Killing bottle...

I've been using this technique to remove couch grass from my heavily planted borders for a few years now. I have a few bottomless bottles that I place over the top of of growing piece of grass. This isolates the grass from neighbouring plants. Into this I spray systemic weedkiller (sorry) with the intention of killing the root system without having to dig up the soil. I hardly have any couch grass now but my wife thinks I might be causing harm to other plants with the use of weedkiller like this. What do people think of the idea in principle? Can weedkiller travel through soil beyond the confines of my killing bottles?

 

Hi,

Good idea, sure we will use a bottle like that for the such troublesome deep rooted weeds.

Providing you only wet the grass/weeds leaves rather than heavily soaking the soil doubt it would affect any other plants.

As the makers of Roundup and Weedol both say it degrades in the soil and you can even reseed the area in 7 days so doubt it would have any effect on other nearby plants.

You do not mention loosing any nearby plants, so we would be confident all is ok.

 

As the drawing says, "Weedol, Roundup ETC".

 

Roundup etc are systemic weedkillers they have to come into contact with foliage to work . The other type of weedkillers are residual which kill the soil , I don't think any residual weedkillers are available to the general public.

 

At diy stores and garden centres etc etc, this will be the case, not online though.
Some online stores that sell residual weedkillers will have a disclaimer stating.

By law, everyone who uses pesticides professionally must have received adequate training in using pesticides safely and be skilled in the job they are carrying out." Upon purchasing this product you and/or the end users are responsible for ensuring that these products are used in line with industry Approved Codes of Practice.

Then other sites don't state anything, yet the general public will still be able to make a purchase from these online sites.

 

Can't think why you'd use path clear on the borders, but hey ho