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Lawn and Garden
Reply to "Why this day and age the herbicides for lawns are still in use???"
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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Okay, help me out. I generally agree with you and have never used fertilizer or weed control products -- but I bought some for the first time this year. Mowing simply does not get the spiky weeds or dandelions, as they just press down under the mower and stay put. I hand weed but it's an enormous amount of work and I can't keep up, especially if it rains every weekend as it so often does (can't mow in the rain either). A couple years ago I bought a house with a pretty nice lawn. I did manual weeding and otherwise left it alone. Two years later it has been overrun with all kinds of weeds - they are not only ugly but not nice to walk on or play on. So what is the solution? I grew up in a drought area and understand native plant gardens, but (a) that's not a playspace for kids and (b) weeding decorative planting beds or rock areas is even harder than weeding the lawn.[/quote] 1. Horticultural vinegar 2. Add clover (I know it’s a cliche on here, but clover is a nitrogen fixing legume and you will make your soil healthier which means weeds are less likely) 3. Fill those flower beds all the way up with plants; weeds don’t grow where they don’t get light. Piet Oudolf gardens. Meadow gardens, meadow lawns. You can leave part of the lawn in traditional turf or make it all clover (but then you have to get rid of all the grass by smothering it or turning the soil over, so that’s a pain). 4. For the spring weed of your bed, get in there early and use a stirrup hoe. [/quote] Not PP, but- what is horticultural vinegar? Is it selective, or does it kill everything? We have added clover when overseeding our lawn, BUT do be warned that bees love the flowers. Not necessarily a bad thing! But at least once a year, I ended up getting stung on my foot walking around in flip flops. So something to consider when you have young kids. Our lawn was not very healthy when we bought the house and within a couple years it was nearly a monoculture creeping charlie lawn. I hate that sh-t! Turns out it loves acidic, disturbed soil and a soil test revealed our soil was pretty acidic. We've applied herbicide a couple times now to knock it back, but also worked to improve soil health and overseed in the fall most years now. I don't need a perfect lawn, but I definitely don't want an exclusively invasive weed "lawn" either. [/quote] Horticultural vinegar is not selective, and it will kill many things (some things take repeated applications if you’re trying to kill them). It’s just insanely strong vinegar. Regular white vinegar is 5% acidity, hort vinegar can be 45% acidity. :) And I LOVE creeping charlie. I love the smell, I love the purple flowers (so do the bees!). But they are invasive. https://hort.extension.wisc.edu/articles/creeping-charlie/[/quote]
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