I’ve got a semi-rock garden and grass keeps growing over the stones. I tried that grass killer from Home Depot and I’ve tried vinegar. It just grows back in a couple of weeks. I want it dead, never to return. Who among you can give me the answer I seek?
Two things.
Cheapest is gasoline. Effect works for like a year, but do it early in the morning when you will be gone all day. It stinks something fierce at first.
Second best is stuff called “Weed killer for Iceplant”.
It’s what the road department uses in it’s Iceplant beds on the freeway turnoffs.
(They use Iceplant because it makes a vast web over steep slopes, and requires little water, so it holds the soil in place cheaply.)
Do you want easy or hard?
Hard—move all the rocks out of the way. Once that’s done, cover the whole garden with that black plastic sheeting, also available at Home Depot and other fine stores. Move all the rocks back. Nothing will grow there. If you want some items to grow there, simply cut an “X” in the plastic, and plant the item in question there.
Easy—Buy the more power grass/weed killer. We’re talking one step below Agent Orange here. Apply as needed. It’ll kill the grass, but Mother Earth will hate you.
Your problem is that you seem to be trying to create grassless acreage. Here are a couple of suggestions:
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Pretend that you’re trying to grow a lawn. Get thy ass to the most upscale nursery/landscaping supply depot in your area, and plunk down oodles of cash on the most expensive lawn care products they have in stock. Apply generously to the entire front yard, and the grass should be dead within a month.
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The white trash method: Install aluminum siding to disguise the front of your house as a mobile home (faded forest green with white trim). Put a 1972 Chevy Impala (as rusted-out as possible) on blocks in the front yard. Complete the effect with a second-hand washer and dryer (mismatched is best) on a blue plastic tarp. This method is cheaper than the other, and usually produces similar results. When you’re sure that the grass is all dead, re-gentrify the yard with your xero-philic rock garden.
Repeat as necessary.
Effective? Nuclear weapons.
Reasonable? Roundup or similar, applied regularly and copiously to all the places you don’t want grass, even if there isn’t any visible there while you’re walking around with the sprayer. Every couple of weeks should be a good start. Don’t slack off.
First, you have no choice, you’re gonna have to move the stones before you start.
Your home/garden stores should stock something called Triox. It’s a “total vegetation killer”. It guarantees that nothing will grow for at least a year. It’s commonly used on the ground before pouring concrete to kill existing weed and grass seeds. Only place it where you want absolutely NOTHING to grow. And be careful to give a wide space cushion to the driplines of nearby trees.
After applying the Triox as directed by the label, you’ll want to lay down a barrier. The home/garden store should have heavy plastics that are perfect for this application. Combined, the barrier and the chemicals should take care of your grass problem for good.
When drawing lines on the Band Practice field, we used to use Gas. Effect lasts for a long time. Has the bonus of killing fire ant beds, too. Just be careful with open flame. 
When I was about 12, we made homemade ice cream and my Dad told me to dump the bucket. He wasn’t very specific so I just dumped the thing in the front yard. About 2 days later the grass in that spot was dead. Dad had forgotten to tell me that the salt would kill the grass. I don’t know how effective that would be for a long period of time but it might be a cheap alternative.
Gas…Gas…Gas…
otherwise
used motor oil
Neither one will win you any enviromantal friends but they are the cheapest and easiest method.
You don’t have your own well right??
Pull out the grass by hand. This method has been used around the world for over two thousand years and contains no poisons that could harm the environment of your garden. It will also give you good exercise so you can be one step further to getting the body that you always wanted. So give your rock garden that extra edge with the patented Elbow Grease™ formula!
I also want to express my concern with pouring gasoline into the garden. If this method is or becomes a popular one, I imagine the effects on the water table would be grim. I suggest everyone who hasn’t already read the book Silent Spring. It may be half a century old, but the main points of the work still apply.
RoundUp. Kills everything growing there (although I’m pretty sure your rocks will survive). Give it a week or so after the application and then pull out the dead grass. If you don’t want to have to do this on a regular basis, you’re going to have to move the rocks.
Gas is a bad idea in general, but especially bad in a decorative garden. The organics (those that don’t volatilize) in it tend to attach themselves to the soil particles as the gas seeps downward. In the ground, they have pretty limited exposure to air, but watch out if you ever turn that ground over. The exposure to lots of air, especially moving currents, will cause the organics to volatilize, creating lots of fumes.
It might not sound like that big a deal, but I had an equipment operator pass out, fall out of his machine, and have to be rushed to the hospital because of this on a construction site about a year ago.
RoundUp. Gas is illegal to use like that.
Boiling water is the quickest though…
[[Do you want easy or hard?]]
(hand shoots up in the air) I know! Ike and Tina Turner!
Roundup or one of its imitators is the best way to go for the homeowner. Grass is hard to kill, except if you want it to grow of course,because sometimes the root system goes very deep. Just keep at it. Spend some time pulling it up by the roots.Put the weed barrier (mentioned above) down on the outside 2 or 3 feet. Use the roundup when the grass in the rest of your yard is having a hard time growing,hot weather early spring etc.You want to stress it as much as posible.
Triox is very good but Gramoxone is better. Unless you have a special licence you cannot buy Gramoxone.The Triox is sold over the counter in a weaker formula than professionals use. There is another chemical called Bare Ground.Nothing will grow there. You need a licence to buy it.
Spectracide Grass and Weed Killer is great too, it hardly takes any, and it gets vines, which are tough to kill down here in Georgia.
Though, it’s true as far as environmentally speaking, pulling them, putting down the black sheeting, or sprinkling rock salt on the weeds/grass will do the job for you too. I wouldn’t do the gas or oil idea though.
I do not know where you are but using gas like that would be very illegal here. In any case I am surprised that anyone would recommend using such polluting methods. You want something simple? Try boiling water. When I was a kid I was given a pot of boiling water to get rid of and I poured it on the lawn (not knowing any better). There was no immediate apparent damage but in a few days the grass was DEAD. I cannot think of anything easier or safer than boiling water. Just reapeat as needed
Or, you could get a big dog that likes to run around the yard a lot. If he runs hard enough and fast enough, he’ll manage to dig up just about everything in the soil. It happened to us, with our lab Bear (rest his soul), until Mom just gave up on grass and covered the whole backyard in woodchips.
I had this question asked of me many times while I ran a landscaping business some years ago… my choice was to use roundup, the available generic version works just as well and costs about half as much. Once you have killed the grass you would want to lay down permeable landscape fabric, plastic won’t let water through. After this you shouldn’t have too much in the way of weeds to deal with.
You can use roundup to take care of small groups of weeds by using a small paintbrush and brushing the herbicide onto the leaves… it will wipe out the entire plant and is great for dealing with crabgrass which has long tuberous roots that can stretch for meters underground. A little touch of roundup and the entire plant dies.
In the past, conquering armies would burn and then salt the ground to ensure that nothing would grow back… starving enemies put up little fight…
I’ve always had good luck using roundup followed by some kind of preemergent and then just follow up with roundup when an enevitable little seedling popped up.
Ever see what happens when some idiot drains their radiator over grass? It creates a dead zone that lasts for years. I saw a 1.5 ft dead zone that didn’t have a single thing living in it for 3 years after some dingus dumped his ethylene glycol there.
That in mind, I use a mixture of 50/50 Prestone and water, an applicator with a thin wand nozzle, and dribble directly down into the cracks on my patio, drive, etc. I make sure there are no spare drops for kitties or doggies to lick up, and I’m pretty sure it will biodegrade well before it hits the water table. Of course this is a poison, and not the most environmentally sound. But repeated applications of whole bottles of Roundup were not doing the trick, and I wonder just how safe that much Roundup use really is.
(Donning my asbestos panties for the incoming flames re: ethylene glycol)