Did you pull any weeds today?

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Greg_Lewis
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Re: Did you pull any weeds today?

Post by Greg_Lewis »

makinsmoke wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 9:40 am I don’t think I’d use salt water.

When the Romans sacked Carthage they tilled salt into the soil to prevent it ever supporting crops again.

Some plants can take salt, depending on the concentration, like beach and ocean shoreline plants. Most can’t.

Just my two cents.

Without going into a long explanation of how it happened, there is a large tract of farmland west of here (as in thousands of acres) that became contaminated with salt water and it's essentially dead now; un-farmable.
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Bill Shields
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Re: Did you pull any weeds today?

Post by Bill Shields »

It takes a lot of salt water to contaminate the land such that nothing will grow. .a lot more than you will want to carry around in buckets.

If you want to kill weeds with it, you have to keep pouring it on until the ground is saturated or dump tons of rock salt down in your ROW.

The same goes with glyphosate. It just takes a lot less per dose.

Make a spray car with a little electric pump and tow it around down wind of your loco.

Or move to Arizona..lots of undeveloped land up for grabs around phoenix
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Pontiacguy1
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Re: Did you pull any weeds today?

Post by Pontiacguy1 »

Main thing to remember about Glyphosate herbicides... they only attack stuff that is actively growing. So don't mow or trim your right-of-way and then spray it. Spray it, let it die, and then trim it off, or trim it, let it start growing back in for about a week, then spray it. Also, Glyphosates do not prevent new stuff from growing, they only kill what is already growing. New seed germination and growth can take place immediately. If you want to keep stuff from growing back in for a while, you will have to add a pre-emergent that will keep seeds from germinating.

If you really want the best way to apply, in my opinion, it would be to use a remote control locomotive to pull your spray car around like Bill suggested. That way, you can stand farther away from it, and just throw the switches, run it back and forth, etc... Our club has been working on a self-propelled fully remote control weed sprayer car that you can easily control from 50 to 60 feet away or more. It will make things so much easier, and it will then be a 1 person job.

One other piece of advice... do not keep any 'leftover' chemical in your tanks unless you are planning on using it in the next few days. If you do leave mixture in your tank, it will form some type of skin or mild sludge that will blind over all your filters, clog up your spray nozzles, and generally play havoc with your entire setup.
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PRR5406
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Re: Did you pull any weeds today?

Post by PRR5406 »

The rain in Maine falls plainly on my train. A solid week of steady rain in Maine, and the weeds are blowing raspberries at me as I walk the dog.
I am planning my revenge with the Round Up. Just give me a few dry days...
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Glenn Brooks
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Re: Did you pull any weeds today?

Post by Glenn Brooks »

This is turning into a fun thread!

Here is my ROW after phase 2: weed wack and pull. It cleaned up pretty well. Phase 3 in a week or two will be Incinerate anything that pokes its head up in the ROW with the trusty old 100,000 btu weed burner. Then should be good to go for the summer.
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NP317
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Re: Did you pull any weeds today?

Post by NP317 »

:o :shock:
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Greg_Lewis
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Re: Did you pull any weeds today?

Post by Greg_Lewis »

Glenn Brooks wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2023 12:49 pm
Phase 3 in a week or two will be Incinerate anything that pokes its head up in the ROW with the trusty old 100,000 btu weed burner.

Wish we could do that around here. Such a tactic would set the field or forest on fire and you'd be posting here asking for bail money.
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Re: Did you pull any weeds today?

Post by Glenn Brooks »

Gregg,

Couple of years ago I did that exact thing. Except in miniature. I used the weed burner to clean out a drainage ditch and turned around after 20 feet to look at my work. Observed that I had caused a small grass fire to burn up the hill and catch my miniature tree, bonsai forest nursery on fire. I was shocked to see these little 4” tall spruce trees explode and crown over to the next one - one after the other. lost about half the forest that way, up the side of the hill.

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Re: Did you pull any weeds today?

Post by Greg_Lewis »

Well at least it was the little stuff. When I worked as a photojournalist I saw large trees burst into flame just from the radiant heat of the next tree over. It's like striking a kitchen match. It give you lots of respect for both fire and the folks who fight them.
Greg Lewis, Prop.
Eyeball Engineering — Home of the dull toolbit.
Our motto: "That looks about right."
Celebrating 35 years of turning perfectly good metal into bits of useless scrap.
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