Oh good. You mean you are killing weeds--not painting your truck.
Nutsedge is tough. This especially true when exacerbated by flowers close by. Just learned that word.
I hope it works. I am not sure I understand how the Roundup is getting from the tank onto the fluffy rollers.
Also try to put bags over the flowers--and then spray.

 

Oh good. You mean you are killing weeds--not painting your truck.
Nutsedge is tough. This especially true when exacerbated by flowers close by. Just learned that word.
I hope it works. I am not sure I understand how the Roundup is getting from the tank onto the fluffy rollers.
Also try to put bags over the flowers--and then spray.

LOL. Rolling paint on a truck. I guess if it's a Matchbox, I can paint both sides at once. Or make an awesome model carwash.

I keep a dropper bottle of 41% gly that I apply directly to cut stems of stuff I want dead (usually pokeweed and !@%^!#$ cat greenbrier) that need a stronger response than simply pulling. My plan was to directly moisten the rollers either with the concentrate, or maybe dilute the concentrate down by half first. I'm thinking less water is better, because I then need less solution to work, which means less chance of dripping. Perhaps diluting the 41% with marker dye would make sense. Like a rope wick applicator, my goal is to apply so little as to be nearly invisible yet still work.

Image is a good over the top ornamental sledge killer fwiw. Other thing you can do is put nitrile gloves on first followed by cotton gloves and dip your hands into a bowl of gly mix and grab the weeds you want to die. Have done his before a few years back. Was just too time consuming Sonia don’t do it anymore but it works.

The double glove method is exactly the technique I'm shooting for, but this ends the back bending.

Sulfentrazone did wonders over the top of the yellow nutsedge in my lawn (and smoked the violets that have also been annoying me), but I've got roses growing over other places it's spread to, a vegetable garden next to it (the vegetables at least are surrounded by blackout cloth), and all sorts of ground cover plants (mazus, creeping jenny, several varieties of thyme, etc.) under it, so spraying just isn't in the cards. It's the stuff under it that has me searching for a positively no-drip answer. Gotta keep the wife happy.

 

Image is a good over the top ornamental sledge killer fwiw. Other thing you can do is put nitrile gloves on first followed by cotton gloves and dip your hands into a bowl of gly mix and grab the weeds you want to die. Have done his before a few years back. Was just too time consuming Sonia don’t do it anymore but it works.

 

You mentioned using a strong solution of gly.
Plant's, weed's need to uptake any and all solutions to work. Plants are always needing to uptake water. You are far better off using directed mix volume than just putting on a hot mix. Feed the plant what it want's. And slip in a Mickey.

 

Or...maybe use a grabber. Put cloth pads on the jaws and soak them with gly solution. Don't bend down just grab the weed and pull up --bottom to top. Coats the weed with gly.
Every 60 seconds spray the absorbent pads with more gly solution using a hand sprayer or 1 qt hand sprayer.

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And if you want to add a sharp sawtooth knife for those extra big weeds--why not? Or add a tree trim saw--if your weeds get big. You need a couple zip ties or some duct tape. Work out whatever works best so you do not have to bend down.

 

Or...maybe use a grabber. Put cloth pads on the jaws and soak them with gly solution. Don't bend down just grab the weed and pull up --bottom to top. Coats the weed with gly.
Every 60 seconds spray the absorbent pads with more gly solution using a hand sprayer or 1 qt hand sprayer.
...
And if you want to add a sharp sawtooth knife for those extra big weeds--why not? Or add a tree trim saw--if your weeds get big. You need a couple zip ties or some duct tape. Work out whatever works best so you do not have to bend down.

I use a "retired" steak knife on pokeweeks (a lot of no longer wanted family kitchen items find new lives in my shop). Slice it maybe 3" from the ground, and apply the 41% gly to the cut using a dropper, and it's done.

My first thought was indeed a grabber with sponges. But the paint rollers appealed to me because they're more efficient at coating a surface than a sponge. Who paints walls with sponges (aside from for aesthetic effect)? Plus re-purposing a good metal grabber would cost more than the pair of super cheap roller frames. But I do like the way you think.

The part I'm most proud of isn't the roller idea, but is the "hinge" I came up with. A bolt was welded cross-wise to the fixed frame, I ran a nut onto it, and welded the moving frame to the nut.

I just bend over and pull em. Been working for 100’s of years

My wife tried pulling them for a few years. With nutsedge, pokeweed, greenbrier and violets (my big headaches), pulling doesn't kill the plant, because it leaves behind too much underground. That's how the nutsedge got so out of control. OTOH, I've had great luck keeping dandelions at bay by pulling.

You mentioned using a strong solution of gly.
Plant's, weed's need to uptake any and all solutions to work. Plants are always needing to uptake water. You are far better off using directed mix volume than just putting on a hot mix. Feed the plant what it want's. And slip in a Mickey.

I took this advice to heart, as it's a very good point. 41% works like magic when applied directly to the cambium, but isn't good for foliar application. Trying to strike a balance between dripping and surface uptake, I diluted the gly down to about 10% (the level recommended for greenbrier), with a lot of blue dye and some surfactant, plus xanthan gum to make it even less drippy. The blue food coloring gel made it easy to see that I was getting good coverage, and I treated hundreds of plants without needing to recharge the rollers. The pair of rollers fit perfectly in an old peanut butter jar, so I can store them without drying out.

I tried the paint roller that allows you to put paint into the handle. It worked to kill weeds out in between our garden rows. I felt thought that it was not being adequately spread throughout the area though. But the final result i was pleased and used very little herbicide.

Those rollers drip paint like crazy when I use them, and paint is engineered to not be all that drippy. Plus you can't roll onto something as springy as a single blade of grass. Which is why I decided on two rollers.

I haven't seen much color change in the nutsedge yet (it is always chlorotic looking), but I'll give it a few more days before passing judgement. It has seemed to work well on other stuff with no collateral damage so far.

 

I have 6 diameter inch pvc pipe that I have cut to various lengths, it might be 4". I put the pipe over the weed then secure it with a long metal plant stake. Then I spray inside the pipe.

 

If the weed is wide I take a piece of twine. Tie a knot around the bottom and wrap it around the weed bringing the leaves and branches towards the trunk, and continue wrapping it heading towards the top. Then I put the pipe over it, and I cut the bottom twine where I tied the knot, and remove the string. Then I secure the pvc pipe with the stake placed inside the pipe and the stake is driven into the ground.

Then I spray inside the pipe. This works good with big pokeweeds. Most times I will make a 2nd application a day or two latter, but always wait a couple of days to remove the pipe, so I know the herbicide has dried.

 

I tried the paint roller that allows you to put paint into the handle. It worked to kill weeds out in between our garden rows. I felt thought that it was not being adequately spread throughout the area though. But the final result i was pleased and used very little herbicide.

 

I just bend over and pull em. Been working for 100’s of years

 

That is what we do for things like dallisgrass on a golf course. Walk out in the morning and paint it with gly.

 

Pokeweed is new to my area or at least new to me in the last 5 years.
It dies back to deep roots in the winter--and sprouts again in the spring.
Typical in the partial shade of the woods not so much in a garden around here.
What do you think? Maybe only the top 2 inches need to be sprayed as the plant then transports the 2,4-D to the rest of the plant.

 

It does seem to appear only in my shady areas, but I think that's more of where birds hang out, because at my office it has beenthriving on a sunny slope where it was intentionally planted. If I had the place for it, I might even try to cultivate it (if only to host a giant leopard moth), but it always seems to be poking through my azaleas and rhododendrons in the worst looking places (where I wouldn't be using 2,4D either).

My problem is that it grows almost fast enough to watch. It may not be bamboo, but I'll swear I've often found a 4'+ tall plant that wasn't there a week before.