Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!
This weekend is going to be Yardageddon 2007. It’s been a long time coming. From a tolerable distance, my backyard doesn’t look too bad. It’s shady and mostly green. A bit overgrown, sure, but I’m into that English Woodland Garden look.
Up close and personal though, it’s rather a clusterfuck. I have a superabundance of ivy, which looks fine, but allows for all manner of little fly-y bite-y creatures to breed without restraint and fuck with me mercilessly. There is tree life that knocks on my side door and invites itself in for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. I think a vine just tried to eat Bennet.
It’s time to get all NoCo on this shit.
I have a weed whacker, and I hope that I have better luck with it than I have with my nemesis the lawnmower. I also have some trimmer thing, I don’t know what it’s called. I don’t need to know what it’s called because I don't care; it will chop plants into smaller bits and that is a good thing. I am going to borrow some lop shears.
Here’s the thing, though, does anyone have any suggestions for how to kill plants at the root? I looked at Roundup, but Roundup costs A Lot of Money, and I am poor. Roundup is out. Off brand weed killer has proven no match for the plant life around here.
Here are the things I’ve been told:
I’ve been told that drilling several holes into the trunk of a tree and pouring salt in will kill it. Done. The house next door has some piece of shit weedy tree just at the fence line that is trying to move into my house. I could cut it back, but why? They have all but abandoned that house, making no moves to sell it or rent it or reattach that siding that blew off last July. Fuck it. I’m sending the tree to see Jesus.
I’ve been told that plain white vinegar will kill plants reliably. Is this true? While not entirely thrilled about the possibility of my yard smelling like a cheap douche, I’ll give it a shot.
Any other ideas? At this point, I would probably put down some fucking Agent Orange if I knew where to find it.
Miscellany
- Kate
- Working to prevent the Idiot Train from derailing and killing everyone in Moron Village.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
4 comments:
Gasoline will work. Almost as expensive as Roundup these days tho. Might talk to Master P about getting a discount on Roundup, it's a Monsanto product.
I killed some tree stumps with, 'em, a mixture of gas and diesel.. that's how we Oklahomans have fun... You could also use a mixture of dishwashing soap and water... 50-50 mix, it will work on just random yard weeds... but doubt it will kill a tree remnant! Best of luck
Can't get Roundup? Look for anything with "glyphosate" as one of the active ingredients. It's the same stuff. Monsanto's patent on Roundup expired in 2000, so you can now get the same stuff under generic names.
Vinegar will work as a herbicide, but the concentration is important. Vinegar with 5% acetic acid is the normal stuff you find at the grocery store, and it will kill the plant, but not the root, so the plant will grow back. You need to find vinegar with at least 20% acetic acid to kill the root as well. Which is, of course, more expensive and hard to find.
As for tree killing, I've always been fond of a chainsaw.
Inserting a copper rod into a tree kills it.
Getting 10 or 11 people to come over and pee on your ivy a bunch will probably get rid of it. Buy a few cases of beer and asparagus and tell some friends to go to town.
Post a Comment