[lqet]

Weeds on the lawn: just use a lawnmower each week, the grass will usually handle being cut on a weekly basis much better than any weed.

Weeds between tiles / slabs or on gravel: just pour boiling water over them. The weeds will become mushy and die within 1-2 days. Repeat every 6 weeks during summer.

Source: we bought a house with a garden full of goutweed [0], which I consider the final boss of any garden owner, and which we have in control now through regular mowing / hot water. Goutweed will just laugh at any herbicide you throw at it, and regrow from its underground rhizomes. I also doesn't seem to require sun, because I have seen plants grow to a height of 10cm completely underground. The joke in my family is that it could grow on foreign planets. As Wikipedia dryly puts it: "Once established, goutweed is difficult to eradicate."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegopodium_podagraria

[DeepSeaTortoise]

You can also use just heat. Like a long propane torch or one of the newer electric infrared ones. It doesn't need a lot of heat, a short burn (like a bit less than a second) is perfectly sufficient to make them wilt within a few days.

Weeds are the flora equivalent of VC-hype-startups. All growth, no substance and no plan B. They pop-up everywhere, with seemingly infinite growth resources and hope you'll despair and do nothing.

Just going around plucking leaves from everything that looks like you won't like it for a few weeks twice a year works wonders.

Basically regulatory capture for your lawn. No need to help along your darlings (in the beginning), just make everyone else play with stupid rules. And once things start going down the drain, it's time for subsidies (fertilizer) and public contracts (pre-germination).

[pengaru]

Thank you for making my morning coffee, consumed while looking down on downtown San Francisco, presently chock full of "AI" weeds, substantially more entertaining.

[SoftTalker]

Never had much luck with burning or cutting weeds from the top. They just resprout and grow back. Haven't tried boiling water.

I just use roundup, honestly. It works.

[LorenPechtel]

I've burned them before. It's pretty effective if you understand the true goal. Despite the name you do *not* want to actually burn the weed! Burning the weed is no better than cutting off the part you burned--which obviously doesn't work very well. The objective is to give as much as possible of the weed a light singe--it takes a bit of experience to even see anything. The weed spends all it's energy healing the damage and dies.

[dwroberts]

This is just a recipe to spread weeds everywhere. If you mow them, most of the time you’ll just break them open and spread their seeds

[lqet]

I you mow them after they have developed seeds, you are mowing them too late.

[n4r9]

But if you then keep mowing the lawn regularly, those seeds won't be able to compete with the grass.

[DeepSeaTortoise]

Unless you mow your grass too low. Always assume the old rule of "your grass reaches just as far underground as it reaches up in the air" still holds.

Also if you mow your grass drastically shorter or you let it grow for a long time before mowing, do not fail to fertilize it from above right or soon after, start aggressively plucking the leaves of weeds (or other selective methods of fighting them) for a few weeks and (optimally, but highly recommended) verticulate it no sooner than 1 week after cutting. Also time it well to grant your lawn at least 3 weeks of ideal growing weather and climate (It won't die because of a week or two of awful weather, but you'll have A LOT more work fighting weeds ahead of yourself).

[lupire]

Why wouldn't they be able to compete?

[amanaplanacanal]

Usually seeds need soil contact and sunshine to germinate and grow. Thick lawn can mitigate that.

[hermitcrab]

IIRC grass grows from the bottom, which means it is very resistant to being mowed or grazed. Weeds/wildflowers not so much.

[mvdtnz]

Or you can learn the lifecycle of plants and don't let them go to seed.

[frm88]

Why don't you eat it? Harvested young it tastes a little like carrot and parsley. Gout weed in salad is very nice. You can also use it as a healing herb for UTI etc. https://www.ndr.de/ratgeber/gesundheit/Mit-Giersch-kochen-od...

[lupire]

I don't understand. What we call "weeds" are plants that evolved to grow quickly and spread quickly. Many gave segmented stems/leaves to resist core damage from cuts and pulls.

[BigTTYGothGF]

I will hate the ground elder as long as I live (but did manage to eradicate it from our garden thru hard work, only to see it spring back up in our neighbor's yard, it's their problem (for) now).