Weed killer

Okay so I work in the maintenance division for a real estate property management company. Well we just had a new building built and it has a bunch of plant beds. Whoever planted the plants didn't put down a weed barrier, and so now there is a shit ton of weeds everywhere! It's ridiculous. I need a weed killer that will kill weeds but not the plants. I'm tired of pullin weeds once a week. It takes up the entire day. Anyone have any good products they've used? Remember I can't kill the plants

 

Your best long term solution is to pull the mulch and put the weed barrier down...

If you have a lot of delicate flower-type stuff, most weed killers will just kill them off. The less potent ones that say they're safe for flowers I've found to be useless on weeds also. If you have shrubs, or something more resilient, Round-up works well. There's a 'kill everything but the trees' version that works well, just don't get it on any of the shrub's leaves or they'll brown and die (won't kill the shrub, just the leaves it gets on).

 

Weed fabric is worthless. Don't waste your time or money.

A proper thickness (2-4") of mulch is your best barrier against weeds.

You can carefully spray glyphosate (roundup) around some of the plants but try to avoid drift. Anything intertwined within the desirable plants will need to be pulled by hand. There are selective herbicides out there that will kill weeds but not the desireables, however you'll need a few different kinds and it just won't be cost effective to use them.

Just an FYI, you say you work for a property management company so you technically need a commercial pesticide applicator's license to spray any time of herbicide on anyone else's property but your own. South Carolina's licensing requirements are very similar to Georgia's. GA is pretty lax about enforcement but I got my license so I don't have to worry getting fined if an inspector were to show up to one of my job sites. Fines can be in the thousands of dollars if you get caught. To get your license, you'll need to order reading materials from your state Ag dept, study it hard, then take the test. GA is a 200 question test and you have to get 70% to pass.

 

i was told that weed barriers is BS..so i opted to not use it.

i did however go crazy with a shredded ceder ground cover. i bet i put down 5" of the stuff. i have had to yank out about 10-20 weeds in the four years since i completed my project. it is working beautifully.

i do get the random baby tree growing when the stupid squirrels start burying the acorns and stuff. easy to police.

 

Drink lots of coffee and pee on them when no ones looking.

I used newspaper at my house and it worked great for about 1 year. now I'm tempted to put the real landscape fabric down. Not sure why it get's a bad rap, the newspaper worked well.

 

Weed fabric works... weeds can still grow in the mulch, especially the mulch that has more of a dirt content (like ground bark mulch vs. cedar chips). The weed fabric prevents the roots of the weeds from having anything to root into. It will reduce the amount of weeds that are able to grow and make it a lot easier to pull the ones that you do get since they won't be rooted well at all.

 

The area is pretty damn big. Probably about 3k square feet. And if I know the owner and they give permission to spray I can do that right?

 

Most of the time, it's the mulch that's blocking the weeds, not the fabric. So you get a false sense of it working.

The only time it should be used is under inorganic mulch (egg rock, river pebbles, lava rocks, etc).

Of the few weeds that germinate in the mulch itself the roots do not even reach the underlying soil. So again... the fabric is doing nothing. Most weeds have shallow fibrous root systems with the exception of a few with taproots.

To each their own I suppose... As someone who does landscaping for a living, I would never use it unless I was putting down inorganic mulch. It's a waste of my time and a waste of my customer's money, not to mention a PITA in the future if you ever want to add plants or when it gets caught in the string trimmer edging beds. All of the landscapes that I maintain do not have weed fabric and none have a weed problem in the beds. They get an occassional weed or two here and there but that's normal and nothing will stop them 100%.

Here are a couple posts from over on lawnsite.com which is a forum for professional landscapers. The general consensus is... NO

http://www.lawnsite.com/showthread.php?t=225387&highlight=weed+fabric

http://www.lawnsite.com/showthread.php?t=366462&highlight=weed+fabric&page=2

http://www.lawnsite.com/showthread.php?t=27177&highlight=weed+fabric

 

Technically no...but you can take your chances. To be honest...I highly doubt you'd get caught. Typically the Ag inspectors just follow around lawn care companies trucks and check for licenses. That's your call though.

 

Good weed fabric works for a couple of years