Topic: Do you use chemicals(weedkiller etc) on your garden/lottie?

[gavin]

Tongue-in-cheek - sodium chloride = common salt?  (Feeling smug - I dropped science at age 12 :) :) :) )

But sodium chlorate?  http://www.dgsgardening.btinternet.co.uk/weedkill.htm.  Not something anybody should be using around crops for eating?  Kills every living thing in the soil for six months or more?  Scary.

This page http://physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/SO/sodium_chlorate.html gives me the willies.   Dunno - I don't have anything like heritage's experience or expertise.

All best - Gavin

[moonbells]

SODIUM CHLORIDE, excuse me shouting but that stuff leaches into your garden from the paths and takes a long long time to degrade, also if you start using another brand of weedkiller at a later date it will mix in with it ending up with a lethal concoction.

Um, sodium chloride is salt. Don't you mean sodium chlorate?

moonbells

[ACE]

I must condiment you all for correcting me

[DolphinGarden]

Hi all

for months here I read about mares tail and horses tail and the woe involved, little did I know that I had an infestation. It was only about 2 weeks or so ago that I saw a photo, and someone on the Ch4 prog had an example on the viewer query section confirmed it.  I spot treated most of it with round up. They are mixed in with a lot of bluebells and tulips so I had to dribble it on. Elsewhere I got a tabloid sized double page, ripped about 6" in the centre and gathered several stalks together in the gap and gave them a squirt. You shoulda seen the colour of the paper after a few mins!!! Several spikes are fading, but this evening when I went next door to cut their side of our hedge (retired father and son ZERO interest in gardening) I discovered a Kevin Costner field of dre...er, nightmarish scenario of hundreds of mares tail. AAAaaaghhhh
Bloody norah batty.  Do they spread via seed a la dandelion or subterraneously like chinese lantern or jump like strawberry and ivy???  Oh  I could not believe it. Hundreds of the buggers...

Aside from that, I have used Verdone in an attempt to treat dandelion after two years of digging out.  Have found it to be ineffective in my back garden, but I did treat some large dandies on public land across from my house and they did seem to wobble a bit, but still seemed to go to seed regardless.
I don't grow anything edible, mostly hedge and grass to keep me busy with my own trial of sunflowers this summer and a few other bits and pieces...


I lost some darling irises the other day and I was quite upset. I bought a kilo of slug pellets with the intention of using it up in a week, nearly! Till someone here confirmed what I had suspected that the slugs are attracted to them and are then killed by them. Ugh, cannot stand the sight of 'em. I need to tidy up the flopped over bluebell leaves and other flotsam and jetsam in the garden, old pots, bits of plastic, general detritus and not make it so home from home for them...then maybe I'll see less of them...

So, I will press the third option in the voting...

Ciaran

[Robert_Brenchley]

Horsetail spreads two ways, by creeping roots, which is how you're getting it from the neighbours, and by spores. Spores need damp to develop into the adult stage, and aren't that efficient as a means of propagation. But the roots are killers.

[DolphinGarden]

Oh dear!  Thanks for that anyway Robert.


Ciaran

[Juliet]

I wouldn't use chemicals if I could - but I can't anyway as I'm allergic to them.  In fact,  I have a neurological illness which can be caused by exposure to chemicals.  So I heartily agree with Piers - & would recommend all chemical users to read his post & take note.

Interestingly, since I moved here & started gardening organically, there has been a massive increase in wildlife in the garden - we now have ladybirds, hoverflies, & sparrows eating our aphids, & blackbirds, hedgehogs, & a frog eating our slugs (not sure where the frog is living - we don't even have a pond!).  Lost one clematis to wilt, but nothing to pests.  Woodchip around the flower beds keeps the weeds down & encourages friendly fungi.  Garden is very healthy.

[redimp]

Full on chemical warfar then with you Ciaran  ;)

If you have pest problems this may be the cause.  Chemical kill everything, not just the things you want it to kill (I am talking pests here and not weeds although I am 110% organic) this upsets the balance and it is the pests that come back first - the predators will not return until there is something to predate.  It will take a few years but the best thing to do is to go organic and provide the right conditions for the friends.  Woody dark areas encourage hedgehogs and along with a pond will encourage frogs and toads (some slug pellets kill these if they eat infected slugs).  Plant marigolds for greenfly and put up boxes for ladyburds and bumble bees.

There - got that off my chest.

[carrot-cruncher]

I would love to be totally organic but the common perennials (bindweed, thistle, dock, couchgrass) have ignored the eviction notice I served so out came the Roundup. 

 It's only used on the fallow land which is undergoing long-term improvement & won't be sown with anything for the next two years.

Land currently under cultivation only gets organic fertilizer & I'm steadily moving over to organic seed.

CC

[beejay]

Just been reading all these posts with interest. We try to use chemicals only when we have to. This mostly tends to be glyphosate on the lottie. With all the perennial weeds it would be virtually impossible to control without. We do use black plastic & old carpet but it amazes me how far bindweed will travel just to find a bit of light. It might be easier if adjacent allotments & the hedge didn't have weeds that spread. A couple of years ago we also sprayed against blight on the tomatoes having lost most of the crop 2 years running. That was sheer desperation. Luckily no sign of it last year. Fingers crossed for this one.

[Robert_Brenchley]

when I find bindweed escaping from under black plastic, I just shove it back well underneath and enjoy listening to the screams.