Gyroscopic Investing

So the weeds are back... the ones I got rid of by weed & feeding last year.

Does anybody here have any lawn care tips... most importantly how to properly kill weeds??  I prefer to keep it as environmentally friendly as possible, but I'm not above knocking off some weeds.

Thanks folks.

I wouldn't ask about this on a financial forum if I didn't trust your guys' input.

All lawns are an environmental negative. But hard to have good neighbors in suburbia if you are going to let your lawn follow its natural succession back into a prairie. So, to minimize herbicides, I use a spot sprayer only. Most hardware sprayers are inexpensive and fall apart within a year, but I have had good luck with highest-end Chapin products.

http://www.chapinmfg.com/RCatalog7.asp

moda0306 wrote: So the weeds are back... the ones I got rid of by weed & feeding last year.

Does anybody here have any lawn care tips... most importantly how to properly kill weeds??  I prefer to keep it as environmentally friendly as possible, but I'm not above knocking off some weeds.

Thanks folks.

I wouldn't ask about this on a financial forum if I didn't trust your guys' input.

You might try this site: http://www.jerrybaker.net/garden/inform ... icles.aspx.

How about putting some Round Up on just the weeds or simply doing another weed and feed whole yard treatment?

You could get some gloves and a weeding tool and dig the weeds up.

In El Paso, where I live, everyone just has "lawns" made of rocks.  It's very tacky, but probably less time intensive than taking care an actual lawn.  Also, if you don't like your neighbors, it's a good passive-agressive attack plan.

I live in an apartment, by the way. 

In addition to the rock gardens, some people have ground cover consisting of ivy and/or a variety of green leafy plants.  For some reason, weeds don't seem to look as bad with this kind of cover, and it's relatively low maintenance.

In the front yard, I don't have a lot of space on either side of the driveway.  Perhaps a total of 800 sq. ft.  I put in artificial grass. 

Artificial grass has come a long, long way since Astroturf.  This stuff looks so real, people routinely reach down and touch it to confirm it's not real. It looks great and it never needs watering or trimming.  But it's not in a high traffic area. 

Thank you, gentlemen.

I have owned three houses in my life.

The first sat on two acres that backed up to a creek and it was a beautiful park-like setting.  The problem was it was an enormous amount of work.

The second house was a 1940s-era job that had been updated.  It had a normal size yard, which was still pretty large and mostly useless.

The third house (which I have lived in for ten years) is perfect for me.  It has a very small lawn (the layout of the neighborhood has the houses set back from the street about 15 feet and about 15 feet of yard in the back and on the sides.  There is enough room for a swing set or a dog, but it only takes 30 minutes to mow, trim, sweep, etc.  The thing I really like about my house is that it is across the street from a two acre park that the HOA takes care of.  Thus, I get to enjoy the view and use of this great area right in front of my house and someone else gets to take care of it.  We were fortunate to be one of the first homes built in this neighborhood so we got our pick of the lots.  It has worked out well.

I think that fertilizing heavily and thereby have the grass choke out the weeds is a better solution than killing the weeds by weed killer. 

I also have heard that from other people including landscapers, at least here in New England.  From my experience it works!

Te weed killer is just a short term fix.  The weeds will come back into the big empty patches.

Good luck! 

I'd recommend that you get yourself a copy of the The Organic Lawn Care Manual: A Natural, Low-Maintenance System for a Beautiful, Safe Lawn, available in large paperback for about $14. It's a fantastic resource on creating a beautiful lawn that's safe for your kids and pets to play on. And an organic lawn, when maintained properly, will be greener and healthier than a lawn laden with chemicals.

One great recommendation in the book for killing weeds is to use a long outdoor blowtorch. Don't laugh. It works. Simply hit the ignition, and quickly touch the flame briefly to the center of any weed. It instantly boils the water inside the stem and the weed will die in a few days. No chemicals, no poison. Just heat and kill. You can cover a lot of ground very quickly with this method and it works amazing on walkways.

Bernzomatic Self-Igniting 20,000 BTU Outdoor Torch

And, I definitely recommend the book. The author was a lawn guy who used a lot of chemicals until his doctor discovered that RoundUp was causing him health issues (breathing problems, headaches, etc). He learned how to get his clients' lawns "off drugs" successfully and then he wrote the book. A few years later, he was selected to use his organic techniques on the National Mall in Washington.

Blow torch?

That is gold... This just might be the most enjoyable weed-killing experience of my life.

Have a fire extinguisher handy.

Adam1226 wrote: Have a fire extinguisher handy.

I usually have a hose ready nearby just in case. It's extremely difficult to start a fire when things are green. Grass and weeds are full of water on the inside. When you put a blowtorch to them, they just shrivel up — they don't really burn. But, dead and brown stuff will burn instantly and fire will quickly spread to other dead and brown stuff. Stay away from dry mulch on a windy day and you'll be fine.

You only want to very briefly singe weeds, so they only wilt. If you hold the blowtorch for more than a second on any location it will create a large brown spot in your lawn a few days later. The heat is more effective than you think it's going to be, so your lawn will look better if you don't hold the blowtorch on any location for too long. The blowtorch is most effective on walkways and for large lawns.

If you have a tiny patch of lawn, you're better off with a short dandelion weeder (it looks like a tiny "v" fork) for precision weeding by hand. It's the original organic weeding device (also recommended by the author). Get the root out and you're done.

Does anybody know where I can get fireproof chaps?

6 Iron wrote: Does anybody know where I can get fireproof chaps?

Here you go:

http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/44240 ... guard.html