Roundup

"apparently you can get white vinegar from chinese supermarkets, very cheaply - £1.99 for 5 litres, if there are any near you."

Thank you mumsnet.

Not near, about 8 miles away, so we'll pop in next time we are near. Thanks..

Harry Bloomfield brought next idea :

At least that was the situation a couple of hours ago, when I last checked and then decided to use up what was left of the mix in a second attempt. Got the spayer out and without doing any more, I noticed that they are definately wilting now, so I just redid the ones still shwing life and the new weeds.

Indeed. I tend to buy this

Darren

What difference would white or brown vinegar make in this context?

Some weeds are a lot harder to kill than others. Grass is easy, ground elder/japanese knotwed is hard. So you need different concentrations, better to buy the concentrate & mix it up to suit your weed. Also less effective in drought conditions. Best to water your weeds first if they are "toughies" in drought conditions. Also essential to apply to point of run off. ie a light spray is no good you need to cover the leaves completely with the fluid. Hairy leave weeds also toughies.

The other way you can come unstuck is lots of little seedlings appear when you kill the parent plant.

So, would repeated (eg daily) application of a weaker solution work?

JGH

No idea, but the site which suggests vinegar, says to use white.

mmm

" Wilko Super Concentrated Tough Weedkiller 250ml £7.00 £2.80 per Litre "

er no that would be a whopping £28 per litre....

Last I bought was 5 litres for £35 IIRC, keeps well ;>))

Jim K

should be no need for more than 1 application for common plants/areas.

Jim K

No, it needs time to work, and the right conditions. It's not an instant drop weedkiller (if that happens, it didn't work).

Generally, you need to apply it when the plants are growing fast, so it gets carried around the whole plant before it kills it. It should take at least a week before you see any signs, and could be several weeks in more hardy plants. It won't work well in the dry weather we have at the moment, as most plants won't be growing due to lack of water.

There are some other use cases. There used to be lots of marestail weed in my garden, coming up between paving stones and stone chipping areas. Glyphosate doesn't work well on this because the leaves (filaments) have a coating which doesn't let it through very well, making it difficult to get enough into the plant. One way is to walk over the plant after spraying which damages the leaves and gets more in, but the damaged leaves may then die anyway before distributing it (and you mustn't walk it over the lawn!). Turns out the best way to apply to this plant is at the end of the season shortly before it starts dying down naturally. It retrieves some of the nutrients from the leaves back into the deep root system to save for next year, and pulls back some of the glyphosate too. It's still not much, but now it's trapped in the root system all winter, and that does kill the roots. It took a couple of years of this to knock it on the head, but I now only have to deal with the occasional straggler which pops up each year, and not a forest of it.

On Monday 15 July 2013 18:53 Harry Bloomfield wrote in uk.d-i-y:

Pickling vinegar I would guess.

Some bloke down the dump reckoned vinegar plus about 1 tbsp salt per pint was very effective. I have not tried yet...

If it works, the weeds will have had their chips.

Er, walk over it before you spray it?

I looked at the concentrate but the instructions said mix only the amount required for the job. I would use it as a spot weedkiller, so need a spray bottle of it to hand. There was no explanation and it seemed strange, especially as the 'ready-to-use' bottle contains rather more than I'd use in one go.

About 3 - 4 years ago I finished the last drop of Weedol that my brother brought home from a farm about 30 years ago - that stuff really worked, so I suppose it's been banned now.

It's probably the Chinese source that kills things, same as the pet food in the USA.

Someone needs to teech Wilco some maffs

I have a litre bottle of the 360gm/lt, and a 1.25 litre hozelock pump-up spray bottle. 20cc of the conc in the bottle, top up with a litre of water, pump it 50 times and bob's yer uncle.

In March I go round and spray all the rough areas in the garden, and the metre-wide strip between our hedge and the field. That way, when the summer comes and I need to go down the field to trim the hedge, I can get down there without spending 3 hours chopping down weeds. All the garden weeds die too, no problem.

I bought the hozelock bottle 15 years ago with my first litre of the

You don't need to spray it daily. One application and wait 2-3 weeks to see the results. If its knotweed I might spray it on two successive days for good measure.