vinegar for weeds?

 

i was just surprised to read in the smh you can spray weeds with white
vinegar, (to kill them, not to make them taste better ;-)

surprised, because i haven't ever heard such a thing!!!

has anyone tried this? i am having increasing problems with sheep sorrel &
had intended to spray them with zero once the leaves are growing again, but
would be more than pleased to give vinegar a go instead. i'm not big on zero
but i can't think of a better way to deal with the sheep sorrel, which is
becoming out of control & virtually impossible to clear by hand-weeding &
grows in places that can't be solarised. i also get some kind of weedy
clover thing in my paths, which annoys me beyond endurance.

thanks in advance~
kylie

 

0tterbot wrote:

I reckon white vinegar won't help anything growing nearby and if you use
enough of it, it might wind up changing the pH of your soil. My granny
used boiling water on stubborn weeds and it was 100% effective. Not very
nice for the worms, though...

--
Trish Brown

Newcastle, NSW, Australia

 


well, i went without saying that you're supposed to keep it off the soil &
off other plants, trish :-) equally you need to keep zero off everything
else too... (including oneself, which wouldn't be a problem with vinegar).

 My granny

boiling water is excellent for broadleaf weeds or grass clumps, that's what
i use. it will kill anything (yes, including the wee creatures nearby) but
it's just not practical for any upstanding plant, you can't get the water
onto it properly. a steamer thingy would be cool, but i'm not getting one of
those!
thanks!
kylie

 


Gardening Aus recently had a show where the elderly chap in Qld (Colin by
name if I got his name right) had a whole lot of organic solutions for
probs.  One of the organic solutions was the vinegar weedkiller, but it's
not just vinegar.  The recipe is 1 Cup cooking salt (not iodised) dissolves
in a Litre vinegar - brush on weeds and dont' get it on anything else
because he says it'll kill it.

The other organic solution he had which we're now trialling is to stop
grasshoppers which was 1 Cup molasses dissolved in 1 litre of water and
sprayed on plant foliage - this solution seems to actually be working.

But back to the f***ing sheep sorrel!  I too have a problem with it but more
in my paths than in my beds (generally).  One bed does have a problem with
it but I didn't prepare that bed at all well and one thing I've found with
sheep sorrel is that it really doesn't seem to like well prepared beds - it
grows best in shit soil.  I've also found that Roundup does not kill it.

Sorrel in paddocks is always an indication to farmers that they need to
apply lime.  We did that on a paddock of our other farm and that has
certainly worked well in the paddock - you dont' look across the paddock now
and see that typical red tinge of the sorrel flowering - it's still there of
course but the other species are more dominant now.  It works to some extent
to check it so you might try adding lots of dolomite and see if that helps.

 



You know I tried that vinegar and salt and you could leave the 2 togeth for
10 years in a jar and you would have salt grains on the bottom and vinegar
on top. The salt doesn't dissolve even if you shook the jar for a week