Herbicides are not pesticides and pesticide is not the general term for anything ending in icide. If you are not sure about this you shouldn't be using them. Read the label and understand what it is you are spraying. Each icide has it's own unique characteristics and you should be aware of what each particular icide can do to you, your animals and the environment.

If you choose to cultivate land then you choose to do battle with mother nature, the natural, organic options for keeping grass trim around fence posts are pretty well zip. Mother nature is laughing at you and your trim grassed posts. You're asking her for natural cultivation and she's saying, sorry I don't cut grass.

Weed and grass free areas - glyphosate or mechanical removal of growth (pull it), mulch and then apply a pre emergent herbicide to reduce seed germination.

Natural, organic method - sow wild flower seeds along the fence line and leave it alone.

Well, I reckon I'll weigh in on this one as well.

I will not use glyphosate for reasons already expressed by others here.

I just got a new scythe. Works like a charm. Is not that difficult to use and will trim grass very close to the fence with ease. sharpening scythes is kind of a trick to learn but easy once you do. It is slower than spraying but I believe it is worth the effort. Check out the videos on Scytheconnection.com I know that they are hard to believe but it really does work that well. Great exercise and pleasant work.

Mulch could be a good answer but will be very time consuming to put down and will only last 1-3 years depending on your level of tolerance for stray weeds. 3 years later you will again be doing the mulch thing. Newspaper will not blow around with mulch on top of it. Corrugated cardboard works even better than newsprint.

I actually liked Chas. burns idea about planting wildflowers the best. But i think i remember that you are trying to clear an electric fence and so that probably will not help.

My suggestion is get a scythe and learn to mow. I have not regretted it.

Charles,

I think pesticides includes herbicides.

I feel mighty knowledgeable on the topic.

Hmmmm ..... did a little research. Wikipedia agrees with me.

paul wheaton
certified master gardener
certified permaculture designer

I know a guy who has a steam jenny for cleaning engines, it kills everything that grows. if you steam blast a patch of weeds its dead, and they stay dead.

So, maybe renting a steaam jenny for a day might do the trick.

Glysophate (the active ingredient in Roundup) is pretty thurogh at killing anything green it is sprayed on.

However, spray it on 1,000,000 weeds, and 1 or 2 will live through the experience. Some built-in resistence.

So maybe one of those weeds has seed.

Perhaps 1/2 of those seeds are now plants that are naturally resistant to glysophate.

It is not that the plants are changing from what they were before - we are just selecting them - only the very, very few that turn out to be naturally resistant will survive.

This happens with any effort to control living beings - viruses, bacteria, weeds, insects.....

Previously we rotated our crops and required different herbicides on our fields that acted totally differently on weeds. So every other year, or every 3rd year, something different was sprayed on the field and weeds had a tough time surviving that.

Now, we have glysphate tolerant corn, soybeans, and some alfalfa. Fields are getting sprayed with glysophate year after year after year. Add to that, glysophate works pretty good so farmers were advised to cut rates of spray - us a bit less to save money. Some of these resistant weeds are killed by a double rate of it, but are only wounded by a 1/2 rate.....

The resistance is bound to happen. There are, I believe 7 weeds that are strongly resistant to glysophate now. There are a few others developing some resistance. Clover & some alfalfa were always difficult to kill with it to start with.

It is not that we are creating some oddball ultra weed that is evolving tho.

We are just selecting the very few weeds that can survive it. 'Natural selection' tho I'm sure some will be bothered by my use of that term in this context. :)

Glysophate is a short term thing, like any other control measure we try to use. They have been working on a dicomba-resistant soybean. The theory why it hasn't come out yet varries from the Greenines to the big M to the govt squashing it. It would be a good complement to the current glysophate trend. In corn we have Liberty Link, so their is an alternative to the glysophate trend. There is no good alternative to glysophate in soybeans -conventional beans you need to apply a pre-emerge, follow with a grass killer when the beans come up a few weeks, and then follow with a broadleaf killer. That is a lot of trips. It is possible to sometimes combine trips, but results can be poor.

Anyhow, I rattle on. Yes, some weeds are starting to select themselves with resistance to glysophate. Because so much corn & bean ground is sprayed with only it, this was bound to happen.

--->Paul

Pesticide is any chemical we apply to get rid of some life form that is hassling us.

Some of them are:

Herbicide - to control plant growth.
Insecticide - to control insects.
Fungicide - to control fungus.
Algicide - to control algea.
Rodentcide - mice & gophers & such.

All these - and others - are under the common term 'pesticide' which includes them all.

We learn that every 3 years at the pesticide traing classes that we need to attend/pass for using some ag chemicals.

Were you thinking of insecticide when you wrote pesticide? Sometimes those get confusing to us.....

--->Paul

Try it on a patch of Canadian thistles up here, & get back to me on how good they stay dead. :) :) About 7 days, I recon, before you see new shoots from the roots.

Flame burners - or steam would have the same effect - have their place, many have been used over the years. Not knocking it - they kill annuals with shallow roots. Don't do much for deep-rooted perannuals most of the time.

--->Paul

I don't know if this has be recommended but I pour a pot of boiling water on my weeds. It kills everything pretty well.

Aren't you using salt and/or vinegar to kill something? Isn't that the very definition of unfriendly?

If it kills something through chemical means we typically think of that as a poison. Salt and vinegar, when used to kill something are poisons.

Now perhaps salt and/or vinegar don't have the far reaching impacts of other poisons like DDT but you cannot argue that they truly have no negative impact on the environment.

Whistler

[QUOTE=charles burns]Herbicides are not pesticides and pesticide is not the general term for anything ending in icide. If you are not sure about this you shouldn't be using them. Read the label and understand what it is you are spraying. Each icide has it's own unique characteristics and you should be aware of what each particular icide can do to you, your animals and the environment.

As a licensed commercial PESTICIDE applicator I am not only sure about the term, I am obliged to know this. I am licensed in several categories including noxious weeds, rights of way, and public health. The latter dealing with insects to critters.

By the way I learned that herbicides and insecticides are pesticides back in the 1970s when I first obtained my private pesticide applicators license.

Good posts. Leaned that the pest in pesticide doesn't have to be animal. Any pest qualifies.

Dave

I had it beaten into me that herbicides were radically different in their chemical make up from insecticides, rodenticides and animal icides and to mark the difference 'pesticides' included only animal/insect control whilst 'herbicide' was used exclusively for vegetation.

Now I have to come to terms with the fact that I may actually be wrong.

(LA, Nursery and Landscaping Association cert.)

That can be a difficulty for any of us! :)

In my training, the insecticides were always considered the ugly ducklings, different the the rest to handle.

--->Paul

Salt water and weeds
 

When I was pumping some stripper oil wells I had plenty of salt water that really worked good for knocking down weeds and did not have to put a lot on, just get the leaves and foliage wet. If you can locate some of this it does the job.

Definition by state maybe?
 

Just a thought, but I suppose that the term might be used differently in different states.

Section "N" give the definition for use in the state of Kansas. Sorry, PDF format.
http://www.ksda.gov/includes/statute...ticide_Law.pdf

I wanted to add to using vinegar as a weed killer. Kitchen vinegar could be used, but I would think that you might need to apply it several times. The recommended vinegar strength is 20%. It can be found at your local nursery and it is not cheap.

The vinegar needs to be applied during the heat of the day. It works by burning the top growth of the plant. The suns speeds that process up.

As far as affecting the soil - I would think that it may change the PH (vinegar is acidic) but I don't believe that any beneficial insects or ground water would be affected. I would not use salt at all on my yard. That would throw things off balance.

No, the definition for pesticide seems not to vary from state to state. In a desperate attempt to regain some credibility I even checked the definition in other English speaking countries and found no variance there either.

I intend to become fluent in Russian, Italian, Greek, Norwegian and at least three Arabic dialects in order to research their definitions of pesticide. It aint over 'till it's over.

Umm. Ma'am, vinegar is a product of over-fermentation, petroleum and it's distillates aren't involved at all.

It's furnished as a standard 5% strength for cooking.

I like your tenacity. Or however that is spelled - your stick-to-it-ness. :)


How do they get 20% vinegar? Thought the critters that make it would not be making it any more long before then. Just like alcohol, it only gets so strong & the yeast dies in it's own waste, need to disill it down to get higher concentrations. I'm sure some similar process for vinegar.

Burning the tops off of plants will kill some real well, & not affect other deep-rooted stuborn weeds much at all. Seems kinda hit or miss to me. It is one way to go after the buggers tho, for sure.

--->Paul

You are correct-however, there are some making what they call vinegar from some sort of petroleum by-products. I have not seen this in stores myself, but have been warned that it's out there...just a FYI.

Patty

From the FDA
 

Things I never knew------

From the Food and Drug Administration web site at:

http://www.fda.gov/ora/compliance_re...pg555-100.html

Presently, we authorize the manufacture of vinegar from ethyl alcohol synthesized from natural gas or petroleum derivatives. It is our opinion that most of the distilled spirits used in the production of vinegar are derived from natural gas and petroleum. When such alcohol is used in the production of vinegar, we would consider any reference to 'grain alcohol' or 'neutral grain spirits' would be misleading for the alcohol and also the name 'grain vinegar' would be misleading, except for connoting strength, e.g., 40-grains.

Practically and scientifically, pure ethyl alcohol synthesized from natural gas or petroleum products does not differ from that obtained by fermentation with subsequent distillation. Furthermore, foods in which one is used cannot be distinguished objectively from those in which the other is used.

I stand corrected, ma'am.

It never occurred to me that vinegar could be made in what I'd describe as an artificial manner.

Interesting.

The author at the FDA has obviously never tasted wine vinegar, cider vinegar and "regular" white vinegar. We won't even bring balsamic into it. Moreover, I suspect that if one were to test them on a gas chromatograph, the findings would differ substantially.

And, as a closing comment, the FDA author also probably can't cook.