Herbicide recomendations please

[Den]

Hello Group:

I've recently brought a house in Southern California (gulp!). I'm now

*very* poor - and have promised my first child to the mortgage company!!

Seriously tho', the driveways, patio and the parkway areas are rather overrun with weeds. I need to find an easy to apply herbicide to blitz them - probably will need multiple blitzing.

When I lived in the UK I used to by a Scott's product called Pathclear - the active ingredient was a chemical called simazine. It was easy to use - empty one sachet to a watering can and water on!

I'd like to avoid the stuff that you dilute two dribbles in a cubic furlong of water and then spray on and would prefer the dilute one sachet in a watering can and water on approach if poss.

Does the group have any recommendations for me?

Cheers

Den

[Phisherman]

I've used a propane torch to clear weeds that grow in driveway cracks and such. Generally you need just need enough heat to wilt the leaves. Here in the USA, the popular product is RoundUp. With this you spray the product onto the leaves. I use it on tough weeds such as poison ivy (which you won't find in S.California).

[David J Bockman]

There is an extremely nasty herbicide called Triox, marketed under Ortho as 'Total Vegetation Killer'. Please read the label and, if you decide to use it, apply with caution. A flametorch works well and won't harm the enviorment (unless it gets away from you) :oP

Dave

[Widdups]

I use Calmix. It is a dry granular soil sterilant made by Nufarm. Quite effective for people with huge farm yards to take care of like myself. I avoid glyphosate (Round-Up) because it is has no residual killing effect. The Ortho product 'Total Vegetation Killer' contains Imazapyr, a herbicide used by farmers like myself on dry pea crops. Rail companies uses the same product in very high doses to sterilize the gravel around tracks to keep them free from weeds. The ortho product likely only contains enough active ingredient for a year or two of control.

Fortunately you happen to live in California, perhaps the world capital of nasty weed control chemical use (excluding the 3rd world countries of course). To be fair the USDA has removed most extremely toxic chemicals, well at least the ones where less toxic options exist (I wonder if Lasso is still available for use on corn, nasty carcinogenic stuff, not to mention Methyl Bromide perhaps the only ozone layer destroying chemical still in mass use). Anyway go to any local strawberry/produce farm with a small container and they should be able to give you enough chemical to do what you want for years.

-Joe

[Janice]

we park in a driveway, and drive in a parkway. ;-)

seriously, when you say the weeds are bad in the driveway, is this a paved or unpaved driveway? Weeds growing in cracks, between spacers and such?

You can buy many different forms of concentrated or ready to use bottles of various formulations from some that foam so you can tell where you've sprayed and if you've sufficiently covered the pest plant. They're non selective herbicides though, so you don't want to get them on anything you want to keep. There are some ground sterilants, but why go nuts with something like that when a simpler and probably cheaper, product that will kill the weeds, yet still allow you options later on by not poisoning your soil, and who knows what else.

Janice .