Growing your own garden is the best way to organic plants and vegetables. You might have a green thumb but may not have the time to pull out weeds as soon as they spring up. Using harsh chemicals not only kills the weeds, but in the long-term these chemicals will leach into the soil and cause problems for your plants and vegetables. The idea behind this present article is to introduce a natural weed killer, something you can just pull off a kitchen shelf and experiment with.
Vinegar is a common product found in most households today, even though it was discovered about 10,000 years ago. Vinegar is an excellent, safe solution for dealing with weeds in the garden. It’s not harmful to children or pets, and it is cheap enough to always have some around. Vinegar kills weeds when used at full strength so you need to be careful how you use around plants that you want to keep alive. In addition to weed killing, vinegar can be quite useful in the garden because it also has many other uses such as controlling ant problems and it can even be used to clean garden pots.
Household vinegar has a 5% solution of acetic acid made from the fermentation of plant products like grapes and apples. There are stronger concentrations of acetic acid available and even synthetically created acetic acid. All vinegars contain acetic acid, but not all acetic acid is vinegar.
For organic gardening, vinegar can function as a natural weed killer. It’s the acetic acid in vinegar that gives it the power to kill weeds. The higher the percentage of acetic acid in the vinegar, the better it will work as a natural weed killer. Vinegar used for culinary purposes is relatively low at 5% acetic acid, so repeated applications will be necessary when using it as a natural weed killer.
Will the acetic acid in vinegar harm my soil? Being an acid, it can lower the soil’s pH a little. This is a temporary effect. Acetic acid breaks down quickly in water, so any residue will be pretty much gone after the first watering or rain. Acetic acid rapidly breaks down in water and so for the best results do not spray weeds just before a storm. The rains will dilute the vinegar and greatly reduce its effectiveness.
Vinegar is a cheap and environmentally safe way to kill weeds. Simply place some undiluted household vinegar in a sprayer bottle and spray the weeds, make sure that you saturate their leaves. Usually within 48 hours the plant growth will wither and die. Vinegar will be more effective on younger weeds. All concentrations of acetic acid, including household vinegar, should cause treated foliage to brown within 24 hours. Young, tender weeds and annual weeds are more susceptible to treatment with vinegar. If you are dealing with hardy established perennial weeds, the roots are often not killed entirely and the weeds can reappear within a few weeks. In this case you will probably need to re-apply the vinegar up to three times to get the job done effectively, as established weeds often refuse to go quietly.
Repeated applications are more effective, and I would recommend three applications over a period of a month. Vinegar is safe and relatively inexpensive, and if your goal is to use a natural weed killer, you’ll be motivated to make repeated applications, as necessary. Take care to not get any of the vinegar directly on any plant stems or leaves. A sunny period is required when spraying weeds with vinegar as you need to saturate the weeds’ foliage with the vinegar, and rain would wash too much of the vinegar off the foliage. Also make sure that vinegar doesn’t get into your eyes, as it is an acid.
If you are having problems with lawn weeds, take care to apply the vinegar directly onto the weeds themselves, being careful that it does not come into contact with your grass. Vinegar can harm your grass, as it is just like any other herbicide! If you do spray with vinegar don’t use it on a windy day, as the wind could carry your vinegar spray onto areas where you don’t want it to go, like your lawn.
To begin with, you might prefer to use vinegar in areas where lawn and other landscaping plants won’t be in harms way, such as walkways where you have weeds growing through cracks in brickwork, cement and stone. Try these areas first and if you are successful and confident, move on to the more difficult areas. Vinegar is cheap and definitely easier on the environment than some of the usual chemicals that you will find in the gardening store. You can also use vinegar for a few other common garden problems.
For example you can use vinegar as an ant deterrent. This is very useful if you find a trail of ants making a way into your house. Just spray the areas where you don’t want the ants, and reapply every couple of days to ensure that they stay away. Ants will not come anywhere near the stuff.
Vinegar will also help fresh cut flowers last longer. Preserve cut flowers and liven droopy ones by adding 2 tablespoons of vinegar and 1 teaspoon sugar to a 500ml of water in a vase. You can also get rid of the water line in a flower vase by filling it with a solution of half water and vinegar before you clean it. Another good use for vinegar is to clean your terracotta pots. Vinegar will remove the calcium scale buildup on pots. Simply soak the affected areas in full strength vinegar, and scrub with a brush.
So as you can see vinegar is not only useful in the kitchen, but it is also good in the garden too!
If you have any questions or comments relating to your garden, please send me an email.
