Speed Weeding

My hunch (no more than that) would be that if they just shrivel a bit, the full dying-off process and turning to dust would be marginally quicker than using chemicals.

I purchased one years ago - complete waste of time. Used both methods (shrivel and turn to ash). Deep routed weeds just reappeared.

I noticed there's an electric one at Aldi for £15 so I looked it up.

I think the idea is you just need to heat the weed up to boiling point. All the water turns to steam, the cell walls burst and the foilage will die off in a few days. Carbonising it doesn't really hasten this process.

If it's a deep rooted weed it can just grow new foliage, so you have to keep hitting it regularly until it runs out of steam. Could be a long time.

But not sure if the gas ones have advantages over electric - hotter yes, but much quicker to use? How much of a faff is setup?

Theo

Best use of burning is to sterilise the very soil itself to prevent further germination

I think the general idea is to heat enough to cause cell rupture, and then the thing will die (including the root) over the next few days.

If you burn it to a crisp you risk leaving the root part isolated, and it can regrow.

Shirley this is why we use glyphosate. Because that kills the root.

Yes, but it's slow-acting. It takes a couple of weeks to kill a plant. If it's an annual weed which flowers, set seed, and releases that seed quickly, glyphosate won't act quickly enough to prevent reseeding. I don't know if glyphosate + diflufenican (Weedol Pathclear) is still available or not, but that's the sort of thing you'd have to use.

Why does cell rupture lead to root death whilst burning to a crisp doesn’t? My thoughts are that both methods are equally ineffective at killing roots. ;-)

Tim

Theo <theom+ snipped-for-privacy@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in news:o-q* snipped-for-privacy@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk:

I trialled one of those and it was a total waste of time, went back in short order as 'not suitable'.

Took far too long to get any decent visible effect on the weed foliage, just not powerful enough. Not sure the gas ones would be much better. I have used a vintage paraffin (vapour) powered one (flame thrower) which was intense enough to get visible results over a decent area quickly but the deep rooted weeds were back in no time.

Fit the gas can if not already fitted. Twiddle the knob to 'on'. Click the igniter.

The farmers have access to materials like that :-) FrankenFarmer.

Paul

Agreed, they are pretty easy to use and you only need to shrivel the leaves - not completely incinerate them. As pointed out elsewhere, the weeds will grow back, but you should go over the ground again. The deeper rooted weeds will have used up much of their stored energy in regrowing.

In that case, why not just hoe them, or rip out as much as you can with your hands?

It depends on where they are growing. My guess is that many people would consider this method of weed removal where the weeds are growing through paving blocks etc.

Well, on your hands and knees with a pair of scissors! Decent sized patio in

Although in some seriousness I can see the gas burners being helpful for those with mobility difficulties.

I am OK getting down but getting back up is the issue

Speaking of ignition faff! One of my teenage *paid* jobs was *singeing* weeds in the horticultural field. No portable gas containers mid 1950's. Our device (which is still on a shelf somewhere) consisted of a scaled up paraffin blowtorch. 4L container for Paraffin with a Schrader valve to pressurise with a foot-pump, providing a fuel flow to the vaporiser (coiled section of fuel pipe in the flame zone) and thence to the burner jet.

Depending on fuel flow rate, this produced a flame around 100mm wide x

As said upthread annual weeds only need to be singed and allowed to shrivel up. The next job was to fire up the Rotavator and create a seedbed for the next crop.

I had one like this:

Mine was like that, i.e. with a built-in pump. You pumped up the pressure and carefully cracked open the valve to let the paraffin out to the coil and be vaporised. If you opened the valve too soon and the coil wasn't hot enough, the burner spouted great jets of flaming paraffin about twenty feet long and set fire to everything in its path! DAMHIKT!