My wife got chickens a few years ago and nixed the weed killers to keep weeds off our gravel driveway. Unsurprisingly, it's gotten pretty ugly. I'm trying to keep a 100' x 200' area of gravel clear. Considering using it on our fenceposts, but since we have hundreds of those, I'm not counting on it. I also have some fencelines in our drylots (limited grass) where burning the weeds could be easier than trimming them. Backpack or hand cart style? Is having a squeeze- type flame control worth it? Thanks, David
That’s another option I’ve considered. It will take many gallons of vinegar and cups of salt to spray my driveway. But I have the sprayer and wouldn’t need to buy the flame thrower.
I may have worded it that way intentionally. It seems that some people find flame weeding much more satisfying and thus easier to keep up with. I can’t imagine why
I can say without a doubt it works great. You only have to wilt the weed no need to burn it. Flame trigger is in my opinion a must have as going full bore constantly wastes a lot of gas and the tank will ice up. After a rain works good as I think that the steam helps the kill and it prevents you catching stuff on fire.
I have one of those propane torches. Never used it for weeds, but it's killer for cleaning the cooking grates on my smoker.
The flame weeder works quite well with newly sprouted weeds but some grasses ( like the ones in my driveway) pop right back up again. I tried a new layer of stone one year on one part and that's when the grass that won't die sprouted in it. I'd get a land plane/power grader for the tractor but I kinda like the look of two ribbons of gravel and green in the center driveway. My driveway was made by just ripping the topsoil off so it's mostly just exposed glacial till . Nice and hard when it's dry or frozen solid.
I never had much luck with burning weeds. They just come back or don’t die. Bulk round up in a backpack sprayer for us. Chickens don’t mind.
Burning the weeds will kill the tops but not the roots they will come back several times before the stored resources in the roots are depleted. Burning will work. Spraying Roundup or similar product shouldn't harm the chickens. They aren't eating them or you wouldn't have any to worry about. There are more organic mixtures to try like previously posted. If you could keep the chicken contained in a run for the day of spraying chemical killers would greatly reduced any potential of them getting exposed as UV will break down most weedkillers.
