I hate weeds. I also hate chemicals. Since buying our house 4 1/2 years ago, I have managed to eliminate our use of chemicals and potentially hazardous cleaning products, and yard maintenance products. Keeping the yard weed-free has proved to be more of a challenge than I hoped for. I have many not-so-fond memories of pulling weeds as a child. Well, now I re-live those memories on a weekly basis. Usually. These last two weeks have gotten away from me and as I surveyed the yard today, I realized I had a jungle of weeds on my hands. I knew I wouldn't get to actually pull them all until later this week, so I found a quick solution in the meantime. I've used vinegar before to kill dandelions and some various other weeds, but using a spray-bottle is tiring, and pouring vinegar didn't work too well as it used up the vinegar way too fast. Then, I had a brain-wave. I went to W*l-Mrt and bought an $8 weed sprayer.
This I filled up with a gallon of vinegar (real grain vinegar, not the generic brand which could be made from petroleum by-products-Heinz is the best) and I added a couple tablespoons of dish soap to make the vinegar stick to the weeds. The pump sprayer worked wonderfully! I only used 2 gallons of vinegar for my whole yard ($5 total) and my weeds have since shrivelled and died.
I purposefully did this on a day when there would be no rain as the sun helps the vinegar "burn" the weeds.
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