salt. You can buy a water container, like barrel, etc. Put 4 kilolitres of hot water into it, and add half kilograms of salt, then mix it up. Spraying the salt water on the grass, better on noon, and the grass would be killed easily. I heard that someone had used the way before. It worked really well. However, the salt mitigate the fertilization as well. So you must use fertilizers next year. Plastic film or gound cover does avoid such problems as well as killing the grass.

But I prefer the ecological one.