Overrun with Weeds

[imafan26]

I had not been to my community garden for almost two weeks since we had a few days of rain. The weeds took off in the meantime and I spent an hour pulling bindweed and California grass. I never made it to the ivy gourd that has overtaken the chili pepper and is trying to climb my Satsuma tree. There is more rain forecast for today.

It is nice to have summer rain, but I have a hard time keeping up with the summer weeds.

My other plots are not faring any better. The herb garden has nut sedge between the brick pavers and I have plants that have reseeded from other gardens and from the herbs straying into different sections and in the pathways.

At home, I seriously need to weed whack before I get a nasty letter from the HOA.

So, much to do, but I try to work outside in the early morning and evenings since it is way too hot to be out in the sun in midday.

BTW I have some chronic problems getting rid of some weedy trees.
Anyone got any ideas on how to get rid of African tulip, Fukien tea, desert honeysuckle, and mock orange. I keep cutting the tops off but they grow back. African tulip has come back after roundup and I cannot dig it out, the root is too big and too deep.

[ElizabethB]

Good luck. If my vegetables grew as fast as the weeds I would be over run with produce. There is a large Magnolia Fiscata shrub growing 3' from my garden boxes. I constantly battle the roots. This spring G cut it back from 10' to 2'. He used his saws all to cross hatch the remaining trunks and I painted them with straight Round Up. No new growth has appeared but we are still faced with digging it out. Neither one of us can do that. There are a couple of young, strong boys in the neighborhood. Once the brutal heat of summer is over we will hire them to dig out the root ball. As they dig G will use his ATV with straps to pull the shrub. When I had my landscaping business I had to deal with that kind of issue several times.

The heat and humidity are so brutal that I can only work in the garden very early in the morning.

Good luck

[Lindsaylew82]

There is a different type of round up at the stores here that is made for woody plants. I use it for poison Ivy in my hedge row

[lakngulf]

August = Dealing With Weeds in the South. The most you can do is try to be a little bit ahead of them when August hits, or they will take over. Always interesting to see the roadways after mowing this time of the years. Weeds and grass so thick that the thatch piles up like windrows.

I transferred my gardens to boxes and containers a couple years back, and this year used a lot of newspaper and cardboard in the early spring. That has helped a lot.

[imafan26]

Is there a better herbicide for weedy trees. What is it called so I can see if I can find it?
I hired someone to cut the mock orange hedge. I cut it as much as I could but it was to the point where I was getting my arms cut up in the process. He had a hard time cutting the stumps down because he said the chain saw was cutting into the dirt. However, he did not kill the root so it is growing back.

[Decado]

Mulch, mulch, and more mulch.

[Rairdog]

Mulch, mulch, and more mulch.

Ditto...weeds only pop up where the mulch has washed away and given them daylight.

[imafan26]

I actually tried covering them with black plastic to block out the light and buried them in mulch and they still came through.

Somebody told me to use gasoline, but that isn't environmentally friendly. Roundup at least does not ruin the soil permanently.

The other solution someone said to use salt. Ditto, salt isn't good for the earth either.

I tried debarking too. It slowed it down but it did not die.

[Decado]

Please don't use herbicides. They are terrible for your soil and for the water table at that. Cardboard/newspaper covered with grass clippings, leaves and or straw work excellently. The weeding will be very minimal, nothing will get rid of all the weeds. With mulch you'll build up rich soil and your plants will do much better too.

[Decado]

Plus with roundup you're supporting the most evil corporation in the world, Monsanto, who's killing all the bees. Soon you won't have to worry about weeds because we'll all be dead from starvation.

[Lindsaylew82]

It's Roundup Poison Ivy Plus.

I use a gallon milk jug with the bottom cut out. Trim the plant to its bottom set of leaves. Put an old hoodie sweater around the base of the plant. Cover the plant with the jug. Spray through the top pour hole.

I've used this method on volunteer pecan, maple, oak, and Bradford pear. It killed the plant to the root, without killing the surrounding ground cover or hedges.

[Lindsaylew82]

......... Sometimes the volunteer trees that I get here are just deep rooted, they cannot be removed by pulling or digging, and cutting them just makes more stems with heartier root systems. Responsible use of any chemical is desired.

[Decado]

I don't believe that. For one if you get them early they're easy. If not you just need to dig a little deeper.

[Lindsaylew82]

Believe what you want to believe. I'm no lazy gardener... I give it all I got! . I respect your opinion, but I have to disagree.

It's a great product. It works very well, and I use it very responsibly on plants that I deem I'm unable to remove safely, or without extensive digging.

[imafan26]

These mock orange hedges were planted by the previous owner and were close to twenty years old. The diameter of the stump is over 5 inches and most of them were multi-stemmed. I did try digging them up but since they also live on rain, I could not get very far. African tulip has deep roots and when they break off they grow back and the tree grows fast. If I don't see them in time, and once they get about a foot tall, I can no longer pull them out. Since I cannot dig them out and I don't have access to anything bigger than a pick, and that bounced right off the root, I don't have a whole lot of other options, one of the African tulips sprouted near the foundation of my house and that is the one I did spray with roundup and is still alive. Bindweed is hard to control just by pulling it because the roots go deep and will grow back as well as set seed.

Roundup does have its place in the world. It is a better alternative to the other suggestions I had to use gasoline, salt, and bleach. All of the alternative suggestions were actually much worse than roundup for the environment. I will still be able to plant after roundup, but not after gasoline, salt, or bleach. They will kill weeds but the residue will remain for awhile as well.

I really don't want to get into the politics of Monsanto. I know the company has a major image problem (of its own making) as the big bad, and everyone can make their own choice to support them according to their conscience.
Just because people hate the company, does not mean that their products are all bad. I would rather use roundup than 2,4D which was one of the ingredients in Agent Orange. Most of the GMO modifications they have made to plants were designed to make it easier to weed the fields without killing the crop, thereby reducing the labor intensive task of hand weeding fields. At the time it was revolutionary, it was a boon to farmers who had a hard time finding labor, and labor, even at minimum wage is a huge expense to a farm. Mother nature, though, does not like to be messed with, as more weeds are also becoming roundup ready.