I’m redoing the garden and want to lose the lawn. As part of the process I want to kill grass without damaging the soil. Is there a way of doing this?

TIA

If you have time just cover it with some old carpet/ plastic.

If you’ve got the space, hire a turf cutter and stack the turves to rot down in a corner upside down. Rotovate or dig over the rest.

I’ve just bought a parafin flame gun- kills the grass and sterilises any seeds laying dormant in the soil

Good old glyphosate which is the ative ingredient of a bunch of weedkillers.  Quickly becomes inactive on contact with soil.   Though I used nedrapier’s method when we did ours.

I’ve spread weed killer on over grown lawns without killing the grass, so would suggest the old carpet/rotavating option instead

I was going to suggest glyphosate weedkiller e.g roundup, but it is now listed as a human carcinogen. So not worth the risk.

How big an area?
I did about 65m2 with one of those turf cutters recently. It didn’t work well on very dry ground, (though still easier than getting it up by hand) and generated enough turf to load the Peugeot Expert I had twice. Big job!

I can hire out my kids to play football and generally run about on it if that helps, should be clear of grass in about a week…

Borrow my wolfhound. She does a great job of killing our grass.

Not game to photograph a bike in the back yard in case of attracting STW censure as a result. 🙂

I think maccruisken’s flamethrower sounds the funnest approach.

or our Vizsla – he’s dug up and killed most of our lawn.

I was going to suggest glyphosate weedkiller e.g roundup, but it is now listed as a human carcinogen. So not worth the risk

Really, tiny risk to the casual user. Might be a small risk to people who use it every day, probably similar to burnt toast.

It’s effective (kills the roots not just burns the leaves) great on grass and is not persistent.

The mechanical options will just put the weeds into the ground, not kill them.

+another for the flame gun.

Sheen Flame Gun X300 Review

Only down side is the cost of the paraffin.
Not sure if fun is the way to describe it but every start up is an adventure.
Usually some on ebay.

I was going to suggest glyphosate weedkiller e.g roundup, but it is now listed as a human carcinogen. So not worth the risk.

As is toast. And bacon. As above, while clearly you should follow normal precautions, and clearly it’s better to use nothing, this stuff is not regarded as being particularly dangerous or particularly environmentally damaging. Opening myself up for a flaming here but health risks have only ever been associated with heavy users over many years and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that burning the necessary gas/parafin was a lot worse for the world than a dose of glyphosate.

That said, what are you replacing the lawn with? Is it something that means you’ll be covering the area anyway? You might get away with mowing it tight and covering it. Or if you aren’t covering it you might need some other means to keep the weeds at bay anyway.

If you do use glyphosate, you may well get away with a lower concentration. Use it sparingly, in warm weather, and don’t expect to see visible results for some time. Gardeners often use more than necessary.

Bitches’ urine – as in female dog wee…..for the avoidance of doubt.

Some of the suggestions above are far from being ecologically sound. Either use a spade to dig it up or hire a turf cutter

re: Roundup not being persistent…

A new study has shown that traces of a commonly-used and possibly cancerous weed killer can be found in the majority of wine and beer.

Researches tested five wines and 15 beers from the US, Asia and Europe for traces of pesticide glyphosate.

Glyphosate is the main ingredient in Roundup, a common weed killer manufactured by Monsanto.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/roundup-weed-killer-cancer-lawsuit-wine-beer-alcohol-a8797911.html

Our trampoline has killed all the grass under it

Hope that helps?

I was going to suggest glyphosate weedkiller e.g roundup, but it is now listed as a human carcinogen. So not worth the risk.

On which list?

IARC part of the WHO
monograph
It’s a long read…

wwaswas, so that means nothing, traces are present, not surprised, are they significant traces which may or may not lead to cancer, no. The whole scare story about the guy in the states was just that, someone who was unfortunatley very unwell looking for something to blame. It wasn’t in any way science based.

Glyphosate is not a persistent weedkiller, most of those were banned in the early 90s, persistent means it stays active in the soil for months prohibiting further plant growth. Glyphostae works by being taken in through the leaves and then propogates through the plant structure which is why it takes weeks to kill the plant properly. Glyphostae on the soil breaks down quickly (days) and is not longer active.

Glyphostae on the soil breaks down quickly (days)

what does it break down into and if that is the case how does it survive long enough to reach my house in a bottle of wine or beer?

If you want to go on worrying yourself about something neglible in the grand scheme of things be my guest, I’d be rather more worried about the chemicals and pollutants entering your lungs every time you use a car, walk by a road or use a bus.

To be honest I don’t know what it breaks down into, but I do know that pesticides are some of the most regulated chemicals in the world and are constantly being reviewed. When the EU or WHO is pushing for a ban I’ll be a bit more worried.

I’m also sure you find trace amounts of all sorts of other things in your beer, micro plastics, fertiliser residue, eostrogen, radio active particles. They will also present a negligible risk. As I said above, persistent is a technical term when applied to weedkillers and reflects how long it remains active as a weedkiller not whether nmicroscopic amounts may not break down immediately.

now listed as a human carcinogen

So is petrol, black pepper, coffee, wood burning stoves, the list goes on….

I was going to suggest glyphosate weedkiller e.g roundup, but it is now listed as a human carcinogen. So not worth the risk

As i understood it, WHO had some concerns, some bloke has taken a civil case in america which was found in favour, but there is no actual evidence that its harmful, it hasnt been banned (yet), but this does not make it not dangerous as such. Really, the stuff we can buy in B&Q is not the stuff we could buy 10 years ago, which would kill most things, I think you need a licence to import the proper stuff nowadays.

no actual evidence that its harmful

The monograph is 92 pages of evidence and the conclusion is that it is a category 2A carcinogen, i.e. a probable human carcinogen.
I agree that we are exposed to many carcinogens in daily life. The point is, here there is a choice not to expose yourself to something risky so why choose it?
I nearly added that for smokers the additional risk would be negligible, but didn’t.

So is petrol, black pepper, coffee, wood burning stoves, the list goes on….

and sunlight.

I was going to suggest banning the sun, but i live in Scotland, so don’t need to worry as much.

Really, the stuff we can buy in B&Q is not the stuff we could buy 10 years ago, which would kill most things, I think you need a licence to import the proper stuff nowadays.

I can’t comment on how true this is but a couple of years ago I looked into the concentration of the active ingredient in the garden stuff and found it to be the same as the max I mixed using the farmer stuff in a knapsack. Which is much higher than the rate for a crop sprayer, so plenty strong enough. IME it’s effective but as stated above it won’t kill anything that’s not in leaf so other stuff in the soil will come up and may require another dose after a week or three. I speculate that a lot of gardeners apply far too much and if they applied a fraction of the amount they’d still kill the same plants, just not as visibly quickly.