I have a spot that is off the side of my driveway 1/2 on and 1/2 off my property, but ok to plant flowers there. Currently what grows there is all kinds of medium range weeds and small weeds. I pulled out the medium/large range weeds and even dug out the root systems to ensure they won't come back. My question..........is about is the best way to do this? My plan was to rake out the entire area (it's pretty loose, nice soil) and then use RoundUP and spray down the entire area, let it sit for a week and plant the wildflowers. HOWEVER, now I'm reading that RoundUP is only effective on the FOILAGE of the weeds, so by me raking the entire area, then applying RoundUP to the soil may be useless???

What I don't want to happen, is I 'think' I have the weeds killed, then plant all the wildflower mixes and the flowers AND weeds come up together and I'm screwed......

And I will be planting wildflowers from a seed mix, nothing pre-started.

Any suggestions are welcome. (And I don't want to use a mesh screen, with topsoil, etc.) . I just want to keep it as simple and basic as possible, because it's 1/2 my property and 1/2 not.....so I don't want to get too crazy with it.

 

You are correct..RU has to get on the leaves.

Here's what I would do.

Spray RU...

When weeds are dead remove dead matter and rake area..this will expose some new weed seeds. Water area daily and wait 1 week for new weed sprouts. Weeds will grow quickly if there are any.

Spray RU on new sprouts, allow to die and rake out

Plant wildflower seed

Water area at least twice daily til WF are established.

RU is rendered ineffective after contact with soil. See directions for delay in planting after application.

 

Hi AdamD7:

I did that once at our first house (long ago). Let me relate my experience.

Before we were married, my wife and I used to drive in the country where we'd always admire the wildflowers growing in the meadows. When we moved into our first house (fix'er upper), there was an area on the side of our house that was mainly weeds. Our first spring, I thought it would be nice to have the area covered in wildflowers.

I could never kill all the weeds. The seeds would still be in the soil and would grow again as soon as I finished. Even if I had somehow managed to get all of them, more seeds would blow (or be dropped by birds) from my neighbors' property.

Now the real bad news... Wildflowers are beautiful on a field when I was driving in the country but when I planted them in a 10'x20' area where I could see them grow and bloom, they really looked just like "weeds". They looked like weeds from the time they emerged until they started to bloom and then again after they bloomed. Because I planted a mixture, the blooms came at different times so I always had a few flowers mixed in with a lot of stuff that looked like weeds. Frankly it looked as if I had a weed garden and some of the weeds had flowers.

When I did this, we were living in a average suburb with grass front lawns. It turned out our neighbors didn't really appreciate my effort to create a "country meadow" - especially when some of the wild flowers started sending out seeds to blow around their yards.

All in all, it turned out to be a bad idea. By July my wife was suggesting the area didn't look too nice. By August she was telling me to get out there and fix the "bed of weeds" before her parents came to visit.

Anyway, that's my story.

 

I'm actually going to make use of both of your suggestions, so thank you. I've used spetracide to kill all the weeds and it worked GREAT. 3 days, they are ALL dead. I'm going to rake them out and see if more grow, then kill again. And I've decided to NOT plant wildflowers, so thanks for your suggestion. I've decided to just buy a bunch of nice flowering perrenials and some ground cover perrenials that will eventually fill in the gaps.......... Money I didn't want to spend, but will be worth it instead of more work down the line when I rip out all the wildflowers..... Thanks guys!

 

Prob a good idea....my wife wanted the WF in a no grow spot...so thats what we did...I'm sure I'll wind up killing them all later.

Unfortunately...not to many perennials that flower out here EXCEPT wildflower type stuff.