Weedkiller: for and against

In 50 years of gardening, I have never once used a weedkiller but I'm getting a bit old. Years ago, my elderly neighbour planted groundcover plants like vinca and ivy and geranium wargrave. It's a constant battle. They cover ground!
I'd be interested to read views regarding weedkillers. I really don't want to use them but.....

 

I use glyphosate as little as possible but its useful on my semi wild part of the garden, if not I could spend the whole summer weeding.
A fairly early spray in May often holds back the weeds for the whole summer to a point where just a bit of strimming is all I need to do by mid summer.

 

No weedkiller used here. No fungicides. No pesticides. Weeds grow and are smothered by other things (non-weeds) or are eaten by caterpillars or bugs or die of drought or (rarely) get pulled up by hand (usually when they begin to flower and announce their identity). Nettles get grown on in pots and planted out in the wild bits of land round about - Red Admiral caterpillars eat them.

 

I don't use weedkiller in the garden. But I do use in tiled front yard for anything that seeds and starts growing between tiles, and tiles and fence wall.

 

I use it on block paving and on the pavement outside my house but not in borders. Luckily none of my neighbours have planted anything invasive and we are boarded up with fencing!

 

With ivy you could try adding a small amount of a biodegradable soap/washing up liquid, this will help the weedkiller wet the surface of the ivy leaves.

 

I've killed a lot of ivy in my garden with glyphosate, it was taking over the whole garden.
But the stuff from garden centres doesn't work, you need the stronger stuff bought on line.

 

It's the vinca that's driving me up the wall at the moment.

 

Like many above I use Glyphosate on paths, driveway and on the border between my garden and the fields next door. There are some weeds like field thistle which are nigh on impossible to dig out so the weedkiller has its uses. I do not use weedkiller on any of the flower or veg beds and hand weed those. I would agree Ivy is difficult to kill due to its waxy surface. Fairly liquid helps ( yes I know it is illegal!,lock me up!!!) but you need to keep at it. If you spray with the likes of Roundup and then spray again in about a months time and maybe even repeat in another month or so it will eventually kill the Ivy, I know because I had to try and kill some which had invaded under a flat roof. I did manage to kill it eventually having thrown “ the kitchen sink” at it.

 

I don't use any killers, but my patch is small. Plus, I feel it is not fair somehow. Like using a nuclear bomb to kill an adversary armed only with a bow and arrow. Mind, pruning with sharp bladed implements makes me feel guilty too. Maybe I'm not cut out for the brutal reality that is gardening.

 

I use it very sparingly, and the new products certainly need more applications. The odd dandelion in the gravelled drive, and stump killer has been needed for the blackthorn, but other than that, any other problematic things get pulled out or get covered up by groundcover. Willow herb is the worst one round here, but is easy to pull out. Bittercress is the same.
Groundcover saves a huge amount of time for me, and was necessary when I worked full time and had my children to look after. No time for doing anything like weeding in the garden, and especially when I'd rather do something much nicer.

 

I've never used any weedkillers and the more I listen to professor Dave Goulson, the more I'm happy I don't. You can find some of his stuff on youtube and I've wanted to post about them here but didn't want to push it down people's throats (as weedkillers are mentioned so often and I don't want to go against the group to much).

He has a youtube channel thats interesting to watch if you like nature, especially bees but he has done talks with other people about just how harmful some of our farming practices can be.

This is an interesting video I think everyone should watch, the statistics are amazing