Clearing vegetation on gravel driveway - anything more permanent than roundup?

[trader_4]

Anyone can buy pre-emergent weed killer at HD, garden centers, online, etc.

[Ethyl]

Weeds out in the driveway I give a good soaking with gasoline...though I wouldn't use gas next to a building.

[Brownwood climate control]

How many pounds of rock salt is needed to do vegetate a 2 acre gravel parking lot

[Ed Pawlowski]

Do you have a well? If yes, Do you want salt in it?

[Dean Hoffman]

I'm guessing you're looking for a soil or ground sterilant. I took a look and ran across corn gluten meal as one. There's a list here of soil sterilants.

[gfretwell]

If the run off from your driveway is contaminating your well you have bigger problems than salt. Potable water is usually below an impermeable layer of rock or at least limestone.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Key word "usually"

Want a list of places with contaminated wells that I know of?

[hubops]

Folks - seriously - don't feed the trolls ..

... John T.

[gfretwell]

Some times the contamination comes in at the source and it is still under a layer of rock at your house. I suppose most of my well experience is Florida tho but the people I knew in Md with wells had them pretty deep, like hundreds of feet. If you are using surface water you are at the mercy of every factory, storm drain and septic tank around you. My well here is 200 feet under 2 separate limestone shelves. I am still getting salt water intrusion. They claim our water actually comes from Pasco county and points north tho. It flows

170 miles underground to get here. Unfortunately too much is being sucked out and salt water is replacing it.

[Ed Pawlowski]

One of the best was a machine shop I did business with in RI. The original owner used to get rid of cutting oil by dumping it out the back door. Now, when you flush the toilet you get an oil slick.

[rbowman]

There was a disposal firm in Connecticut that came up with a unique plan. Wait for a really rainy day and take a drive up I91 with your tanker and spray the waste out. They got busted when people following the tanker saw their wiper blades melting.

At one point I had a flash of inspiration. There are quite a few old fashioned gas stations with two bays that are sitting vacant or have been completely abandoned. Plenty of room for a shop, bathroom facilities, and office or storage spaces to convert into living quarters. Then reality set in -- buy one of those and you're on the EPA's speed dial. Nobody ever really cared that the underground tanks leaked a little. Gas was cheap.

[gfretwell]

That was a big thing here in the 80s. Every one of those old 2 pump stations disappeared after they dug out the tanks and about 100 yards of dirt around them. The owners were all bankrupt and the stations usually went over on taxes or foreclosure. Now they are all some kind of boutique. The one at the end of the street was a used car lot for years, now it is a granite counter shop. 7-11, Speedway and Circle K descended on the area and now there is a shop and rob on every corner. We do have one independent next to the old gas station that used to be a Circle K, now it is just "The Russians". A Russian family runs it now and we aren't sure all they sell is gas, beer and hotdogs but they are surviving.

[Ed Pawlowski]

I live four miles from I75 up 301. In that stretch there are three

7-11s, two Circle K, Marathon, as well as four more places for coffee and such.

[angelica...]

Usually? Maybe. Mine was at the bottom of clay, sand, and gravel. No impermeable rock until much farther down.

IIRC the old well on my property was at about 25 feet. The new one that the previous owner had to install before he could sell was maybe 180 feet(?). I'd have to look it up.

Cindy Hamilton

[gfretwell]

I suspect as people are getting them tested you are going to stop seeing those ground water wells. People use them for irrigation here but the iron stains everything red and that lasts until the salt in it starts killing the grass.

[angelica...]

I don't think anybody on my road who has a well does much in the way of irrigation. The subdivision people do, but I don't know where they draw that water from. Us "old-timers" just let the grass go brown in the summer. Although that hasn't happened for several years. It used to be that it stopped raining near the end of June and resumed sometime in early August. Now it rains right through and we don't get a hiatus from mowing like we used to.

Cindy Hamilton

[gfretwell]

Irrigation is responsible for the majority of water use here and it is mostly grass, either lawns or golf courses. The St Augustine grasses that are most popular for lawns are least drought resistant, most fertilizer dependent and most susceptible to bugs so in addition to water use it also causes significant chemical/nutrient pollution in our water ways.

These are generally northerners who came here with a vision, not understanding it is unrealistic in any sustainable way.

[angelica...]

It's probably the same here. I'm blissfully ignorant. Ah, here we go:

Non-agricultural irrigation is a pretty small portion.

My lawn is a good mix of grass and weeds. It never gets watered; it never has chemicals put on it.

The bastards. They should stay where they came from.

Cindy Hamilton

[gfretwell]

Same here. God put it there and God can take care of it. I just mow. It really looks pretty good mowed after it has been raining a month or so. In the winter, our dry season, it is pretty bad looking if golf courses are your goal.

The funny thing is the same people who insist on a green lawn, lose their mind when their canal turns green.

[rbowman]

Yeah, but it rains in Michigan. A lot. I would go for an xeriscape with native species but getting there might be more work than mowing.

The photos are from early summer. By August it doesn't look as pretty.