Killing weeds with vinegar

I seen a mixture on the Internet. 1 gallon white vinegar, 2 cups Epsom salt and 1/4 cup of blue Dawn dish soap.
 
Hi, Steve;

My wife uses undiluted vinegar, but she adds about a teaspoon of dishwashing detergent per gallon. There is also a recipe for an effective weed killer made from those two ingredients plus some amount of Epsom salt. Easy to find it online if you're interested.

Costco has the best price on vinegar that I know of. Last summer it was $3.29 for two gallons. This year it's $4.19 as the value of money keeps going down.

Stan
 
Saw a similar recipe online several years ago involving vinegar, dish soap, and plain salt. Not sure of exact proportions, and I doubt if it needs to be terribly exact anyway. I used full-strength vinegar in mine. Worked fairly well, but it took quite a while--a week or so--for it to have much effect. Went to use some the next year and it had totally rusted up the cheapie spray bottle I'd put it in. No biggie, and I felt the experiment was worth the minimal cost, but it's far from a magic bullet.
 
There's a horticultural strength vinegar that's about 4 times as strong as regular vinegar. I don't know if it's even legal in the United States, but you can get it in Canada. I use regular grocery store white vinegar full strength on horsetail with mixed success. Works better than anything else I've found, though, as most herbicides I've tried won't do a thing on horsetail.
 
You need 20% vinegar or the weeds will laugh at you, I've seen it at Lowes or the local Garden Center. Use it straight, $20/gal, pretty pricey and PPE is required.

Nate
 
That's the one my sister just sent me. Seems the White Vinegar is just 5% acidity off the shelf. It's probably the salt part that kills them. Kinda like making your own Sea Foam fuel treatment from mineral oil, naptha, and alcohol, for internal combustion engines (which by the way is a great "snake oil").....let's see now......what viscosity of MO and what additives, what kind of naptha as there are many, wood or ethyl alcohol, how much of what? Why bother when you have something that really works unless you have nothing else to do and lately, with this monsoon we have been having, I have had plenty of free time.
 

I tried the vinegar and salt trick once on a gravel driveway. When I got done, that part of the yard smelled like a dill pickle, but nothing else happened. I allowed a full week for it to work, and then went to town and bought a jug of Glyphosate.
 
There was a guy in Florida who designed a machine to kill weeds. It used a boiler and sprayed boiling water on the weeds to kill them. I watched the application video; they had to travel real slow. Apparently that didn't catch on, never saw anything more about it.
 
The vinegar that organic farmers use for weed control is rally strong stuff, like somebody else mentioned 20% acetic acid. I've tried it with mixed results, need to apply more than once and it's not terribly cheap.
 
Yep. That's the one I use. You usually have to apply it twice, but it works pretty good. Picked up a cheap plastic sprayer at walmart. No metal parts.
 
It works well. I buy Target's house brand vinegar, mix half a gallon vinegar with 1.5 gallons of water. It kills broadleaf weeds, such as creeping Charlie, better than any weed killer for lawns I have found in a store.
 
(quoted from post at 02:11:36 05/28/15) You need 20% vinegar or the weeds will laugh at you, I've seen it at Lowes or the local Garden Center. Use it straight, $20/gal, pretty pricey and PPE is required.

Nate

Any % will work. If 20% works, then 10% will work if you use twice as much.
 
(quoted from post at 16:58:48 05/28/15) Picked up a cheap plastic sprayer at walmart. No metal parts.

Interesting you would mention this. Thinking I would (finally) get a good sprayer that would last more than one season, I bought an expensive, all-metal sprayer. For some reason, the inside of the receptacle is painted. Out of the box it looked sharp! The first time I used it, I was proud to have upgraded. But, every time since the first time I have had to disassemble it, air blow out all hoses, rinse out paint chips from the receptacle and even then it will clog with new paint chips before one tank is sprayed.
 
UPDATE TO SPRAYER ISSUE -

There is a value to going to a family-owned hardware store! Some of the national chains have reasonable customer service, but can't match a good family-owned store!

I went to such a store recently to buy yet another sprayer after my deluxe model finally quit responding to even my aggressive efforts to clean it out. And, I got an education from the fine fellow at the store. When you rinse out the sprayer after using it, use some [b:f3fa92e7c3]ammonia[/b:f3fa92e7c3]. That will cut through the chemicals (in this case, vinegar) you sprayed and flush out all the lines and fittings.
 

Just plain old table salt is very effective at controlling weeds. Just sprinkle it on the ground where the weeds are growing.
 

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