I hate to admit it, but this popped up on my facebook feed. It talks about a natural seemingly somewhat benign weedkiller. Do you think this will work? Are there any negative effects of these substances on my soil or the environment in general?
Instead of using Round-Up try this. Safer for the environment.
1 gallon white vinegar
2 cups Epsom Salt
1/4 cup Dawn Dish Soap-blue original
Combine in a sprayer container and apply to weeds or grass you want to get rid of. Spray in the morning after the dew has evaporated. Natural News claims weeds will be gone by end of day-maybe a little longer!
Vinegar will kill the weeds above ground within hours but the roots will be unaffected and will just grow back. Salt will kill everything and effectively makes the soil inhospitable to plant life. Roundup takes days but attacks the roots, and unlike salt loses its potency over time.
This. The vinegar-salt combination is actually pretty toxic stuff that is used for de-weeding a sealed driveway, where it’s even allowed (it isn’t where I live).
Except it’s epsom salt (magnesium sulfate), not “salt”, i.e. sodium chloride.
Epsom salt is actually used as an adjunct to fertilizers if soils are deficient in sulfur or magnesium, so it’s not particularly toxic in its own right.
Not sure if 2 cups per gallon is a concentration that might mess up the osmotic balance of the roots or something like that though.
Use reg salt, and super saturate the vinegar with it, as much as it will take. The dish soap is what breaks the plants waterproofness so the salt and vinegar will get to work.
It’s most effective when used on newly sprouting weeds, as opposed to well established ones. You have to frequently reapply it, I use a dish soap squeeze bottle so I don’t have to bend.
It’s also most effective, as a deterrent, where it’s reapplied often over time, in my experience.
Used regular table salt, vinegar, and dish soap on the poison ivy that had taken over my backyard last summer. Sprayed the shit out of the entire yard (I’m not allergic to poison ivy) and nothing happened for like a week, but then suddenly one day it all just withered and died. It was actually quite dramatic.
Also experimented with just pure rock salt. I have a problem corner in my front yard, so I bought 40 lbs of rock salt and just dumped it out and spread it with a rake. In about a week everything I had applied salt to was dead and the area is now just plain dirt. Even killed the bamboo, which is notoriously near-impossible to get rid of. Guess it’s easy if you don’t care about anything growing there ever again (I don’t).
That works, and it’s a relatively natural remedy. By the time you may change your mind about that corner, the salt will probably have dissipated.
There is a crack in my patio that is notorious for growing weeds. I just sprinkle some Epsom salts in there every springtime, and guess what? No weeds. If any pop up, I pull them out.
That’s the problem with salt; it never dissipates. At best it might eventually sink below the root layer, but it’s most likely to be flushed into nearby vegetation you want to keep.
Vinegar alone will work, though it may take multiple applications. Works best if applied while the target plants are in direct sunlight. Works better on some plants than on others. I killed some poison ivy by my house that way, though it took a while, partly because it was on the north side in the shade.
I strongly recommend against the salt. As has been pointed out, it’ll permanently poison the area against most plants. As I don’t think has been pointed out, too much salt is bad for groundwater/well water/waterways.
You don’t need the dish soap, either. Just straight vinegar.
Heh, when I had morning glory growing down the rain drainage system I had talked to my neighbor about tossing some salt down there. He said you probably don’t want to salt the earth like some Roman general. I didn’t do it even though I live near the ocean and it’s plastic pipes down to the street. In as much as I hate Roundup. i painted a small amount on the remaining leaves and it killed it right off.
I think I’ll get a weed sprayer and fill it with the suggested ingredients and spray a small area just after the rain when the tender shoots are just sprouting up. I’ve got no important landscaping anywhere near where I will spray, so I think the damage will be minimal.
I don’t trust Southern Living to be an impartial voice in this matter. A good portion of their revenue is from garden chemical companies.
Story I got from someone involved.
One of the local high schools played a prank on another school. They sprayed “Heights bites” with glacial acetic acid on the school’s practice field, in the middle of winter. When spring came around the field greened up except where the acetic acid was applied.
My concern with using vinegar is its effect on concrete
What is the point of the Epsom salts? That is a fertilizer. Does it make the solution more effective, or just reduce the acidity of any soil that gets sprayed?
As various sources have pointed out, including Southern Living, vinegar alone or in combination will only kill the leaves and not the roots. You need the chemical nasties to get to the roots and do a permanent job.
Another way, for relatively small areas, would be to use steam, if you have a steam cleaner. Expensive, but zero residues.
There’s no doubt the concentrated stuff works (but read the label and use correct PPE!) – we have a drum at the farm. But I’ve never tried the formulation in the OP.
I’d ask for a cite for this claim, but don’t bother.
The author of the article, Steve Bender is their long-time gardening correspondent, a fun and knowledgeable guy who is no one’s idea of a chemical company stooge.
I’ve been spraying it on concrete for years, zero staining has been seen. And it would take a dozen or more applications before any mild build up effect might occur, in my experience.
It has its place and uses, but it’s never going to be round up!
Vinegar has its non-culinary uses (for instance, I use it to clean our coffee machine); gardening, not so much.
In general I am dubious about home garden remedies propagated via the Internet. Among the myriad ineffective suggestions for getting rid of fire ants is pouring vinegar on their mounds. The fire ants probably laugh themselves sick over that one, or else make killer salads.
It’s a wonder, but I’ve managed all these years of gardening to avoid using chemical herbicides of any kind. Hand-weeding, hoeing and mulch work well. For weeds growing through cracks in sidewalks and driveways, burning them out with a small propane torch is effective and satisfying (you can almost hear them scream).
The commercial weed-killers like Round-up have introduced an acetic acid version recently and it gets terrible reviews. People hate it 'cus it stinks and has poor results compared to the original formula.
