I just unloaded another batch of gravel in the driveway, and i have some big landscape areas with gravel as well. There were no liners, but i hear that they are not good to put down. Anyway, i STILL have weeds and grass growing through gravel so deep i damn near need the 4wd just to get out.

i have about 500' of linear driveway, another probably 5000 square feet of pebbles in other areas, including over the well, and around my two favorite bigg ass oaks and a cactus.

how to i kill and prevent weeds and grass from coming up without spending every weekend jacking with it? I have tried burning. No good. I have tried roundup from a backpack bottle, doesnt seem to work too well, and takes FOREVER. I dont really want to salt as i dont want to rust up the vehicles.

i also dont want to shorten the life of the trees, or poison the well.

any better ideas? commercial sprayer perhaps? know anybody in the simonton area?

Mix a preemergent with the RoundUp to extend its control. Metolachlor is a good one for that application.

Sahara and Roundup together is an option
Use arsenal or pramitol as soil sterilant

Bayer makes a product called Specticle Total that is designed for exactly that. You get a great preemergent with glyphosate and diquat to kill most weeds.

Esplanade EZ, you'll thank me later. Spray once and forget about it.
Arsenal, Sahara, Pramitol are not friendly to nearby hardwoods. In fact, that's what Arsenal does best, kill oaks. Sahara contains imazapyr, i.e. Arsenal. No es bueno para los arboles.

Put down concrete or asphalt?

I used Mojave on the Rocks around my cabin with good success. But as mentioned before it can be hell on trees so be careful.

cbr,

I feel your pain, as I've been maintaining several thousand feet of fenceline and also the perimeter area around several large industrial buildings.

Roundup (glyphosate) by itself won't provide any residual protection, and if you get 1 month between treatments, you're doing well.

So, you need to add a residual herbicide to the glyphosate. One of the most effective residuals is imazapyr, (e.g. - brand name Polaris/Arsenal), which claims to offer 'season long' control up to 6 months, although I've only been getting about 4-5 months with it, depending on the area and application rate.

You'll find imazapyr as the secondary ingredient in the big box store product 'RM43', which is 43% glyphosate and less than 1% imazapyr. I usually see RM43 selling for about $89.99 for 2.5 gallons at places like Tractor Supply, Atwoods, Home Depot and most feed/farm stores.

If you're hardcore and have large areas to maintain, you can buy the ingredients separately and mix your own. I like a final mix of about 1.25% imazapyr (of the 27.7% concentrate) combined with 3% glyphosate (net) plus surfactant.

But imazapyr by itself is pretty expensive. I paid around $225 for a generic-brand 2.5 gallon jug of the 27.7% strength, so I wouldn't recommend mixing your own at this point.

Here's the CAVEAT -- as Micropterus pointed out, you've got to keep imazapyr away from your desirable trees. They recommend a 2X the drip line distance from trees, but I'd stay even farther than that.

I'd never heard of Esplanade EZ until Micropterus mentioned it, but it claims to be safe around trees and also lasts up to 6 months. The catch seems to be that it will cost you quite a bit more to apply it, if I understood the mix rate instructions correctly.

So, you may want to get a jug of RM43 and try it on your driveway ONLY, and see if you're happy with the results. I sure wouldn't use it in the other areas you mentioned though.

If you do try the Esplanade EZ, let us know how it works. I'm always ready for a better mousetrap.

Esplanade is the **** so far, thank you fir the reccomendation