The 7 Deadly Homemade Weed Killers

Hanna,
This is really helpful info that I can use! Thank you. I don’t like using weed killers, but I will try these.

By the way, the latest frost here in our area that I can remember is June 12th.

These are good to know. If you need a shield for spraying, you can cut the bottom off a plastic bottle, enclose the weed in the bottle, and spray into the opening at the top. This stops the spray from getting on nearby plants.

Thank you for posting this! It is good information, and totally earth friendly to boot. Yay!

Ohh… I had never heard of hot sauce as a weed killer (pest deterrent but not weed killer). That’s great. It can serve two purposes at once. Thanks for the tip!

I discovered quite by accident that our corn-based cat litter (brand name: World’s Best Cat Litter) supresses weeds as well as the packaged corn gluten products. I’d scattered some scooped, used around where I’d seen rodents, hoping to discourage them, and no weeds have popped up. That litter will be doing double-duty from now on, at least in areas where I don’t do a lot of digging or hand work.

Glad I could help. Good luck on your project!

This is great stuff. I’m so glad someone is promoting NATURAL remedies. Thanks!

AWESOME to have found this site just in time to
try murdering the darn thistles in my lawn!
I’ve been fighting a losing battle with them for
years… spending hours and hours trying to dig
them out each year. It’s like the more I dig,
the more I end up getting. Darn near impossible
to walk barefoot in my grass anymore. Isn’t
that one of life’s pleasures?!
I’m going to try heavily salted boiling water…
Thanks!

Great tips and I love that they are earth friendly, economical and no-nonsense. I will be using them this weekend. Thanks!

“it will eventually be washed out.”

No it goes into the ground and enters your reserve of groundwater. But who gives a rat’s ass about groundwater when you can have pretty oh so pretty flowers in your little burgeois garden…

boiling salted water, the way to go. The water kills the weeds, the salt keeps them from returning for a lont time. The only thing to remember is that the salt tends to stick to your soles, and this is not very friendly to your marble floors, if you have any.

People should be very careful about “corn gluten” vs. “cornmeal” because each serves a different purpose in the garden!

CORN GLUTEN MEAL is a byproduct of corn processing. Its proteins are able to inhibit seed germination, therefore it can be used as a pre-emergent weed killer. It works by stopping root formation. It also breaks down over time to become an organic nitrogen source.

CORNMEAL is flour ground from dried corn. It’s not a weed killer but can be used as a fungicide. Grocery stores’ “food grade” cornmeal works fine but it’s expensive and usually comes in small quantities. “Horticultural” cornmeal is generally used for animal feed. It’s a good choice to use as fungicide because it’s cheap and available in bulk. Cornmeal is also a source of nutrients for the soil.

Sorry, it is waaaaay too easy for people to steal articles when the rss has the full article. It is a common problem for bloggers and RSS is normally the root of it. I only publish a partial in the RSS because of this. Thanks for stopping my blog.

I understand that corn attracts rats. I was told not to throw out corn cobs in a composting place near my house. Maybe you should find out if corn meal also attracts rats.

Marlene- I had the same problem down in Florida but was able to get the grass under control after some work. What I did was take my shovel and slice into the ground all around the area in whcih I wantd to kill off the grass. Doing this killed off the arms of the grass that was growing into the space I wanted cleared. I next put black plastic on the area I want to clear out and held is in place with stakes, bricks and even had a layer of sand on the perimeter of the plastic. After a few weeks I rolled the plastic back and everything- EVERYTHING- was dead under neath it. It was just a matter of raking it up and throwing it out.
As long as you keep an eye on the border of the cleared area and chop off any amrs trying to grow into it, you will be fine. A neighbor suggestd spraying Round Up lightly on the space you want to clear prior to putting down the plastic. It seems like overkill to me, not to mention a bit “chemically” but he swears by it. I have not tried it but I am suplyig it as an FYI. Just make sure you wait a few weeks before you plant anything in there though if you do use Round Up. Good luck!

I think the new bleach pens could do wonders when you need to get at targeted plants. Where you can’t get the whole plant out. Try putting the bleach on the remaining stubs.

Can you please explain to me what exactly is “green” or “environmentally friendly” about putting bleach, salt, acetic acid, and alcohol into the ground? Not only do these things make CO2 during their manufacture and transport, most of them will wash down into the groundwater.

What’s wrong with good old-fashioned hand picking of weeds with a removal tool, followed by a good layer of mulch to suppress new growth?

Having grown up in Denver and learned about water from the scarcity of it rather then it’s abundance, I realize that adding salt to the earth sounds like a simple easy fix. The fact is that you seriously need to think about what is going to happen to that salt (or any of these products) after they’ve entered the groundwater.

I urge you to resist salting the ground, including your driveway, the streets, your garden, etc, given the ill effect of over saline water on the ground, on drink water supplies, and especially on plants.

The both the plants and the humans need a certain amount of salt, but the only way to get it out of water is to evaporate the water and leaving the salt. In the case of a lake, (say the dead sea) when you evaporate water you are left with more saline water and eventually the water becomes unusable by any but the most hearty bacteria. In the case of a river, adding a little salt upstream means that down stream it’ll be more salty, as during that commute it’ll evaporate and leave more salt at the base. How about when you irrigate, given all water has some salt, the evaporation causes the salt to be left behind on the ground. Repeat and you’ll build the salt concentration up till the land is unusable.

Biologically we need it, but but all elements in at some level are poisonous.

i already laid the mulch but weeds are growing through them, what can i put over the mulch to stop and kill the weeds

Glad I found this site! I went out yesterday and bleached all of my weeds. I will keep everyone posted on how it is doing/did. If all goes well, I will have killed all of my weeds for $2.78!!!
THANKS!!

For those with no luck with newspaper “smothering”, Try cardboard, then mulch on top. Worked at suppressing weeds in parts of our garden. Lasts for a few years before it breaks downs and decomposts.

My boyfriend and I just bought a house about a month ago, when we initially looked at the house and the yard it looked ok, the yard we could tell would need some work and we were fine with that. However, by the time moving day had arrived after waiting the month for closing etc.. our back yard looked like a field that had never even seen grass before. Around the edges were weeds that are over half as tall as me (I am 5’3″), most are very spiky and painful to attempt pulling so we have been using the shovel. We both work swing shifts and have the two kids to take care of so our time has been limited to the weekends for the most part. My children basically don’t have a backyard to play in, this is why we bought a home and not a condo.. having a yard meant everything to us.
Neither of us have ever really gardened, and having put all of our funds into the house we don’t have the necessary cash needed to buy a lot of products or services. I love the ideas presented on this blog, though it seems these solutions are more or less for “spot” treating. Our whole yard is the “spot”, and a damned ugly one at that lol. We aren’t looking to have some award winning garden, all we want is to be able to get this nightmare out and to be able to plant grass seed so we have a nice grass covered backyard without all of the frill for the kids to play in.
I spoke with my new neighbor and apparently the lady we purchased from LOVED to garden… problem is once the weeds would start growing she would plant something in another part of the yard. Neighbor said “I don’t think (insert name here) ever pulled a weed in her life”. So we have found that we indeed do have veggie gardens, flower gardens, vines growing EVERYWHERE, and just about anything else that will grow in this backyard.. I am sure we even have new species of weeds back there. So although I will be trying out some of the suggested solutions on the lesser areas, does anyone have a suggestion for large scale weed removal? Something that will allow for grass seed to grow after it is out, we don’t want an all dirt back yard after all, but at this point even that would be more welcome than what we have haha. Thanks for listening to my rant and sorry it was so long 🙁

Thanks for this information it’s a great help and I really appreciate finding it.

The bleach and vinegar are really simple options. I hate to think how uch money I have spent over the years on store bought wedd sprays.

I wanted to thank everyone for the ideas and website! I went out and spent around $8.00 on 3 gallons of vinegar and 4 bottles of salt and 1 bottle of dish soap and took the directions of 1 cup of salt , 1 gallon vinegar 1 tablespoon soap and my weeds all shriveled up within 2 hours after just a light spraying. Never have we had this kind of success even with roundup or other name brands. I am a huge believer in organic weed killer and would love to see all the poisons stay out of our ground and stay natural.

Thanks Hanna for some great suggestions. I do have concern in regards to your suggestion of using salt to kill weeds and that “It will kill the plant but will dilute down to harmless in the next few rainfalls.” Here in New Hampshire we are combating salt in our ground waters and surface waters and have impaired waterbodies for chloride primarily due to salting of roadways and parking lots in winter. In addtion, salt in our groundwaters from cooking and water softeners does contribute a small amount. Salt does not go away into the ground. It goes through the soil and into our groundwaters or in the case of treating a driveway, may run accross impervious areas into stormdrains to streams and other waterbodies. There is no practicle treatment for salt in our waters (or soils) and we are seeing enough salt in some of our New Hamshire fresh waters to make it the salinity of seawater. Lastly, one grain of salt ingested by a song bird can be toxic enought to kill that bird. Although decreasing the use of herbacides is a positive for our environment, please research the impacts of salt in our environment and re-consider suggesting homeowners contribute to this environmental problem.

I am so sick of reading about the supposed harms of using salt on weeds. Look, most of the weed killing applications here are done on such a small scale that it may only increase the salt concentration of a typical underground aquafer or groundwater by a few parts per billion, essentially with no dire impact. Furthermore, water treatment plants will filter and reduce the level of most harmful ionic species from the water before distribution, so unless you’re drinking untreated well water (which may also contain water-borne parasites), chances are your water supply is relatively safe.

And for New Hampshire’s water issue, that’s the result of winter after winter of salting the roads…which is a practice we never need here in southern CA and other warmer climate regions of the nations. So I do believe I can put a few tablespoons of salt on my lawn and not risk salinating the county’s watertable to seawater salinity levels. Besides, if NH’s water gets to a point where the salt levels in the water supply is absolutely adverse to health, I’m sure the state will provide for a few desalination plants to make sure the citizens of the US will have water to drink.

In closing, I will be salting my earth.

To the poster above:

Your logic of the snowballing effect with salting is flawed. Under the binomial distribution model, there’s a 50% chance of salting and 50% of not salting for any given individual looking for a herbicidal solution should the decision be made. However, if we factor in confounding factors such as the need to salt–conditions where salting would be beneficial, having the knowledge of salting, and other unforeseen variables, we can safely assume that less than 50% of people will salt their soil, which puts the practice of salting at a lower probability of occuring. Thus the impact of salting would not be as you claim: one person does it, another person does it some more, then it gets as bad as Russia’s scorched earth. Which by the way, Napoleon’s army was defeated by a combination of the harsh Russian winter and Russian troop’s retreating/scorched earth policy–not purely by salting farmlands.

As for the US government’s response to the tragedies of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, yes it was imperfect because we have casualty counts. But I ask you, what government in this world would be able to provide the response that people who are critical of our government expect in a situation like that? Would the Indian government have done any better in the tsunami of 2004? How about the Chinese government in the Sichuan earthquakes of this year? For disaster of those magnitudes, we would be foolish to expect the perfect rescue from any government. These are experiences that humble ourselves in the knowledge that even a developed country like the US cannot respond perfectly to a natural disaster of that scale. Could the response have been better? Of course, but to what degree short of perfection will it satisfy critics?

If you are able to take warm showers, drive on paved roads and the highway system, enjoy near-uninterrupted electricity, benefit from health care provided in an emergency, and drink from the tap and not risk death from systemic sepsis of parasitic infections, then I say the faith in our government is well founded. I invite you to visit a developing country and see if you’re able to find these spoils that our government has either directly or indirectly provided for. Most Americans have no idea how fortunate they are to have infrastructure that provides for the most basic and granted necessities. An infrastructure nurtured by a government such as ours. I respect your opinion of our government, but I also want you to realize why some of us still have faith and trust in our government.

Oh yeah, the pine shavings also add a water retention barrier to the soil which means watering less.

Giday all, this is an awsome site. I am a keen veggie gardener and am always looking for good ideas for my garden, and ways of recycling things into the garden,looks like I have found a good site here one that looks after our planet too.

We have some real hard strong grasses in Aus. and the way we kill them ( naturally)and plant a garden at the same time is by using putting old house carpets down first, this stops weeds in their tracks, ( saves on dumping into land-fill), then we just lair the garden from there on.About 8 lairs.
First up some wood chips, ( no wood chips lots and lots of cardboard soaked with water, but wood chips would be better or a mixture of both) followed by blood and bone, water well,
Next pile on all the weeds you may have pulled/torn up, grass cuttings and lime( lime helps to break down and aids composing, about 250 gm to one sq. metre of garden, and you will only have to do the lime thing to your garden once a year).
Next old leaves, straw, old horse stable straw,( make friends with a horse owner) twigs( not big branches they can be used for a another start-up garden later) and leaves cut from old/felled tree branches, more blood and bone.
Next some sheep,or cow,or horse, or chook manure, or a bit of them all. Lay it on thick, some more lime on top of that.
Next up more straw or mulch or grass cuttings. More blood & bone.
Next more manure lay it thick and more lime.
Next more grass/straw, of leaves (dried) weeds or what ever is lying around in the yard,( organic that is) more blood & bone.
Next and for the final lair, all the compost you can find and soak with water right through. Leave this tall ( about 60cm high) for a week or so to break down and you will have the best rich planting soil ever. Lay on some straw or mulch thickly when you start to plant your seedlings, just make a hole in the straw where you want the plant to go, add a little soil and water and plant. The carpet will take some time to eventually break down, but you will have no weeds in your veggie patch, and when it is time to grow a new seasons crop, all you have to do is top it up with mulch, manure, grass cuttings etc.You may not have noticed, but, No digging is ever needed in this garden, just a light rake to spread things around as you lay them. Old tree branches, washing machine parts, bikes, wheels, baby prams, everything ( not rubber or batteries or chemicals though) can be used to Raise the garden bed from the start to keep from bending and there by preserving the back/knees.

It is very hard to eradicate weeds from Bahai grass, it being a tough drought resistant grass, which needs very little if Any watering and fertilization. The only way I have found to get rid of the weeds is by digging them up by hand. Back breaking, knee cracking for sure, but you could get through it by, On with the ear phones with great music blasting like Hard Rock, Country, Heavy Metal which keeps you moving at a good pace, plenty of water at hand to drink (no excuse to leave the weedy area)some suncream on the exposed skin area, a hat (not a baseball cap), a box to collect and hold the weeds (keeps them from blowing away and perhaps resow themselves) a good spade, and strong boots to help you push the spade right down to the roots and away you go.
Good excerise too. Before you know it, you will have dug up those weeds.

Cut of the roots of the weed and discard into a bucket for a boiling later on to kill them, but keep the rest of the plant and use for your mulch/compose, heap or to start one going.

Or you could try the salt & vinagar treatment, but be warned salt, vinagar, weed killer, and pouring of boiling water onto your weeds will damage/kill the surrounding grass/plants too, as it gets splashed with the liquid or absorbed from the run-off.

Salt & Vinagar treatment; 1 cup salt, I use cheap own brand cooking salt, 4 litres white own brand cheap vinagar, mix in a Plastic container until salt is dissolved then spray or use a an old cup and pour on the weeds, taking care if possible not to wet the surrounding grass. I have found it easier to fill an old drinking bottle (the kind you buy milk drinks or drinking water, the ones with a spout) the water flow is more direct to where you want to place it, and you are reusing/recycling the bottles. I also wear rubber gloves when using S&V treatment as both can dry out the skin.

I have been using both methods on my garden for over 40 years and both have worked for me. Itcould be the music I listen to.

Aloha from Hawaii!

Which one of those methods would you use if you had a invasion of a pesky vine called Ivy Gourd growing on your property? I keep pulling them out and cutting them back so it hasn’t had a chance to cover my property like a blanket. Some places it is gorwing from I have good access to pull it from the roots, like under the house, or it grows threw a wall. If you have suggestions I’d apprecieate them. Please e-mail me @ teestayovahea@yahoo.com just incase my computer dies on me and I lose this page. My computer is old and is on it’s last leg. Thanks! Have a good day!

Tee

i have 300ft of fence line to keep clean of grass and weeds. i have a 15 gallon sprayer. how much salt should i mix with 15 gallons of water to keep fence line clear of weeds and grass?

I went to lowes and got 20lb bags of water softener salt for 5 bucks each. Boiled water and made a mixture of about 3 cups salt to each gallon of water, then mixed 1.5 gallons of the salt water with 1/2 gallon of vinegar in a 2 gallon sprayer and killed of an area 10ft by 30ft. 2 weeks later and noting grows!

To remove tree stumps, bore holes in the top and pour in buttermilk. There’s something about the acid in it that will decay the wood. It may take reapplication a few times and a few years, but it works.

I just had to add a couple comments. As a gardener I am always looking for better methods to make green/organic gardening more productive and less tiring. Sites such as this with homemade ideas are a wonderful tool. Thanks for the ideas! Just be careful to do your research.

Just hand pulling weeds may be an option for some, but is not practical for us.

Our family of 11 grows two 65’X110′ gardens to provide a large portion of our annual produce needs. Relying on hand or even just mechanical weeding is impossible.

We have found 2 “tools” that have greatly reduced our weeding workload and improved plant health/productivity:

CORN MEAL (not corn Gluten meal): For the last 2 years we have been experimenting with corn meal as a weed suppressant. We have either ground whole dried corn or just purchased some cheap cornmeal at the store. It works very well. It is inexpensive & easy to get. After planting plants, or after the seeds we have sowed emerge, we sprinkle the area lightly/evenly with corn meal. This greatly reduces the amount of weeds sprouting in that area.

One warning: Be careful where you put corn meal! We have applied it to a row of plants and then planted bean seeds just downhill. Apparently the rain carried corn meal over to the beans. We only had about 5-10% of the beans sprout!

MULCHES: We have used cardboard (a free waste product from my work) and black plastic (I know, its not a green choice, but it works great, allowing us to increase our garden size.) The mulches are laid down on the ground, secured then holes punched and plants placed. This has GREATLY reduced the amount of weeding. (We also sprinkle a little corn meal in each hole to reduce/eliminate weeds growing up in the hole!)

I would be very careful in the use of Salt: Be careful where you use it (and where it will wash into.) Used frequently salt can render the soil almost lifeless! I would never use it in a garden area, but it may be fine in driveways. There’s my thoughts

Scott

Thanks for this post. I used it and linked back in one of my posts because I was angry that my neighbor was so insensitive to nature. good information, I usually use newspapers under the mulch, works fine. Some weeds are fine, who cares.

This is the first year for my gardening attempt, and it is in dire need of weeding. My plants are coming up, and so are the weeds. Your 7 deadly weed killers sound quick, easy and judging from the other posts, effective. But what about their effect on the vegetables? Can I spray everything without fear of losing the garden, or do I need to spray each individual weed?

thank you, i was going to buy industrial strength weed killer but now will try boiling water on my driveway.

I know not exactly eco friendly but might add a bit of salt too.

Hi,
Many thanks for the brilliant ways of killing weeds domestically. I want to set up pesticides, herbicides and other agro-allied chemicals manufacturing production in my country (Nigeria, any advise for me?

Regards

Hana,
I work at a complex that is so very short of cash it is becoming very rare. I am the maintenance man there and it is my job to rid rocks, flower garden and cracks in the court yard. You reminded me of the salt factor. My repair man is very down on salt because it ruins machinery and and shrubbery. Thanks for the advice and the reminders. I’m sure that I will have great success. Have a great summer. Great tips, sorry I went on and on, I’m just very exicited.

I’m just wondering if using a small steam machine would work as well as boiling water. This way all you would have to do is plug in the machine with an outdoor extension cord instead of carrying hot pots of water back and forth. Has anyone used this method?

Do not use Round up or Zero in your gardens. It has a chemical in it called GLYPHOSATE which was originally designed to kill humans. They engineered it in germany spraying it on 300 prisoners a week later the grass area where they had been sprayed died. Later they used this in the vietnam war as an ingredient of Agent Orange. It is linked to Non Hodgkins Lymphoma( cancer of the Lymph Glands). Glyphosate is not to be sprayed in a water shed area. Are you sure the fruits that you buy at the supermarket or markets have not had round up used near by??
The world will have to start growing their own veges in their back yards- to avoid any toxic residues.

Use alternative natural remedies whereever possible in your lifestle. Add oil to Vinegar Salt weed killer, instead of soap. The oil helps the vinegar bind to the plant if you also mix molassas the blackness will attract heat to the plant burning it.

YES!
Too much salt poisons the land making it unfit to grow anything.

Check your history. Russia were victorious over the invading French by burning the crops and salting their fields. Thereby starving the French army the deeper into Russia they went.

Marlene

I have a brick and sand (and weed)patio…. We’ve had a lot of rain and just finished weeding it again… Fingers sore and knuckles scraped. I keep avoiding pesticides… Very interested in some of the methods mentioned, especially the salt method…I don’t have any inground plants nearby. Thinking of sprikling first with cornmeal, then brooming rock salt between the bricks… Thought the white would look nice to start, and after it rains the weeds would be taken care of… Would appreciate your thoughts… Many thanks.

Great site, great tips!

To those screaming about the effects of salt on groundwater, you contribute to the problem just by walking, driving or riding the bus to commute. The materials used to pave the roads and sidewalks are harmful to the groundwater as well, but I am willing to bet you use them.

Further, I bet if you dig deep enough, you will can find a reason internet use harms groundwater or the environment, if so, would you stop using it?

hey gang, dun mean to sound crude, but store ur piss in a bottle n fill it, place in direct sunlight for 2-3 days then add nail varnish n shake, the strength is incredible, it will kill grass, plants, anything, within days my brambles n thick thistles dried up n have stayed away for nine months! be careful tho, as animals n insects may fall really ill, dont ask how i came about this but i use it all the time, hope it helps, p.s dont boil the water, natural sunlight is fine, good luck

I have an area of approximately 1,200 sq. feet that has been overrun by various weeds. I want to kill all of them so I can plant flowers there next spring. Do any of these homemade recipes kill everything now but leaves the area plantable after the winter?

Thanks

Use a flamethrower! Quick, easy, fun.
Use small version if you don’t want to kill everything.
Make sure your pets don’t run infront of you.
🙂

5 Star Answer! Thank you for speaking the truth!

be careful its not GE corn products… read about how ge trees r ruining tasmanian water and soil.. mutation cells of animals and aquatic life. yikes..

Comments: Sounds great to kill weeds with what we can find in our home and very effectively. I will definitely try boiling water and salt.
Question:
Is it safe to kill weeds by these home made remedies on a grown up lwan? As it might effect the roots of Bermuda grass.

Yes salt will kill plants. Have you heard the biblical story ‘to salt the earth’? The Russians used salt to poison their fields so Napoleon’s invading armies could not grow anything to eat. Salt is a poison in large amounts, even to humans.

Try boiling water. It will not poison your land.

When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant. ~Author Unknown

O btw, as far as the boiling hot water I did give the surrounding soil a dig with a weed digger to channel the water directly around the plant, but the hot water did the rest of the job, leaving a limp plant that was so easy to remove I could pull them out by hand root and ALL!

Thankyou for this…

I used to use sodium chlorate but the E.U. banned it across the entire European union so due to a couple of hundred idiots who *might* use it to make bombs, 500 million people apparently can no longer be trusted. Pencil nibbling paper pushing bureaucrats. I do hope they have car accidents.

Luc – UK.

hey,

great advice! and one more thing to make you feel better about it. round up, the most common weed killer on the market, is made by one of the most noxious corporations on the planet–MONSANTO. they are the folks who have genetically engineered crops that don’t reproduce seeds so that farmers have to come back to them every year to buy more seeds. they are particularly nasty in india, apparently, where, i suppose, restrictions are more lax.

thanks again!!!

i have a motocross track on about a half acre of land and the weeds will never die no matter what i seem to use. ive tried your total vegetation killers like round up and others and there pricey!!! and dont seem to work very long! will using these cheaper household methods work???? and should they be mixed strong?? thanks for any advice willing to try anything!!!!

Well said!!!!! AMEN! The poor lady was just posting a few helpful tips on how to eliminate a weed and ppl get all emo abt it! I was just reading the comments to see if there were any posts on these solutions actually working and found a mini eco/earth war going on. If those folks feel so passionate why don’t they work on inventing other solutions to the salt trucks that come down my emergency snow route several times a winter? I appreciated the article and while I don’t particularly like to use chemicals (for fear they’ll enter my veggies~~ which are completely organic) I do have a truly nasty poison ivy issue that I may resort to using the bleach on. Unless u’ve had poison ivy in the creases of your neck and eye lids you have no idea what lengths I’ll go thru to rid my yard of it! 😉

I have a huge problem with cane poles or bamboo poles. i want to get rid of them. I heard you can use rock salt does anyone know what would work? Please let me know, thanks Misty

Boiling water! So so simple, yet deliciously effective on my patio weeds, thanks for the tip! I haven’t tried it on the lawns yet, but I like the idea of digging a channel around the dandelions (it’s always dandelions, isn’t it?!) and protecting the grass a little bit.

Happy gardening, people.

the greens are high in vitamins, but I was told NOT to eat them once the flower goes to seed then it is bad. Roots also are but I just can’t bring myself to eat them! Too many other tasty herbs to eat. LOL

Seriously? co2? Yes I understand the bleach… But everything else you mentioned shows a complete lack of any understanding at all.

Alcohol will evaporate very rapidly mostly within seconds, if you somehow happen to dump the whole bottle on the ground it will be broken down with in the soil in a matter of hours.

Salt, aka Sodium Chloride will be slowly dissolved by water and is beneficial for ground water in small amounts even for lakes and streams.

acetic acid is a naturally occurring chemical in the decomposition of certain plant sugars after the fermentation process, also would be easily broken down within the soil after a few days short of dumping an entire 55gallon barrel.

My compost pile creates more co2 than both of my vehicles, so please become more educated about these topics.

what do u mean by “Tell it to the Indians”

I am going to try the bleach in a area where my kids play is that OK?

atlanta pressure washing company

In addition to the peppers, Tabasco is vinegar and salt.

Also, Monsanto produced Agent Orange, round up has this chem, in it.

I agree with at least the principle of what you were saying at the start… I fully intend to go and pour some salt on my weeds right now. But as for trying to sound clever – binomial distribution wouldn’t really be a good statistical method to assess this. There are not 2 factors “salt” vs “herbicide”… i suppose you could argue for salt vs non-salt, but that isn’t really very helpful. For example, on this site alone there are 7 possible weed solutions – if chosen evenly, that would give a probability of about 14% of people going for salt. Far too many confounding factors in addition.

Agent Orange was 2,4-d-t, a derivative of 2,4-d. Different chemistry entirely from Round Up. There are plenty of truthful bad things you can say about these chemicals without resorting to misinformation.

Well ive tried the vinegar salt and dishsoap on my pathway at the beginning of the summer, it worked for a week or so, then everything came back with a passion, so i was considering using the bleach. I thought that might be expensive considering the pathway is more than fifty feet long. I think i will try the boiling water but i would also like to learn about a natural remedy to kill weeds in the lawn with out harming the grass. i have search the net for this and it seems i have to buy chemicals. yet when i bought weed and feed chemical the active ingrediant was a special kind of salt. so i was thinking a special mixture of salt water might be just as good as buying the weed and feed, yet i havent found anything to help me with this venture on the net yet. I would love to get any feed back on either of these topics. thank you for your time and website.
Anthony

After spreading cornmeal to prevent the seed growth of crab grass, how long do we have to wait until we can plant grass seed?

Virgil said, “What’s wrong with good old-fashioned hand picking of weeds with a removal tool, followed by a good layer of mulch to suppress new growth?”

Well I have a wide rock path, and use to pull the weeds, but now there is grass growing everywhere. I can’t dig up rocks and pulling a blade at a time would try anyone’s patience.

Would someone please tell me how much of each to use. I’m doing a science fair and i don’t want to mix them together.

Question re: salting. I have some blackberry bushes in my backyard (well, it’s more like a dirt lawn), and I’m hoping to get rid of them to lay down some gravel or mulch. Problem is, we have a beautiful tree nearby that I’d hate to kill. Can you spot kill bushes using salt, or is one of the other remedies above a better bet? Or, should I just throw down the gravel or mulch and deal with the weeds as they come up?

I know nothing about lawns or gardening so any help is appreciated.

Plain talcum powder is also very good for getting rid of any ants

Common everyone
We are sending rockets outer space and searching for plants and we are trying here to kill the plants

how selfish we are

The common cold and grass are very common and can’t be separated unless you want to live elsewhere in Flats or rocks or in other planets

The grass will keep growing as for as there is land with soil and moisture

I know we want to make home very beautiful

The hot water if the land is bigger you need lots of hot which is not best for many

Combining the bleach with any other chemicals or boiling hot water with anything also don’t do it

adding the chemicals will spoil the soil as the PH level of soil is not balanced and anything grown on it later will be no good

why can’t we simply grasp the grass by hand from it’s root and cover the floor with thick plastic sheets available in stores if you don’t want it keep growing

I am NOT a gardener! Would love to be one tho :). I have a very fierce rosebush (looks to be about as old as dirt with horrific thorns, but so beautiful) and some other bush that I don’t recognize that are being savaged by thistles. I have dug them, sprayed them and cursed them to no avail. How can I get rid of them without hurting my flowers? They have also invaded my daylillies…. 🙁

I always use hot water to kill the weeds in my garden. I wasn’t aware of the other methods, thank you for sharing this information.

Salt will kill weeds. However, if the ground is totally dried out from it (so that nothing will ever grow there), you may get overrun with ants (ant colonies) who like that environment… Then, you will be trying some of the same methods (boiling water, detergent, etc.) to get rid of the ants. Just saying…

Um, I think Marly is talking about American Indians (ie, Native Americans).

The EU has banned salt?? What do you cook with? Or have they just banned certain forms, or large quantities?

Hanna, I got carried away reading and replying to the comments here, and just want to tell you THANK YOU for posting this wonderful list of weedkillers. My teakettle got lost in my last move, but now I have a good reason to replace it: the weeds in the sidewalk cracks, and the ones that have just about taken over our brick sidewalk (yes, we have a 100-year-old sidewalk – now I understand why it’s one of the last ones in town!) I tried a big pot of boiling water, but by the time I carried it out to the sidewalk and then poured it out, it had cooled so much it wasn’t effective. So I’m gonna get me a BIG whistling teakettle and try it again – with vinegar, to prevent hard water deposits!

What about all the salt they use on the roads when they’re icy???? Where do you think that water goes??

stop blaming the landlord. YOU live there. Have a little pride in where you live no matter who owns it. I am a tenant and when someone drives by my house, they don’t say Oh lookie lookie the land lord is trash. No, dear that reflects on you. Grow up

Is apple cider vinegaar effective or does it have to be white vinegar?

I missed this one on my first time through – thanks for the tip! I could sure use a mulch that’s gentle on my knees, smells nice, AND is sustainable (since pine trees are grown as a cash crop, unlike cypress for example).

I had grass and some kind of wiry, small-leaved spreading bushy little weed coming up in the cracks in my sidewalk. Perfect for experimenting! My results:

Straight bleach poured on killed overnight.

Straight vinegar poured on strongly discouraged the weeds, but did not kill them.

Dilute vinegar, salt water, and vinegar-salt water solutions didn’t particularly bother them.

So I put some straight bleach in a spray bottle and went to work on my brick sidewalk. I spray a small area, wait a day or two, and pull the dead weeds; then I spray the next area. That way, the rest of it stays an attractive, soft carpet until I’m ready to clear it. (Half the children in town walk down our sidewalk every day, so that’s kind of important to me.)

Next year, when the weeds start to sprout, I’m gonna have a new teakettle, and I’ll be ready for them!!!

Don’t use the salt on your lawn. As previously mentioned, nothing will grow, where salt is used, for years.

P.S. The ginger takes months to rot -most good things take time. Maybe it would make a bio-fuel on the side?
I wonder if citric or acetic acid crystals put on a stump to soak in would kill it?
I think sulphate of potassium salts may be a fertilizer you can intentionally over-use on unwanted plants. Check it out!
Or maybe I should try all these ideas and report back.
The sun will whiten most clothes stains in a few days, So I don’t use bleach. It makes pants look bleached and horrible.
Where we are, the plants like and need a LITTLE sodium chloride. Very important to specify/ quantify a proportion/ratio accurately when querying, or passing along recipes/ ideas, so they are really usable by us out here. Thanks! have a happy one! (HAy-HO!)

how long do these last? will new weeds just pop up next spring from tap-roots?
thanks!

This has been gaining comments for quite a while! Nice work! It occurs to me that there is another means of controlling weeds, and even bugs that is really the greenest of all forms of pest control. It requires no energy to gather the components, package and ship them like pesticides, green pesticides, or even the household items we are talking about here. There is 0 environmental risk, and it is something we should all be doing anyway for other reasons. It is prevention. Keep our lawn mowers clean, keep our soil healthy, make good use of mulch, use the proper amount of water and fertility, and weeds are a lot smaller issue.

great info , thank you so much,,gonna try some things as i have 2 driveways that i wish to keep gravel an dirt as im kinda ol scool that way,,the weeds been makin me ol an tired

I boil 1 gallon of vinegar, then I dissolve 1/2 pound of salt in it and add some dishwashing detergent. The reason for boiling the vinegar is that salt will dissolve quickly. Put the solution in a sprayer and spray it on the weeds. It works great but not on weeds that have glossy leaves. Also it works best if you spray it in a warm sunny day. Round up has been linked to leukemia and non- Hodgkin lymphoma, it is NOT safe like they want you to believe. Do your own research online and stop buying carcinogenic chemicals for your yard!

Hi – enjoyed reading your comments about killing weeds. I have one comment to make about rubbing alcohol. I have used it successfully to kill scale & mealy bug on plants with no detrimental effects on the plant. It makes sense that the alcohol will dry out something, but I have had no problem with killing my plants while killing the insects.

Thanks for the ideas here. I have a query though. I’ve got Mare’s Tail (or Horse’s Tail) in my garden. My understanding is that this is a weed that thrives in soils with very poor nutrition (i.e. nothing else will grow in it so Mare’s Tail takes over.)
If I use the ideas on here on my garden, is it likely to just make my Mare’s Tail infestation worse?
Thanks in advance

Wonder sometimes how we define “weeds”. Where I live a lawn is supposed to look like a golf course. I am frustrated by the “good” grass vs “bad” grass distinction. I think dandelions are not only lovely in a salad when young greens but provide a burst of yellow spring color. Clover is also beautiful in bloom and gives to the bees without which we would have nothing. Watch the fields, there is nothing more beautiful than their turn from yellow to blue to red in the spring. Why do we have to subscribe to an ideal monoculture of what our nature should look like? That said, I will try boiling water on my brick walk way, only to “keep up with the joness”.

We had a similar problem when we moved into our house. It basically just took a lot of work. First, go through with a big shovel and get the big weeds out. Make sure you’re getting the roots. Next, I took a pick axe and went to town; I had to tear up some patchy grass spots. I sprayed the whole area with a regular weedkiller and then rototilled to loosen up the soil. Finally, I sprayed once more with weedkiller and laid down sod. It took months of work but now we have a nice grassy yard.

Just used boiling water. Smelled like cooking greens. What a great idea!

Totally agree about dangerous gas! My neighbor was putting lots of bleach down on their patio and it ran onto an area of soil used by all the local dogs and the resultant gas hospitalized her.

I’m with you on that, Kiki! Remember, “a weed is a plant out of place” – if you want it, it’s not a weed! I allow limited amounts of clover in my lawn, and all the poppy mallow I can get to grow. (Not dandelions, though – a few are lovely, but they can quickly take over and become a mess.) As long as I have enough nice soft green grass to get from one part of my yard to another, that’s all I need at my stage in life.

But I do my best to murder the weeds on my brick walkway (where do you have brick?? not many towns do anymore) because the roots go down between the bricks and are hard to get up; and because the most flourishing weed there is knotweed – which makes a nice soft green carpet all spring, and then in June (when the roots are well established) the stems turn woody and knotty, so it’s impossible to pull and awful to walk on! 😛

we removed 50 years of ivy with roundup + black plastic; next time, i will try vinegar + black plastic!

I have heard that salt from our water softeners fort wayne can help a little. This summer I feel like my weeds have been out of control. I’ll willing to try anything and everything to keep them maintained!

I’ve been pouring boiling water on my sidewalk weeds. It’s time consuming but worth the effort to avoid chemicals. Love the salt idea, I’ll try that next!

If you live in the south, were they do not salt, salt your weeds. If you live in the north, where they have real winters, use other methods to kill the weeds. Salt problem solved.

We need corn gluten meal, not corn meal. I have tried to get CGM from feed stores and have not been successful. I live on a producing farm and shop regularly from the local big name brand store.

I was using Limeaway to get rid of the rust on my driveway, then i decided to pour some on the weeds growing along side of the driveway, WOW!!! Works faster than anything i’ve ever used before…now i just get Limeaway & dilute it a little bit….(just wanted to share that it made feel like Mr.Wizard)…lol

BEST SITE EVER!!! But will it work on (all) the p-ivy, p-oak etc.. I have covering my yard? And what effect do any of them have on spiders? HELP! Over rum with them all. Really need advice quick, I have 2 grandkids and 1 on the way. Thanks to all for the information.

I’m having trouble with the Reply links. Wanted to let people know I found corn gluten meal by the 5-lb bag on Amazon.com. Will report back when I’ve tried it.

I HAVE ALOT AND I MEAN (ALOT) OF EARTHWORMS IN MY YARD, CAN I USE SALT TO KILL THE WEEDS AND NOT HARM MY EARTHWORMS??? ♥♥

I used straight boiling water on my pavers & driveway & the next day NOT a weed in sight. Thanks for the info! ♡

If I were a plant, that hard rock and heavy metal music would definitely put an end to my existence. Thanks for the S&V recipe. Plan to use it real soon.

Those big Black ants may be carpenter ants, not a good thing, they will eat you out of house and home literally if you give them some time. Best to rid yourself of them asap

Thanks hanna for posting it..almost got being crazy thinking how to get rid the weeds..almost 7years after getting married..we spent so much time,effort money on always pulling the weeds..after pulling it after a day or two it starts to grow again and again.pulling it spent more time than to keep it clean after…it really fast to grow.eve ryt now thats why i cant try it so i’l start tomorrow and ihope it will work…and i really owe you for giving the tips…thank you so much..(actually im researchinh for the chemical solution what is the best to buy.but i’ve read this so..thanks a lot..

This is a great resource! Thank you! Question: I really like the boiling water especially for cracks in driveway. I also have a couple of trees, large, each of which has small rocks surrounding it where weeds thrive. Is there any danger of killing tree roots underneath where those weeds are? I saw a post up above somewhere that said that would be a problem. However, I was thinking if I use small amounts in small areas each time that it shouldn’t be an issue. It would seem to me that large roots would not be susceptible to that. Also it would also seem that the water would not be as hot after seeping through the soil. However, I am not a gardener so would like to get others thoughts on this. Thanks!

50# bags of salt are available at tractor supply year round for $7.00—-the cheapest way!! I use a hand held grass seeder to spread into my gravel drive and let mother nature do her job—work is a four letter word!

I’m trying to kill the weeds in my vegetable garden. I want my garden safe from the chemicals but there are small weeds everywhere that I can’t pull. You can hardly see my plants.. I just dont have that much time. i live in michigan so our growing season is short. What would you recommend for that? Can I spray something on the weeds carefully not getting my vegetables? Any suggestions? It’s not a huge garden but its large enough that the weeds are overwhelming.

These are fantastic suggestions. The salt in boiling water with a bit of dish soap is AMAZING!!! I live in San Diego and recently dug up my grass (brown through most of the year) lawn and replaced it with decomposed granite, a few larger boulders and a variety of succulents. And wouldn’t you know it? When I want the grass, it won’t grow. When I don’t want it, I can’t get rid of the *#%$ stuff!

On the suggestion of a landscaper friend, I used Round-Up and it did not work on the grass, though I suspect some of the other plants I wanted may have met an early death. The boiling water by itself was a great solution, but I found I had to go back a time or two to some of the hardier specimens. Once I added in the salt and dish soap, though, INSTANT DEATH! Seriously. I’d pour the boiling water and salt on the bits of grass popping up that I didn’t want, and poof! A couple hours later, they’re shriveled up brown & dead. Screw you, Monsanto! This is cheaper, more effective, doesn’t require me to go to Home Depot and while I’m pretty sure salt isn’t great for my plants either, I feel way better not supporting a corporate giant.

Sorry that you are so misinformed, or a stooge for Monsanto. If you did ANY homework you would know GMOs are proven to be a cause of LeakyGut Syndrome, which is recognized by the AMA as a disease that results from GMO corn, and the pesticides that explode the gut of the corn beetle, work on you at a much smaller scale, causing undigested food to enter the blood stream and cause sever allergic reactions. This is one reason that so many kids are allergic to many common foods and other ingredients that were never a problem before. eat all the GMO crap you want, my family is eating organic.

I hope no one took Jeff Bigman seriously about undigested food entering the bloodstream. This is not a possibility. If you have had rudimentary biology, you know that. Surprises me what ludicrous statements are made and no one challenges them. I hope it is because they think that no moderately educated person would pay any attention to them.

I have noticed that some people have large weed patches to contend with,just an idea but perhaps renting a portable steam cleaner and blasting the whole area with hot steam?

1 cup of White Vinegar
1 teaspoon of salt
Weed and bug killer