cheeky chappie wrote:
hello all and thanks for replies.

please see pic taken last year, this is roughly how things are at
present:

'[image: http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/2752/garden1z.th.jpg]'
(http://tinyurl.com/8aapenq)

as you can see the weed is close to the shrubs, if anything even more so
now, so it's not a case of being cack handed, i'm pretty sure spraying
that close without protecting the shrubs will damage them?

Not if you do it on a still day and use glyphosate. It has to hit green
leaf or green stem to do damage. Using a coarse spray setting and a wand
lets you go in very close. I do it to get rid of couch grass in my
gooseberry bushes every other year. And you can always cut bits off if
you think you might have caused collateral damage.

also by default i'll be spraying the soil due to the weed being
extremely low lying so can't really avoid that.

You waste any that hits the soil so concentrate your firepower on the
green parts of the weed itself. I remain mystified why this weed is
causing you so much trouble if you are in the UK.

the weedkiller i've bought is a systemic weedkiller concentrate
containing glyphosate, it's a 250ml bottle and the box says:

151.4g/l (13.4%w/w) glyphosate as a soluble concentrate.

do you reckon this'll do the trick?

The piece of land you showed is small and would take an hour or so to
weed by hand. The detail is insufficient to identify the weed.
Glyphosate will kill anything green it touches iff it is in active
growth. I would wait until late March to spray.

It should also take a couple of weeks to take effect if used correctly.
Then when the weeds are looking pretty unwell dig most of it out. I am
assuming here that you actually have a pernicious weed with rhizomes.

Once a month hit any survivors again with glyphosate (or any other
weedkiller you happen to be using).

Regards,
Martin Brown