Please weed on (Weedol)

Member Name: LegendaryMrDude

Product:	Weedol
Date:	01/10/01 (1167 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast!, Easy

Disadvantages: Expensive, Not much use on 'tough' weeds

A jungle, that's what the garden was when I moved into my flat a few years ago. An old victorian house that had been converted with the garden left to seed for far too long. The 'lawn' had more in common with a meadow and the 'flower-borders' would have been more at home along the banks of the Amazon! Foolishly, I had agreed with the landlord that I would return the garden to some sort of reasonable state. It was only after I had moved in that I began to realise the scale of the task ahead of me.

What were my options? I could welch on my deal with the landlord and leave the garden well alone but there was the deposit. I could attack it with a strimmer... but the sheer size of the weeds would probably render the strimmer useless. Dig it all over and start from scratch, this was probably going to the the only sensible long-term option. Ho-hum.

I was psyching myself up for the arduous task ahead when my girlfriend said "when are you going to weedkiller the garden?". Weedkiller! That's GOT to be it! Saved at the last! My psyching-up well and truly forgotten, I hastened down to the local DIY Superstore and, not knowing which was best for the job ahead, invested in a few brands of weedkiller; Weedol, PathClear (both in soluble granule form), Verdone and RoundUp (both liquid). I also picked up a bright-red watering can with a special weedkiller sprinkler attachment (bright red so that I don't get it mixed up with the one I use for plants I DON'T want to kill).

Back at the flat I thought I'd run a test to see which was the better at killing the numerous types of weed to be found in my 'garden'. The plan was simple enough, divide the hideously over-grown borders into sections and use one of the products on each (I'll put a review of the others in the relevant sub-sections of dooyoo).

So what do you actually do with Weedol? Fill the watering can with water and empty a sachet of Weedo
l into it. Stir vigorously until it's all dissolved and then water the weeds with it. Easy. At this point I would note that it's best if you actually use WARM water to fill the watering can. It makes no difference to the effectiveness of the weed-killing but it does see the Weedol dissolve an awful lot quicker. So I did as instructed and applied the freshly made-up Weedol to the alloted test-area.

What of the results? For the next week I closely followed the progress of the weeds in each of the test areas. As far as Weedol is concerned, the results were noticable after only 2 days! The smaller, faster growing weeds (I don't know their names but none of them flower) started to turn a pleasing shade of grey and after 4 days they were no more. Larger weeds including dandelions and dock were also pretty much done-for within four or five days of application. The biggest weeds, brambles, buttercups, bindweed and the damnable wild forget-me-nots proved tougher cookies.

Whilst Weedol did kill the leaves of the bigger weeds (black spots, discolouration and eventual loss of the leaves touched by the weedkiller), the plants themselves remained healthy. Only a week after application, most of the bigger weeds were back, and this time they didn't have any competition from the smaller ones!

So is it any good? Well I still use it and have bought more since. You just have to be aware of the weeds that it will deal with and those it won't. For wiping out the small, fast-growing stuff it is pretty much ideal. Certainly once I got rid of the bigger weeds Weedol was excellent at wiping out all the smaller, opportunist weeds that sprang up when the competition was removed. It's easy to store, easy to make up and easy to apply. Even if it rains shortly after application, it does the job. It's also supposed to be safe for children and pets once the application has dried (although I can't comment as my goldfish don't go in the
garden too often).

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