I posted in a thread a while ago and got recommendations on the best weed killer for keeping weeds out of my pavers. I can't find that thread now and lost my notes...

I've got a large area on both sides of my house with pavers that I never want to pull a weed from again. Or atleast very rarely.

Something to sterilize the soil is what I seek.

Any info and links are much appreciated.

Fire

Roundup Max Control 365 is supposed to be good for a year.

Pramitol

Mixing Glysophate, 2-4D along with a surfactant is pretty good stuff.

Also, read up on TEBUTHIURON.  It is soaked up by the roots and inhibits photosynthesis so the plant starves.  But this shit is vicious, it takes no prisoners.

That's what it was... Thank you sir.

Should I wait until spring to apply? I live in Florida and everything is growing still but growth has slowed significantly. My understating is that the stuff needs go get to the roots and get fully absorbed that way. So if the weeds are dormant it will not be very effective.

A bong  

Killzall is awesome. Can usually find it at ace or lowes. I mix some boric acid in the sprayer with it and it seems to keep the crawlies in check too.

Ortho ground clear works pretty well.  Kills everything including bushes and trees so you need to be a little careful where you use it.

Often overlooked but this is a good solution.

Napalm

Casoron is what you seek. It doesn't kill weeds but it keeps them from coming back.

RoundUp Max Control 365 works really good too.

You need something that lingers in the soil. Regular glyphosate or 2,4-D is not enough. You need either the RoundUp 365 or you need to put down Casoron after killing them.

Throw this on your yard.  Add naptha, fertilizer and flame. Guaranteed to work or double your money back. fag.

Attached File

RIF.  read the OP's request.

1) your suggested herbicide cocktail kills plants with leaves, and then shortly thereafter becomes inert.  it does not sterilize the soil like Pramitol-25 or other similar long term inhibitors, and therefore does not help the OP.
2) mixing 2,4-d with glyphosate is stupid.  2,4-d is a selective herbicide, whereas glyphosate is a non-selective herbicide.  2,4-d does not kill anything that glyphosate doesn't already kill, and it costs more.

ar-jedi

note: rainwater can "move" Pramitol (and similar soil sterilizers).

proceed with caution, as any water runoff from the paver area can  (literally) cause downstream problems.

I have used all kinds of herbicide. Cousin suggested a get one of the propane flame throwers from Harbor Freight.
Have used it several times and it works great. Just have to watch that I don't get carried away with it.
Any respectable pyromaniac should have one of these.

Propane torch with push button igniter from HF

lol Silky

Crossbow, salt...yep, plain old salt works.

If you are concerned about chemicals and your pets, use one gallon of plain old white vinegar with about a half cup of dawn liquid dish soap in it.  Other dish soaps work too, but if you get bargain brand dish soaps, your results won't be as stunning.  Be careful though, it also kills the living bejeezus out of grass, or other plants it gets onto.  On lawn weeds, that mixture will start turning them brown within a few of hours.

If I use glyphosphate on my pavers that are up against a fence that borders a neighbor's yard with grass will I kill his grass from it leaching under the fence?

I was planning to mix it in a backpack pump sprayer and spraying the cracks between pavers not pouring it out real heavy and I can go lighter near the fence. You think I'll be ok doing that?

I haven't tried it yet, but I have looked at a product called RM43. I think it's a lot cheaper than roundup. It has 43.68% Glyphosate with a weed preventer. Label says it'll prevent weeds up to 1 year.

I have been using Glyphosate only and it'll kill the weeds, but more just come back after a few weeks.

Buy any corn and put it on your weeds. The Roundup will do the rest.

glyphosate (tradename Roundup) ONLY works via absorption through the plant's leaves; it has no effect whatsoever if sprayed on the ground.  it does not "leach" and affect nearby plants.
moreover, it is not only completely inert in a few days but even the dead plants have no lingering herbicidal effects, so you can till them into the soil and plant new stuff (grass, etc) a week later.

glyphosate does not kill seedlings nor prevent germination -- it simply kills plants that have green leaves, nothing more.

the general term for this is "post-emergent herbicide" -- that is, a plant killer that is only effective on plants that have already germinated and emerged from the ground.

glyphosate, sprayed on the leaves, is translocated throughout the plant and interrupts critical enzyme processes, resulting in plant death.
glyphosate is not absorbed by the roots of plants, and spraying the ground around a healthy plant will have no effect whatsoever.

another class of product is "pre-emergent herbicide" -- as the name suggests, these types of plant killers either prevent germination altogether OR interrupt some early stage of plant life (such as inhibiting root development).

you are already familiar with one use of "pre-emergent herbicide" -- crabgrass preventer, such as "HALTS".   crabgrass is best controlled by preventing it from growing in the first place, via a pre-emergent herbicide application early in the spring BEFORE the crabgrass seeds start germinating.   once the crabgrass seeds have germinated, shoots are growing through the soil, and leaves are appearing, it's OVER -- applying pre-emergent herbicide will have ZERO effect.  at that point you have to use (wait for it...) post-emergent herbicide, and killing crabgrass with post-emergent herbicide is a pain in the ass -- it's tough stuff and the thin leaves have a waxy coating which simultaneously helps preserve water under dry/arid conditions AND prevents good absorption of herbicide.

so for your paver problem, spraying glyphosate when there are no green leaves showing is pointless; you are just wasting money.  glyphosate is a post-emergent herbicide which kills live plants -- it does not prevent plants from growing in any way.

to prevent plants from growing in the first place, you need a pre-emergent herbicide -- and Pramitol 25 is the .44 magnum of non-selective pre-emergent herbicide.  but with great power comes great responsibility, and if you let the Pramitol 25 get carried around the yard by water or soil migration, you can cause yourself a lot of problems.   you can see the warning on the amazon page: "not recommended for residential areas"; there is a reason for this.   note that in general Pramitol 25 will not kill live plants; reminder, it's a pre-emergent herbicide.   it will, however, do a hell of a job of preventing any new ones from coming up.

the "Extended Duration Roundup" and similar products sold at HD/Lowes use a cocktail: glyphosate (to kill the stuff that is already greened up) along with some other chemical which remains in the soil for some time and prevents new weeds from coming up.   how long that second chemical is effective is highly dependent on many factors, including how much rainwater is diluting it.

ar-jedi

@ar-jedi

I am having great success with some Team pre-emergent that you recommend the last time one of these threads came up. That stuff really is worth it's weight. Here in south Florida, we have pretty much year round seed germination. It just never quits. This stuff makes a big dent for problem weeds.

Thanks Jedi! Guys, this dude knows what he's talking about. I now have one of the best looking yards on my street. Everyone else has fields of weed flowers while I got some nice 4" thick sod!

MY DAY IS MADE: ONE PERSON ON ARFCOM LISTENED TO ME.    

good to hear that TEAM pre-emergent is hammering your weed germination.  

I'm still experimenting with post emergents. I've tried Bayer 2-4D and roundup for lawns. Both southern varieties. Both killed my grass if sprayed too late in the day and if it was too hot out during the day. It literally needs to be in the 70's to mid 80's and have time to fully dry before the sun goes down. I suspect dew allowed both to be too wet for too long.

Bayer however killed the grass either way, even when mixing it light. The roundup for southern lawns does work well if the above mentioned parameters are right.

Also, Sedgehammer is a godsend.

at-jedi what do recommend for my situation? Not wanting to kill neighbors plants grass etc but don't want have weeds in my rock beds or pavers...

The Roundup 365 has been working really well in my rock beds. Might have to apply more than once.

I have the same problem.  The solution is generic Roundup in a spray bottle.  I perhaps have to spray twice a year to keep the weeds away.

@GunLvrPHD what is this generic round up you speak of?

Home Depot and Lowes both sell various types of non-Roundup-branded Glyphosate

Religious Conservatives

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Roundup-Max-Control-365-Concentrate-32-oz/34972999

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Roundup-32-oz-Concentrate-Extended-Control-Weed-and-Grass-Killer-Plus-Weed-Preventer-5705010/

@Royalwithcheese

for the past couple of years i've taken to using the generic Trimec from Tractor Supply; it's a cocktail of 2,4-d and two other post-emergent herbicides.  see link
mix at the label ratio and apply between about 65'F and 80'F.

as you found out, if you apply any selective post-emergent herbicide when it is north of 80'F or worse 85'F you can really do a job on the turfgrass.  
and as i have found out, when you apply Trimec when it's below 65'F or so, it's effectiveness is poor.
so i aim for a nice 75'F or so day to hit the lawn with the Trimec; stay out of the tree canopy areas when spraying.

ps
my neighbor asked me in the middle of last summer, when it was 95'F out, "hey, how do i kill all the clover in my lawn, tell me what to buy and i'll go to home depot and get it and spray it."
i told him, you can't do anything in the middle of the summer.  the grass is already drought-stressed.  you apply anything and it will curl up and die.  wait until the fall, when temperatures drop, and then go at it.
instead, days later he turned big patches of his lawn brown-yellow using some shit in a bottle attached to the end of his garden hose.  he remarked a few weeks later that i may have been right.

ar-jedi

ps
REMINDER TO ALL
turfgrass varietals vary by region.  do not apply any herbicide you read about on the internet until and unless you understand what turfgrass species you have.  application of some post-emergents to cool weather turgrass types can maim or kill the grass, and the exact same thing can happen with application of other post-emergents on warm weather turgrass types.  so before trying the "great lawn stuff" that you read about on the internet, you need to understand what kind of grass you have in front of you and whether that "great lawn stuff" you read about is actually compatible with it.  finally, always remember the secret to a nice lawn: concentrate on growing grass, not on killing weeds.  if you make the soil and water conditions optimal for healthy turfgrass, it will outcompete and crowd out the weeds -- and as a result you will need very little herbicide.

diesel

Or antifreeze

Propane torch.

Then spray a preemergent (I use prodiamine) so the shit won’t come back.

Torch is fun to use as well

1) Best Weed Killer? is literally the title of the thread. 2,4-D and glyphosate all kill weeds.

2) 2,4-D and glyphosate both enable those conditions to occur. "Very Rarely" for one person may be frequently for another.
3) Mixing 2,4-d with glyphosate (with a surfactant) is not stupid but rather effective, especially against very stubborn plants like English Ivy, poison ivy and poison oak. Far more effective than either herbicide alone.  And when the mixture kills the plant the first treatment, rather than the third or fourth it is most decidedly cheaper, especially when my time is taken into consideration.

lol
maybe it would be a good idea for you to read a bit farther into the OP.  for example, suppose OP wanted the "best weed killer" to kill weeds in his lawn?  he follows your advice.  weeds sure are gone.  but so is his turfgrass.  how's your hokey cocktail looking now?  suppose his weeds are a species of bamboo? your hokey cocktail isn't going to do anything to bamboo -- nothing.

but no, in just five seconds of reading we see that the OP states a defined problem: "I've got a large area on both sides of my house with pavers that I never want to pull a weed from again. Or at least very rarely. Something to sterilize the soil is what I seek."

you failed.  the cocktail you specified does not do this -- it does not prevent recurrence of the weeds.
meeting the OP's goals requires a non-selective pre-emergent herbicide, aka a "soil sterilizer" aka "soil poison".

several good ones have been mentioned already in this thread, along with some caveats regarding their use.

continuing...

no.  you are out of your depth here.  the most effective herbicide for those types of stubborn, "woody stem" plants is triclopyr.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triclopyr

triclopyr is so effective on these types of plants that the people at Monsanto mix it with Roundup and market it for that very purpose:
https://www.roundup.com/en-us/products/roundup-brand-poison-ivy-plus-tough-brush-killer-products

if you value your time so much when killing ivy-type plants, you'd stop wasting time uselessly mixing 2,4-d and glyphosate, and start using a product that contains triclopyr.

ps
2,4-d is not going to make much of a dent in those woody stem plants, because 2,4-d is a growth hormone which is specifically targeted towards a specific kind of topside cell type -- which in turn makes it less effective on woody stem plants.  the glyphosate is doing the heavy lifting in terms of short-circuiting the photosynthesis process in those plants.  if you understand your enemy and you understand your weapons, you can win all your battles.

ar-jedi

Roundup + triclopyr



OP: see the table below, it has useful info for you.

This, mix with diesel as directed.

And again, you completely ignore the second line of my original UNEDITED post.
Also, read up on TEBUTHIURON. It is soaked up by the roots and inhibits photosynthesis so the plant starves. But this shit is vicious, it takes no prisoners.

Just watch out for runoff.

The 'soil sterilizers' can be washed away and kill everything they touch.

A years worth of rain can move that many feet away.

Ortho Ground Clear works for round a year.
It also moves with rainfall.

I was dead serious about the diesel.  A trickle of diesel between pavers in an area where, as per OP's quote, you "never want to pull weeds from again" isn't going to contaminate aquifers or poison the neighbors.  It's actually been used as a surfactant for aerial pesticide application for a long time.  Just look at it as giving the diesel an opportunity to return to the Earth from whence it came.  

That doesn't mean you have to get all crazy with it... a tiny trickle'll do ya.