Weedkillers do not kill the weeds in my garden

Weed killers😮😮😮.

No way!!!

The problem is that these weeddkillers have been made less and less powerful. Either there are bans stopping domestic consumers using certain weedkillers available to farmers or it is so diluted it is useless.

I find that the solution is to double or triple the amount of weedkiller for every litre of water in the spray. I did this this morning and last night and all the weeds on my gravel access road and on the garden paths are shrivelled and brown. However it does work out very expensive. But now I have knocked the spring flush of weeds, next week and thereafter I will be going around with my weed burner.

DH has just found information that hard water prevents weedkiller working properly. He has just tried again using rain water. We shall see …

My solution is bleach - cheap, thin bleach. I know nothing about gardening …….

crazyH

My solution is bleach - cheap, thin bleach. I know nothing about gardening …….

Salt and vinegar poured directly on the weeds, not your chips!

Weeds are wild flowers. Our insects need them. If you really don’t want them I’d suggest just digging them out.

Boiling water is quite effective.

Skydancer

Weeds are wild flowers. Our insects need them. If you really don’t want them I’d suggest just digging them out.

My problem is that I have set aside a patch of land, about 25 foot square to go completely wild. it has been like that for nearly 30 years. All the weeds in the rest of the garden - and in total it is a fifth of an acre, come from my wild garden and the garden is too big and the weeds too many to 'just dig them up'. We are moving house because the garden is becoming too much for us.

I limit weedkiller to paths and gravel and patio. beds I hoe regularly

What kind of weedkillers are you using? Systemic weedkillers take a little time to work. Until they die, they could be shedding seed, which means new weeds, so you have to apply weedkiller to them too.

M0nica

Skydancer

Weeds are wild flowers. Our insects need them. If you really don’t want them I’d suggest just digging them out.

My problem is that I have set aside a patch of land, about 25 foot square to go completely wild. it has been like that for nearly 30 years. All the weeds in the rest of the garden - and in total it is a fifth of an acre, come from my wild garden and the garden is too big and the weeds too many to 'just dig them up'. We are moving house because the garden is becoming too much for us.

I limit weedkiller to paths and gravel and patio. beds I hoe regularly

Same here, I think.
Our neighbours like a semi-wild garden and the seeds blow over. What to dig out, what to leave?

I'm going to throw some poppy, cornflower and Ox-eye daisy seeds down in an area of our garden. Weeds or wild flowers?

No such thing as a weed.

It isn’t possible to dig weeds out of gravel drives which are compacted. There are plenty of flowers for pollinators in my garden thank you. Grass is wind pollinated so no harm done!

I spray the weeds using a mix of vinegar, salt and washing up liquid, seems to work well.

Llamedos13

I spray the weeds using a mix of vinegar, salt and washing up liquid, seems to work well.

I've tried that on the patio, it killed the leaves but not the roots. The persistent little so and sos grew back again.

Allira That is my experience. This is why I blitz them with a strong weedkiller in the spring and follow up with my burner.

The problem is not flower and vegetable beds - I can weed them with a hoe, but the gravel drive, paths, patio etc, which in a big garden like ours amounts to a significantly large area.

Desdemona

No such thing as a weed.

Of course there is. Would you let a child play out in a garden infested with nettles?

Oh I really don’t like to think of weed killers
What is a weed, it’s a flower that you re not keen on, it’s a flower that reproduces at a rate you are not happy with, it’s a flower than may not be as big or bold as your shop bought artificially produced stuff, it’s a flower that may come up in the wrong place for you, but it’s still a flower
A flower that feeds the insects
If the flower in my photo was sold in a packet you’d all be buying it

I’m happy to hoe to keep the weeds down, but I have a real problem with bindweed which strangles every plant it grows next to. If you dig it out and leave the tiniest bit of root underground you may as well not have bothered, so systemic weed killer is the only solution. However it seems to be resisting even that this season.

A sunny area of my garden is a pebble garden, not gravel but the sort of big stones we have on our beaches here. It is impossible to dig out the roots from underneath these. I use a spray weed killer but need to do it regularly because the weeds are stubborn. I don't use it anywhere else.

Whitewavemark2

Weed killers😮😮😮.

No way!!!

Me neither. If I've got unwanted weeds - then I pull them up. Certainly wouldnt use weedkillers - though mine is an organic garden and I grow as much food as I can in it and weedkillers are particularly incompatible with that.

I find that a dandelion puller is useful for particularly awkward long-rooted type weeds - both dandelions and anything else.

Had a case of "chicken seed weeds" recently - grr! From previous owner of adjacent house trespassing into my garden to get her insufficiently-guarded chickens. So she trespassed into my garden and threw around their food seeds in it!!!!!! That was a nuisance - and I dealt with that by putting large sheets of cardboard weighted down on the trespassed-on bit (when I spotted lots of little weed seedlings coming up there) and then raked that bit of ground.

I also use bark chippings on top of bare soil to help prevent weed seeds being able to "set" there.

weed killers do work provided you take good care with the dilution ie not weaker than recommended. They cause growing plants to make a growth spurt and then they die right down to the root. If unsure then use less water to make a stronger liquid and be patient. I get commercial liquid weedkiller from ebay and keep it safe and I wear rubber disposable gloves and a mask, only doing this on a very still day with sun forecast

I did the weeds in the paver cracks last week, a large area including the communal area, special hozelock pump sprayer that I only keep for that purpose. All other weeds are hand dug if perennials or hoed during hot sun

Greyduster

I’m happy to hoe to keep the weeds down, but I have a real problem with bindweed which strangles every plant it grows next to. If you dig it out and leave the tiniest bit of root underground you may as well not have bothered, so systemic weed killer is the only solution. However it seems to be resisting even that this season.

I'd forgotten all about the fact that part of my garden had a bindweed problem when I first bought the house. It used to run rampant around a garden fence I had and I was never quite sure whether it had started off in a bit of adjacent land (owned by neighbours) or on my land. Cue for that tatty unmatching fence had a lot of it blown down the first winter I was here - and I asked those neighbours if I could access that land and replace my fence with a wall (with me being West Country and not West Wales that meant a brick wall, as I loathe those concrete block walls - and I noticed my wall had pretty deep foundations done for it).

Not had one single sign of bindweed in the years since and I guess that neighbour finds that beneficial - as I've not seen a sign of it popping up on that bit of land either.

So - maybe digging down to the depth required for a 6' tall normal (ie brick) wall is sufficient to get every last bit of root out, as it worked a treat here?

I worked hard on getting bindweed out on part of my allotment yesterday, the area had been covered with black builders plastic since november 2nd. It was a very satisfying job and the roots are very distinctive and spread a long way.

The area is covered again and that will `force` any shoots that have shoot potential. I will uncover again in a month before putting in the bee friendly plants, 20 of them. I will carefully dig out remaining shoots and keep a close eye on the area. Eventually the bindweed will have used up all their resources but I will need to be watchful

Paver weeds are different altogether, lurking down in the fine narrow spaces. They need weedkiller

I hand weed my courtyard, as I like some the self seeded plants to remain. I also have a bindweed problem from next door’s garden.When we moved in a new fence solved it for a while, now when I see some bindweed I dig as much of the root up, as I can. It does seem to be getting less.
A local plant nursery had a display garden that became spoilt by bindweed. There solution was to clear the area with a mini digger and put suppressant down. Then gravel it over and make an ornamental garden with planters and pots. A bit drastic.