Kitchen Garden Forum

The Royal Horticultural Society have announced that sodium chlorate, a popular weed killer used by gardeners on land not intended for growing wanted plants on and hard surfaces, is to be withdrawn.

According to the Pesticides Safety Directorate, all chemicals in the chlorate group were voted by members of the EU not to be included in its list of permitted chemicals. The exact reason for non-inclusion has yet to be made public.

Popular brands containing the substance include: Doff, Gem Stop-Weeds and Dead Fast.

An official notice including use-up dates is likely to be published within the next six months, but it is expected that sodium chlorate-based weed killers will be off the retail shelves by 2010.

Extract taken from the Gardeners Club September newsletter.

Beryl.

Better stock up now then. There was lots on the garden centre shelves last week. I noticed because it reminded me of when I was sorting out Dad's gardening stuff and found a large sack of sodium chlorate in the cellar - probably enough to wipe out the whole population of Yorkshire. (Did I hear someone saying "Not a bad idea"?)

This is a bit off-topic, but my dad used to ask me to bring him some Sodium Chlorate when we went over to visit him.

Unfortunately he was living in Ireland at the time. During the 1990's it was hard to get Sodium Chlorate there because it had a secondary use ("weedkiller bombs").

Back then, if you went over by ferry, there was often a fairly strict check at the port (even in Southern Ireland) and I never felt brave enough to have a couple of Kilograms of Sodium Chlorate in the boot........

It is rather potent stuff isn't it Colin. Glad you didn't get arrested for terrorism - I suppose Dad was risking it a bit too with those quantities. I've no idea where he bought it.

I only want to kill off brambles,on our allotment site fires are not allowed so blowing tem up is a definite no-no

can you rent a goat? in one town i lived in that was overrun by brambles, there were goat rental outfits: the goats would eat everything above ground, then you'd rent a pig to eat the roots. not sure if the goat's milk was raspberry flavoured...

Hi Alia,
no chance of that even if goats & pigs were available for hire.I wanted to put a couple of beehives on my plots and get into bee-keeping.Committee said no,because the Council were afraid that vandals would attack the hives,get stung, then sue them for "the lack of Duty of Care"

Regards
snooky