SOOO not organic, however, glyphosate will do the trick. That's the active ingredient in Round-Up. The problem with Round-Up isn't what you might think. The problem is that it has a detergent in it, designed to make it "thinner", (less surface tension, a surfactant), and the detergent is poisonous to plants and animals. The glyphosate just stops the photosynthesis cycle- which your fish and turtles are not reliant on. Look up something called Fusillade II (fluazifop-P-butyl), Eraser-AQ (glyphosate), and then a non-detergent type of surfactant like Dyne-Amic.

dewey1139, Salt should be used sparingly in any area where you ever intend to grow some sort of plant on purpose. Homemade salt remedies can harm the microbial life in your soil (good soil is alive and filled with many living microorganisms---billions per square foot) and the salt can remain in the soil a long time, damaging plants you hope to grow there in the future. In his book "The Truth About Organic Gardening" (which I highly recommend), Jeff Gillman discourages the use of salt as a homemade herbicide for exactly the reason I stated above. On a personal level, I already have a high sodium content in my soil, so the very last thing I'd ever want to do is add more salt to it. Some scientists have done research with boron (easily available to the homeowner in Mule Team Borax, sold on the laundry aisle) as a herbicide and found that it controlled certain weeds, like creeping Charlie. However, there again, a little boron is good and even desirable in general for good plant growth, but excess boron can be toxic to all your plants, so I wouldn't use this method unless I'd already had a soil test and knew my soil didn't have excess boron to begin with. Tons of weeds in the soil indicate poor soil. Many weeds colonize poor soil as they are adapted to it. To get rid of the weeds, improve the soil. It is that simple. Once the soil is better, the grass will grow more thickly and more lush and will crowd out the weeds. Be sure you're mowing at the proper height too. I like lawns seeded with clover as part of the mix, and I have many, many dandelions growing in my front yard and love them. We're out in the country, though, and our neighbors can barely see our house from the road and, because the house sits back 300' from the road, no one can tell what sort of lawn we have or if we even have one at all. Thus, I don't have the peer pressure of having nearby neighbors who think a suburban yard should look like a green carpet of astroturf. If I felt a certain level of peer pressure to have a perfect green carpet of lawn, I'd work on fixing the soil so the grass would be vigorous enough to keep the weeds out on it own, and I'd use a pre-emergent weedkiller (chemical or synthetic, both types are available) to prevent the weed seeds from sprouting. That's a lot easier than mechanically removing them after they sprout. I imagine if y'all go to the lawn forum or the organic forum you would find the lawn experts there who could answer your questions. I prefer growing everything else that exists more than lawn....trees, shrubs, ground covers, herbs, flowers, veggies, fruits....and even native grasses more so than lawn grasses, so I'd be more likely to try to tell you to get rid of your lawn and replace it with water-wise, native plantings and then to mulch heavily to keep the weeds out. When I have weeds growing someplace, I ask myself what the weeds are telling me. Generally they are telling me they found some bare soil and sprouted and grew there, so for beds of non-grassy plants, mulch thickly applied combined with regular hand-weeding while the weeds are small and easy to remove is the answer. For lawn grasses, a weed problem is telling you the grass is having trouble growing well and covering the ground, thereby leaving bare spots where weed seeds can sprout. In that case, the answer is to improve the soil and to make sure you are growing a lawn grass suited to your soil, growing conditions and lawn maintenance practices. Dawn

Yep, soil is expensive to get rid of, and CL usually has lots of offers for free soil that go unanswered. Are there any low spots in your yard that need to be evened out? Can you build some raised planting beds or berms somewhere in your garden and use the soil there? Are you thinking of building a waterfall for your pond, that could make use of the soil? The cheapest solution is to find a way to keep the soil on site. Bermuda grass roots can go down 3-5', and new growth can sprout from those deep roots. That is why it is so difficult to eradicate.

Oh, derp, you're looking for an answer and I gave questions. I deal with weeds and other pests biologically when possible. I set up competition for limited resources, and I encourage things that eat what I have too much of. For bermuda grass, I killed its head start by cutting it to the ground, heavy mulching, and planting a cover crop mix in the area. For algae overgrowth in the pool-turned-pond, I introduced several other plant species, and both vertebrate and invertebrate algae eaters. For mosquito larvae in the pond, I leave the aggressive predatory bugs alone, and introduced fish small enough to see them as food, which I never feed. For slugs, snails, and herbivorous pest bugs in the garden, I never kill spiders nor centipedes, and I'll be putting in some toad houses when I can, now that I know we've got useful amphibians in the area. I think for nearly every maintenance and balance problem in a living system, there's some organism holding up a tiny "will work for food" sign, aching to solve your problem for you. But for it to work, you do have to let go of tight control.