Thursday, August 7, 2008

Natural Weed Control

As many of you know we just bought a house. It was a foreclosure, on the market from late winter- meaning no water all season. The arid environment and the lowest rainfall in a years equals a lawn that looks like straw. We've watered, tried lawn tonics, and done rain dances trying to bring it back.

The only thing that has come back so far are the weeds. The special lawn tonic, water, and sun have turned tiny little weeds that barely caught my attention into small shrubbery. My mom's solution was to buy weed killer and douse the lawn, but that doesn't really work with my trying to be green ethic. Also the prices I saw at the big box store- not my cup of tea.

Instead I sought a natural method of weed control. A spray bottle full of vinegar was my method of attack. On Tuesday morning I visited each weed in the backyard, giving the base a few squirts of vinegar. I'm happy to report 3/4 of the weeds are shriveling up.* The ones that aren't dying are the ones that didn't get full sun while I was spraying so one of these afternoons** I'll be spraying those in the afternoon.

Vinegar Weed Control Tips:
-Spray only the base of weeds. Vinegar will hurt other plants, so try to target each individual weed. A spray bottle or power sprayer*** is probably your best tool for targeting the individual plants.
-Sunlight is your friend. This method works because the plants suck in the vinegar as they grow. A lot of sun speeds this process up.

If the next round of vinegar doesn't work I'll be moving to boiling water. I would have tried this first, but I'm a clutz and I see things not ending well.

Have you had any luck controlling weeds naturally?

*including the evil cactus-like weed that attacked me the other day
**when my quads stop being sore
***we have a 1 gallon pump sprayer that can spray as fine stream

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love this idea. I'm a huge fan of vinegar, but didn't know it was a weed killer! I discovered a while ago that I can put dandelion leaves into our green smoothies, so we no longer have any dandelions in our yard - we ate them all :)

Anonymous said...

What a fabulous trick! We have loads of weeds to experiment on. I shall wait until a sunny day and then pull out my spray bottle of non-toxic vinegar. I already use vinegar for heaps of household chores but never considered it for the garden. Thanks for the tip!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this tip! I'm going to try it today. How often should you spray? Also any rate I love the concept of your blog!

Anonymous said...

I've heard about this, but I also read that vinegar kills the soil, also, so I've been afraid to try it anywhere except in the cracks of my driveway. Keep us updated to let us know if the lawn comes back in these spots. I'm too scared to try it myself :)