weeds along fence line

[LazyJ_Arabians]

Herbicides/insecticides are designed to absorb into tissue, be it plant leaf or human skin. Toxic or not they are going to get into your blood stream if you expose yourself to them. Eye tissue, soles of your feet, and palms of your hands are the most "absorbable" tissues of your body. Therefore, eye protection, rubber boots, and rubber gloves. Long clothing washed separately. Enough of anything foreign in your blood stream and your liver/kidneys are going to complain. These are both internal organs you want to keep happy.

Livestock and wildlife are generally smart enough to stay away from the stuff.

[SLOBuds]

I treated a 10 acre parcel with generic roundup last year. Pretty close to what you are looking at.

A couple of observations:

1. Buy the generic stuff. It is dramatically cheaper than the brand name chemical. No difference except the price. Buy from farm supply.

2. It's a contact killer. The weeks have to be there and you have to make contact with the solution to their leaves. You need to have dry weather for 48 hours after application. Meaning, no rain for 48 hours.

A fellow above talked about possibly using a non-contact weed killer. Just be sure to know that the non-contact solution can 'run' down hills and kill other vegitation that are completely away from the place where you intend to kill. I also think that the long-term killers are significantly more dangerous than Roundup. The 'upside' of non-contact is that it will kill stuff that has not emerged yet. I wait pretty late in the year before application of Roundup so that whatever is left over is quite small.

3. Follow the directions. The solution I bought wanted 1/2 cup per 1 gallon of water. I think it took me 15-20 gallons of the mixed solution to handle the 10 acre perimeter.

4. Yes, be careful with contact. The chemical is very mild in composition, but you can definitely have a skin reaction if it gets in contact. I do not personally wear protective garments. But I DO take care not to get it on my skin, or I wash it off immediately.

5. Apply the product when there is no wind. The wind will carry the solution and you may kill vegitation that you did not intend to kill. Plus you may get it on your skin.

6. It takes quite a few days for the weeds to actually die. Don't worry and don't change your mixture. It just takes that long and you only waste expensive chemicals if you try to speed up the process by increasing the mix ratio.

7. You will need to spot-treat some weeds that either get missed, or some underlying weeds that don't get killed during the first round.

8. Think about how wide of a swath you want to kill. I think that I made mine a little bit too narrow. Like maybe 1' on each side of the fence. I think I'd prefer something more like 1 1/2' or 2' each side.

9. I'm happy with the results. It looks dramatically nicer (to me) with those weeds away from the fence, and it helps me out when I need to brush hog the parcel, and it's a lot easier than using a weedeater.

10. By the way, you do have the option of not clearing those weeds at all. Some of the folks in my area don't understand why I want to clear under the fence at all. And the 3rd option is to use a trimmer. Quite a bit of work there.

Good luck and I hope this helps.

[MadReferee]

You might want to take a look at this thread from last year that discusses 41% Glyphosate and Roundup.

41% Glyphosate and/or Roundup

If you really want to make it easy go out in the spring when things start growing but before anything is up over an inch. Get some Sahara. Spray one time and you are done for the year. Nothing will grow back.

[Pat]

CowboyDoc is right about the weed control but we seem to be ignoring another way to clear a fenc row, especialy barbed wire with t-posts.

Disk a fire break on both sides and burn it. This is better early in the season when there isn't too much big growth and there is enough of last years for fuel. Alternatively spraying enough contact killer (RounUP or whatever) to kill enough biomass to serve as fuel when dry and then burning can be ggod too. With a good burn you can kill everything that is above ground.

Pat