Those pesky weeds are sprouting up, without fail, right in the middle of your garden and exactly where you don’t want them. No question – you need to kill them before they strangle the life out of your precious flowers and produce that you’ve worked so hard to grow. Before you run out to the nearest hardware store to overspend on chemicals that may or may not work in the long term, try one of these homemade weed killers that just may remedy your problem.
Boiling Water
Suffocate those bad boys with a pot of boiling water. That’s right, even just a couple sprinkles of scalding hot water will leave them shriveled up a couple days after the assault. The only thing left to do will be pull them up once they’re finally dead.
Cover Them Up
With what? Get creative. Newspaper, hay, pine straw, moss, you name it. People forget that weeds are plants too, so they need all the same things that your other plants do: water, air and sunlight. Putting a tarp, for example, over a large patch of weeds for several days will deprive it of sunlight and even water, which will leave it lifeless in the long haul.
Salt
If you’re looking to be proactive, salt is the way to go. Stock up on salt at the end of winter and sprinkle on the weeded parts of your gardens, yards and walkways before they have a chance to eagerly sprout right up in the springtime. This way, if they even sprout, they’ll have very little life, and will be super easy to kill. Salt is powerful stuff when it comes to plant life, so be very, very careful with it. Take care to restrict it to areas where weeds are dominant. It’s not for those one or two weeds that keep popping up between your tomato plants, unless you want to kill your maters, too. Also, salt can erode concrete over time, so be sure to sweep up your remnants and mess if you’re throwing salt on concrete or brick surrounding weeds.
Vinegar
Here’s one you may not be surprised about: vinegar. Vinegar has a tremendous number of uses for those of us who like to steer clear of chemicals, so add weed killing to the top of the list. The acid present in a cup full of vinegar is enough to suffocate and eat away at the nutrients in the weeds that cause them to thrive. Douse the weeds with vinegar, and they’ll most definitely be dead as doornails within a few days. This especially works will for weeds with long stems and roots, like dandelions, dock and plantain.
So, before you go spraying pesticides, artificial weed killers and other chemicals on your weeds (not to mention your lawn and your garden, since that’s likely where your weeds are), check your pantry for some homemade weed killers; you may have just what you need if you can find some salt, newspaper, vinegar, and a pot to boil water in.
Do you know of any natural ways to kill weeds?
