top | item 46162187

(no title)

lqet | 2 months ago

Weeds on the lawn: just use a lawnmower each week, the grass will usually handle being cut on a weekly basis much better than any weed.

Weeds between tiles / slabs or on gravel: just pour boiling water over them. The weeds will become mushy and die within 1-2 days. Repeat every 6 weeks during summer.

Source: we bought a house with a garden full of goutweed [0], which I consider the final boss of any garden owner, and which we have in control now through regular mowing / hot water. Goutweed will just laugh at any herbicide you throw at it, and regrow from its underground rhizomes. I also doesn't seem to require sun, because I have seen plants grow to a height of 10cm completely underground. The joke in my family is that it could grow on foreign planets. As Wikipedia dryly puts it: "Once established, goutweed is difficult to eradicate."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegopodium_podagraria

discuss

order

DeepSeaTortoise|2 months ago

You can also use just heat. Like a long propane torch or one of the newer electric infrared ones. It doesn't need a lot of heat, a short burn (like a bit less than a second) is perfectly sufficient to make them wilt within a few days.

Weeds are the flora equivalent of VC-hype-startups. All growth, no substance and no plan B. They pop-up everywhere, with seemingly infinite growth resources and hope you'll despair and do nothing.

Just going around plucking leaves from everything that looks like you won't like it for a few weeks twice a year works wonders.

Basically regulatory capture for your lawn. No need to help along your darlings (in the beginning), just make everyone else play with stupid rules. And once things start going down the drain, it's time for subsidies (fertilizer) and public contracts (pre-germination).

pengaru|2 months ago

Thank you for making my morning coffee, consumed while looking down on downtown San Francisco, presently chock full of "AI" weeds, substantially more entertaining.

SoftTalker|2 months ago

Never had much luck with burning or cutting weeds from the top. They just resprout and grow back. Haven't tried boiling water.

I just use roundup, honestly. It works.

dwroberts|2 months ago

This is just a recipe to spread weeds everywhere. If you mow them, most of the time you’ll just break them open and spread their seeds

lqet|2 months ago

I you mow them after they have developed seeds, you are mowing them too late.

n4r9|2 months ago

But if you then keep mowing the lawn regularly, those seeds won't be able to compete with the grass.

mvdtnz|2 months ago

Or you can learn the lifecycle of plants and don't let them go to seed.

lupire|2 months ago

I don't understand. What we call "weeds" are plants that evolved to grow quickly and spread quickly. Many gave segmented stems/leaves to resist core damage from cuts and pulls.

BigTTYGothGF|2 months ago

I will hate the ground elder as long as I live (but did manage to eradicate it from our garden thru hard work, only to see it spring back up in our neighbor's yard, it's their problem (for) now).