Killing grass

[The Medway Handyman]

Looking for a weedkiller to kill off grass under decks. Weed fabric usually does the job, but I want to be sure. Sodium Chlorate?

How far do they/does it spread sideways?

[Tim S]

The Medway Handyman coughed up some electrons that declared:

Weed fabric alone will be enough - cut the light off and nothing grows. People on allotments use bits of old carpet - though I suspect your customers may think that a bit cheap ;->

Sodium chlorate will poison the ground quite effectively - it won't spread far though, probably a foot at the most in the wet, depending on the strenght of application.

A Glyphosphate based killer will get in the foliage and travel down to the roots in the same plant - but this isn't helpful in the case of grass, though it does kill grass quite effectively.

Cheers

Tim

[newshound]

Engine oil? That seems to have done a bloody good job when I parked something leaky on the "emergency parking" bit of my lawn (which has plastic reinforcement).

[ARWadsworth]

Sodium Chlorate from the Pound shop. One tub should do 10m2 but I would double the dose.

Unless you know a source for Paraquat?

Adam

[Dave Liquorice]

Well it does but not for long.

How long does it last in the ground?

And breaks down in the enviroment so you can use it to clear an area and be able to replant after a while.

Chemical only treatment may not get seeds. If you don't put a fabric down they will grow under the decking. Personally I think a decent bit of weed fabric is all you need.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "The Medway Handyman" saying something like:

Roundup or one its clones.

[Andy Dingley]

Good fabric is your best bet - kills grass dead, but there are other plants that will happily travel several feet in the dark before emerging. Grass normally can't compete under decks anyway, it's the others (esp. brambles) that cause the trouble.

Sodium chlorate is easy to get hold of and works for this sort of long- term sterilisation. Glyphosate and *quat aren't persistent enough to be any use, although glyphosate might be useful for a first-pass to kill things already present.

As far as the water goes. If there's any sort of slope with runoff, sodium chlorate could have a run-off deadzone.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Isn't that glyphosphate based? If so, it will only kill what's currently growing. By design, it is deactivated when it hits the soil, so it won't stop new plants growing afterwards.

[ARWadsworth]

Napalm? It is supposed to smell good in a morning.

Adam

[David]

My Aunt buys a large tub of table salt and sweeps it into the gaps, seems to work for her, but I am not really sure because doesn't the salt dissolve in the rain?

[geoff]

In message , ARWadsworth writes

Only when used in conjunction with washing powder

I heard that Surf is best

[The Natural Philosopher]

yeah rondup is glyphosate. There are path clear stuffs tho. They persist a bit longer in the soil.

Ive never found chlorate to be that effective. Except for amateur explosives, but it isn't even any use for that these days.

[Dave Liquorice]

Well it'll burn it off but it'll grow back. How about Agent Orange?

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember [e-mail] (Andrew Gabriel) saying something like:

Well, that's what it was supposed to do, but a 5% solution of one of its clones caused a non-growing wasteland that lasted for a year before anything grew back at all and even then only sparsely, and it was the only thing that killed off the briars.

[Gib Bogle]

Glyphosate.