Gardening advice
I know a number of members are green thumbs. I need to remove some weeds (dandelions, ivy vines, and other small things) from my landscape bed which contains some shrubs.I removed some of the larger ones manually. Does anyone have any advice on how to get rid of the other stuff? I also have some moss growing there. I thought about some of the available herbicides, but I'm not sure how they will affect the things I want to keep. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Mike
I'm going to agree with TomTierney on this. I try to avoid chemical pesticides and weed killers in my garden. I weed by hand and go heavy on the mulch - it keeps the weeds down, the moisture in, and eventually enriches the soil as it decomposes. A good cedar mulch will also help to keep certain insects away as they don't like the smell. I, personally, don't remove moss per se as I like it.
You should check out the group Nude Gardeners for more tips!
Jen
Make sure the day has absolutely no wind blowing before you use Roundup. I've killed things I didn't want dead. You have to saturate the leaves to kill it. The plent(s) then grow themselves to death. It does work on poison ivy.
We have 7 acres, 4 of which are woods and a 47'x24' entrance bed that I want to invite anyone to come help weed. LOL
All, thanks for the tips! I thought about Roundup/herbicides, but had some reservations as I was not sure if it would harm the shrubs I wanted to keep. Plus, it seems a rarity nowadays we don't have wind here. I got most of the big stuff out this weekend (had to wear shorts outdoors, , buta lot of smallweeds remain. I wanted to clear that out before I lay some mulch down. I haven't used cedar much before, but could give it a try this time around. I'll also take a look at the nude gardeners group. There used to be these nice white landscaping stones in the bed the previous owners put there. Looked good too. Then one of the hownowners association boards suddenly decdied they were not appropriate (I guess since not all owners used them), and ordered me to remove them. Now I have to battle the weeds.
Thanks again all!
Mike
Just an idea, if you have a weed that is under other shrubs and there are other things around it, make up a solution in a can and use a paintbrush over the leaves. you can also drip some killer in to the centre of the unwanted plant. Make sure you use gloves and carefully dispose of the brush and can.
This doesn't work for large areas, but does work where you cant dig out the entire root of a weed.
My biggest problem is thistles growing up between rocks. The paintbrush solution works well on the pesky-suckers!!
Good luck!
Martin
Martin, That's a good idea to try. I'ts been pretty windy here, so I've been leary about spraying anything. I could take out more manually, would just take more time.
As forTom's post about inert ingredients: For household/commercial/indistrial products, the "inert" refers to the fact that those ingredients do not degrade the active ingredient or impede its activity, or enhance the product's activity. It's not refering to their toxicology patterns.For pharmaceuticals, everything gets tested. Most people probably are not going to be aware of this, unless you are a chemist. Thanks for posting the info, Tom.
Thanks again to all who responded, your advice is helpful!
Ciao,
Mike
Roundup best applied when the sun is not too strong or the water evaporates leaving the product inert on the surface of the leaf. Leaves uptake moisture through the underneath of the leaf so whenever possible spray low down with as fine a mist as you can. Another trick is to spray a second time ten days/fortnight later. Good luck.
A sometimes-useful thing about vinegar is that plants differ a lot in sensitivity. A half-strength household vinegar spray will kill oxalis and all the mints & kin (such as oregano) but leave most things growing; full-strength will take out more things; 20% horticultural vinegar will kill any plant it wets (and do a job on your lungs if you get a solid whiff of the spray.)
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