You have any tips on the violets? We’re happy to have a diverse, fairly wild and weedy backyard, but the damn violets spread their big leaves out, and then die out half-way through the summer, leaving big bare patches. We pull many dozens out by the roots, but there are hundreds more.
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They’re tough, and even when you think you’ve won, they come back again the next season. What’s worked for me is several applications of an overspray selective herbicide (Ortho Weed b Gone, the purple label) and keeping the blade height high on my mower. The best time to apply the herbicide is a couple of applications in the spring, and then again in the fall, but it takes a couple of years for the regimen to completely work.
worse than nothing, actually: it makes the weed think it’s being grazed on, and it comes back stronger the second time, and has deeper roots. This is a fancy, selective, and weak lawnmower. It’s useless against weeds in a vegetable garden.
If I could use a weedwhacker in a vegetable garden I wouldn’t be hand-pulling weeds all the goddamn time and I wouldn’t have this problem.
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I thought that part was hilarious. The most important time you need to weed is when your plants are tiny and weeds can easily outgrow them, shade them, and deprive them of nutrients.
The only weed that is short enough for this is bermuda grass, and bermuda grass has no end and no beginning and ripping it up only makes it stronger.
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Using machine learning, the Bonirob is being taught how to identify weeds ad destroy them before they have a negative effect on a growing crop. Using imaging, Bonirob can examine leaf color, shape and size as it weeds out those plants that are not wanted in the field. Weeds are then removed mechanically, avoiding the use of potentially dangerous herbicides.
The robot’s weeding mechanism is a ramming rod that crushes the unwanted weeds so the desired crop can flourish. According to Deepfield communications head Birgit Schulz, the Bonirob was more than 90 percent effective in carrot cultivation trials.
Other projects:
https://www.google.ca/search?q=weed+picking+robot
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Weird movie, but one of my favorites.
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Bindweed has become the bane of my outdoor existence. If a robot can eradicate weeds wrappred around plants (without damaging the plants), I’d be willing to buy one!
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Ha, funny you mention that. We had a similar experience. My wife planted some mint in the backyard at our last house, and it became completely uncontrollable.
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Anyone have any good methods for dragging crouch grass out of a bed of aloe? I would need to pull up everything to get it out of there, and still wouldn’t be sure it couldn’t regrow. Besides which, the aloe is spiny; it’s like why clownfish live among sea anemones.
I’d rather have mint than the cursed plants with thorny seeds.
Yeah, and it will make certain weeds like grasses and rhizome-spreading plants significantly worse. If you’re not taking out the root, it’s not weeding, it’s pruning.
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Came here to say the same thing - Willamette Valley weeds grow 2ft per day and develop 1/4" thorns in all directions. This thing is cute, though, I like the idea but it needs computer vision and a laser gun
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