Weedol weed killer: what is left in the range, and what is leaving it

Pathclear was two herbicides doing two jobs out of one bottle. The glyphosate killed the weed standing in front of you. The diflufenican stayed behind in the top few millimetres and dealt with the seed that had not come up yet, which its database entry sums up in six words: selective contact and residual action, bleaching. The pack claim of preventing new weeds for up to three months is traceable rather than invented, because diflufenican's typical half-life in soil is 92 days. What that does inside a paving joint, and where it is and is not permitted, is set out in the full breakdown of path and drive weedkiller, and I am not repeating it here.

Nobody has announced anything, so here is the evidence instead of a claim. Both Pathclear product pages on Evergreen Garden Care's own website return a 404, and so does Rootkill Plus. Their current Weedol range page lists six products across three lines and neither name appears on it. There is no Pathclear address anywhere in their sitemap. Archived copies of that range page date the disappearance to a fortnight: 19 mentions of Pathclear on 16 July 2024, none at all by 3 August 2024.

The redirects are the part nobody has read, and they are the company telling you what it thinks the swap is. Pathclear's old ready-to-use address now sends you to Weedol Path & Gravel Control. The Pathclear concentrate tubes address sends you to the Path & Gravel tubes. Rootkill Plus's old addresses send you to Weedol Rapid Weed Control. Glyphosate and diflufenican out, pelargonic acid in, stated in machine language on the manufacturer's own server.

The scale is bigger than one product leaving one range. There are only four amateur products containing diflufenican registered in Great Britain, every one is a Pathclear, and every one belongs to Evergreen Garden Care. Withdrawing that line quietly closes the only amateur residual category there is.

And it is a commercial decision, not a regulatory one, which matters because people assume anything vanishing from a garden centre has been banned. Pathclear's approval is still valid, and it is being actively renewed: HSE's own amendment notice says the authorisation remains extant until a decision is taken on the renewal application, which is why the register shows it with no fixed end date at all. The regulator has not touched it. The company simply stopped selling it, so there is nobody to appeal to and nothing to wait for.

Here is the part that will actually cost somebody money, and it is not the manufacturer's doing.

Wickes currently sell the ready-to-use Path & Gravel bottle, £6 a litre in August 2026, under this sentence: "Weedol Pathclear Weedkiller is a Glyphosate free product which kills weeds and prevents new ones. It creates an invisible barrier that prevents new weeds for up to 3 months and is ideal for paths, drives, and patios." The specification panel further down the same page correctly gives the active ingredient as pelargonic acid.

So one listing carries the withdrawn product's name, the withdrawn product's three-month barrier claim and the replacement's chemistry, on a product whose own label says it will not provide long term control of perennial weeds. Somebody searching for Pathclear lands there, recognises the name and the promise, and takes home a contact herbicide. Then they spend the summer wondering why it stopped working.

I am not calling that dishonest. Retail copy in this category is written once and reused for years, and elsewhere in it I have found spec boxes giving a preservative as the active ingredient and, on one listing, a colour. But it does mean the brand name has stopped carrying information. Two things identify a weedkiller now: the active ingredient with its grams per litre, and the MAPP number. Everything on the front of the pack is a description of the job somebody hopes you are doing.

Rootkill Plus deserves a proper obituary, because its label is the most interesting thing anywhere in this range. It was 120 g/L glyphosate plus 0.33 g/L pyraflufen-ethyl. Put those side by side and the ratio is roughly 364 to 1, which raises the obvious question of what a third of a gram was doing in there.

Not the killing. Pyraflufen-ethyl is a phenylpyrazole that works by contact, inhibiting protoporphyrinogen oxidase and rupturing cell membranes, and its typical half-life in soil is 0.32 days. About eight hours. It was in the bottle to deliver the label's promise of visible results in 24 hours while the glyphosate got on with the slow part, which the same label puts at weed death in up to 28 days. The scorch on day one was the third of a gram. The kill four weeks later was the 120.

Worth understanding rather than sneering at, because it is the pattern behind half the shelf. A fast-acting claim on a systemic product almost always means a small dose of a contact herbicide riding along to cover the wait. Honest enough, as long as you do not read the speed as strength, which is the exact mistake the timings on a weedkiller label exist to prevent.

One more oddity from the same pack, because it catches people out comparing bottles. Rootkill Plus printed two yields for one 500ml bottle: "Makes up to 29 litres (for spray use) and 117 litres (for watering can use)". Nothing about the weedkiller changed between those numbers. The same dose went into one litre of water in a sprayer or five in a watering can, so the second figure lands around four times the first while treating exactly the same ground. It is the clearest proof on any UK label that a yield claim measures water rather than weedkiller, and what a "makes up to" figure is really counting is worked through properly there.