I recently moved into a house in the Bay Area. We have raised beds and grow vegetables. Between the raised beds we have dirt walkways. We’re getting weeds in the dirt walkways. I’m not talking dandelions but rather, Angry Mondo Weeds From Another Planet. The ground they are growing in is like concrete. I’ve been using a traditional metal weed puller but getting down to the root of the weeds has bent the tool because the ground is so hard.
I was thinking about getting a commercial spray bottle of RoundUp but am hesitant for health/environmental reasons. I have found recipes online for a home brew solution of Vinegar, Salt and Dish washing Liquid. One site claims,
“Drench the weeds with the solution on a dry, sunny day. Coat all surfaces well with the spray. Any plants soaked with this solution will die within several days. They won’t be back and nothing else will ever grow there.”
The line, “…and nothing else will ever grow there” concerns me. Has anyone used the home brew recipe above? Does it really have an Agent Orange affect? Has anyone used a safe commercial product or a different home brew solution which does not have a nuclear outcome?
Do tell.
Note: Any weeds in the raised beds are pulled by hand so I won’t be using such a solution in the beds.
Well yeah, use enough salt and nothing will ever grow there. :smack:
Vinegar is generally too weak to do much to weeds. And dishwashing detergent would have to be concentrated to work well and then you’d have scrubbling bubbles all over the place.
For an environmentally safe weed kill, consider a cheap propane torch. Burn 'em out a few times over an extended period and the roots will eventually give up.
Based on observations of the bar next door, which has been using Round Up for weed control for a couple years now, that stuff breaks down fairly rapidly over time. A year from when you apply it everything is growing again just fine. Which is how it’s supposed to work, it’s supposed to break down in the environment.
Round Up is used on food crops. I wouldn’t advise drinking the stuff, but it’s not nuclear waste, either.
The biggest problem with using it in a garden is accidentally getting the plants you want to keep alive.
An alternative to spraying is to cover the dirt paths you don’t want things growing in. A traditional means of doing so is to mulch the heck out of them - straw, hay, grass clippings, whatever, layered on to a depth of several inches (it does pack down over time) will smother what’s underneath. As the mulch decays it will also supply nutrients to the plants you do want.
You can also use “landscaping cloth”, which is a fabric dense enough to exclude light but porous enough for water to pass through. Cover what you want to keep clear with the stuff, tack down the edges thoroughly, and you have your weed control.
I’m partial to a teapot of boiling hot water. Soaks in and cooks the roots. You won’t get rid of an entire footpaths’ worth of weeds in a single go, but it’s about as environmentally friendly as it gets.
I recently read this about RoundUp and GMOs. (I’ve read about this on other sites.) I think I’ll try a weak version of the home brew vinegar solution first and monitor the results. Thx!
Landscape fabric gets an iffy (at best) review from most gardeners when it comes to weed control. Over time dirt and debris get into it, weeds germinate and it’s a mess trying to yank weeds out of fabric. It also gradually degrades, resulting in the same problem.
A coarse mulch (like large pine bark chips) is another option.
The salt and vinegar act as dessicant to kill the existing weed and the detergent only acts as a surfactant, helping the mixture stick to the weeds. You don’t need much.
The problem is that the homemade stuff does not get to the roots like Roundup does. In some ways, Roundup is more environmentally friendly than the salt/vinegar/detergent mixture
Can you post a pic of the weeds? If we know the species we might be able to better target our advice.
Personally, I’d do boiling water, then a layer of corrugated cardboard (deconstructed Amazon boxes, or stop by Home Depot for fridge boxes), then a layer of bark/wood chip mulch. OK to walk on, tough for the weeds to regenerate through. I just did a similar treatment on my community garden bed, which was utterly choked with weeds.
If you have raised beds, get some black “visquen” (trade name) - 10 mil plastic sheeting. Big box stores have it in 50’ lengths. I imagine real construction and/or landscape stores have larger sizes (and better quality).
As long as you don’t pole holes, it is absolute - it will kill anything now growing and turn it into compost.
Use rocks. etc. to hold down the edges or get fancy and cover it with chips or gravel or (?).
I’d like to second Broomstick’s recommendation for RoundUp. It really has a bad reputation that is not deserved. It is not nuclear waste and does break down quickly. It can only be absorbed by the leaves, but when absorbed, it will kill the plant. Once in the ground, it breaks down so quickly, they cannot measure it. Farmers will spray a field with RoundUp and in a week, plow everything under and plant their crops.
The reason it “works for a year” is that most weeds are annual plants, which means once you kill off this year’s crop, you won’t be bothered until next spring. Also, as Broomstick stated, the biggest threat is getting the spray on plants you don’t want to get rid of.
The pre-mixed bottle with the squeeze handle sprayer is a pretty good option. Get used to how it sprays in an area you want to clear until you get pretty good at shooting, then soak the green leaves of your weeds. Don’t do it on a windy day, an be careful you don’t spray it on anything you want to keep.
It really is a good product and is not an environmental disaster (which you might get with some of these homebrew methods). It really sounds like it is just what you need.
Why is there no lemon juice or soda crystals in this home remedy recipe? Oh well - at least they used the vinegar and salt. (Seriously, “amazing homemade recipe/remedy for [anything]” always has lemon juice, vinegar, salt or soda crystals in it).
Back to the subject of effective weedkillers… you can get gel formulations of glyphosate (roundup) that can be painted directly onto the offending plant - no overspray or contamination of other stuff.
Otherwise just chop the green part away and keep doing it until the roots die. Pouring left over cooking grease on the leafy part also does some serious damage to the weeds.
