Hands Down the Best Way to Kill Weeds and It’s Not Roundup

Just to put It out there, salt, when used in reasonable amounts, will not kill asparagus. So if asparagus is your thing u can use salt in this(preferably isolated) bed and control weeds in this way. Asparagus is resistant to the effects of salt but dont cover the ground and make it look like its snowing and expect everything to be ok. Also not good for under 1
Yr shoots

thanks

Lawn weeds like dandelions are a joy to eliminate. It’s done with coffee beans, barley and sometimes hops. Here’s how…

Buy yourself a Fiskar weed gun. You know, the post with a tube or claw you stomp in over Mr. Weed and pry him out. With just a little practice, you can do it with 1 hand. If it is before 11AM, the other hand holds a coffee while meandering around your lawn. After 11, a beer is quite acceptable. Just do this every couple of days. It’s quite relaxing, almost theraputic, even zenish. In a couple of weeks, no more weeds and your lawn is airated as well.

Your welcome.

Unfortunately Monsanto is an enemy of the people, putting GMO’s and other crap in our food. It is a fact that Monsanto is working hand in hand with Bill Gates to reduce the population. That means, roundup causes cancer and probably a host of other things. Their goal is to eliminate you, that is a fact, so if I were you I would NEVER buy ROUNDUP again. The FDA has the same agenda, population control. I mean come on, it’s poison and they love for you to use it around your home, family, crops, and animals. Perfect.Buy more. NOT!!!

Salt is not good for the soil or other plants or next plants. perhaps Baking soda a better idea.

I tried the same method of vinegar, table salt and Dove soap. I have a long, badly heaved interlocking driveway so I don’t find the pump sprayers very effective. Even if you hit every nook and cranny the amount of spray is not that much. So I tried a paint roller. I sopped up a good amount and just rolled it on. Way faster and highly effective

This year a I sprayed our gravel with roundup 365 and I mix it extra strong because the premix is a joke well I will never waste my money again I’m done with roundup and I’ll find something else to use it’s just unbelievable never had this happen before maybe they have changed something in the chemicals

I am attempting to kill dewberry vines and wild grape vines along my pasture fence lines PERMANENTLY!! Has anyone here used the vinegar/ salt/ soap recipe on these aggressive vines with success? I just want them GONE. TIA

I THOUGHT THIS WAS ABOUT KILLING WEEDS, NOT THE GRASS TOO.

Another great alternative is a propane torch. They’ll run you $20-$30 at places like Harbor Freight or Northern Tool. Make sure you get the kind with a hose that hooks up to a propane tank like you use on a grill. The ones that use the small camp stove canisters are junk. It kills everything without ruining the ground and yard work has never been so much fun. I’ve burned a fence line clear or ivy and other weeds in the rain with it.

Harden sprayer? Is that one tou hook up to a hose and mix with water?

I spray my tomato plants with a mixture of water and dawn dishwashing soap it didnt kill anything around it or my plants so I dont think this will kill weeds or grass

Actually kills dandelion and blackberry briars very well.

From the company that brought you Agent Orange, “Round UP”

Seven points on this discussion.

(1) Salt is not exclusively sodium chloride. There are many salts. A salt is the reaction product of an acid with a base. Sodium chloride (table salt) is the product of hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide. Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate, MgSO4) is a true salt, the product of sulfuric acid and magnesium hydroxide.

(2) Sodium chloride (NaCl) does not poison the soil. All soils have varying quantities of sodium in them. Sodium does cause soils to become impervious to water by locking onto clay micelles and displacing calcium (Ca), causing the soil to become like concrete. However, the condition is not permanent unless you keep adding sodium every year. Even then you can cause a sodic soil to recover by adding gypsum (calcium sulfate, CaSO4), another salt, or sulfuric acid (H2SO4), which reacts with soil calcium to create gypsum, which displaces sodium. The sodium is released, becomes soluble and leaches away with either irrigation water or rain.

(3) When a salt is mixed with vinegar (acetic acid, CH3COOH), it dissociates into cations and anions. In the acid solution in vinegar (approx 5% to 6 % acetic acid) its reaction with plant tissues is a combination of an acid burn and a salt burn. The acid disrupts cell membranes. The salt causes cells to lose water. The combination is a rapid burn and dry down of treated foliage. You can use a lot of different salts to get this effect. The alkali metal salts (lithium [Li], sodium [Na], potassium [K], rubidium [Rb], cesium [Cs]) are the most toxic, followed by the alkaline earth metals (beryllium [Be], magnesium [Mg], calcium [Ca], strontium [Sr], barium [Ba]). Their salts increase in toxicity with molecular weight, i.e. sodium chloride (NaCl) is more toxic to plants than lithium chloride (LiCl), and potassium chloride (KCl) is more toxic than sodium chloride. Furthermore, their halide salts, particularly with fluorine (F) or chlorine (Cl) are the most toxic. Sulfate salts (SO4) are less toxic.

(4) Finally, if you want a really hot “salt & vinegar” weed killer, try vinegar and potassium chloride. Potassium chloride is found in “Light Table Salt” (not salt substitute) and is more expensive than ordinary table salt. However, fertilizer grade potassium chloride (murate of potash, 0-0-60 fertilizer) is cheaper than table salt. It is not as pure as table salt because there are insoluble components. But if you mix the murate of potash (KCl) with vinegar at the rate of 1 or 2 cups to a gallon of vinegar, you will get a very hot weed killer.

(5) With 0-0-60 murate of potash, there is a mineral component that is not readily soluble in water or even dilute acetic acid (vinegar). Therefore, when you mix the murate of potash with the vinegar stir vigorously until most of it is dissolved. Let is stand until the insoluble mineral component settles out. Then transfer the clear solution to your sprayer. Then add liquid detergent, and do not stir to avoid foaming.

(6) The effect on soil is negligible because unlike sodium, potassium is more reactive and does not cause the soil to become alkaline. Potassium is a plant nutrient, and once in the soil, it provides additional nutrients. If you check your garden fertilizer label, you will find that it contains potash (potassium) usually in the form of murate of potash (potassium chloride, KCl). Potassium, like nitrogen in fertilizer is quite water soluble and will readily leach out of the root zone of plants. So it must be replaced periodically.

(7) My experience with potassium chloride fertilizer showed me how toxic it can be. About 35 years ago, I was an agricultural consultant with a large, multi-state farmers cooperative association. An orchard owner in Washington, Utah, asked for a fertilizer recommendation after a soil test showed a potassium deficiency. I recommended about a quarter pound per tree applied in the drip zone of the trees. The “drip zone” of a tree is the area under the tree just where the branches of a tree end. It is the area where the maximum number of feeder roots exist closest to the soil surface.

The orchard owner, however, was a city guy who had never farmed anything before. He had moved to the rural area of Washington County to become a gentleman farmer, while he continued to commute by air to his office in Los Angeles. He had no idea where a tree’s drip zone was, so he placed the murate of potash against the trunks of his trees. A few months later, he called to say that his trees were all dead and had been killed by the fertilizer. When I investigated, I found that the murate of potash, still in crystalline form, in direct contact with the tree trunks. It had destroyed the bark, cambium and water conductive outer xylem of the trees. I explained where the drip zone was and that his lack of understanding had caused him to kill his own trees. We saved most of them by bridge grafting, and about half survived. But this demonstrated how phytotoxic concentrated potassium chloride is.

I have poison ivy and other weeds growing on and around my fruit trees. If I use the second recipe would it kill my trees too?

That was the idea. Kill everything so that nothing will come back. I want to clear a patch of land to put a greenhouse on it. Weeds are now gone, but will come back. I want everything dead. Extinct. Gone. Never to return…

As for all you yahoos yelling about salt . . it’s MY land. Not borrowed. I’m not a tenant. I OWN it. If I want to put salt in the soil and sterilize it, then I will. If you don’t like it, find another planet to live on you tree hugging a-holes.

Salt poisons the soil. It makes it barren for generations. In the past, when a conquering nation wanted to destroy a land/people, they would sow the water and soil with salt. (The Bible has examples.) Not all pollutants are new inventions.

PLEASE stick to vinegar and dish soap, etc. Even if you never want ANYTHING to grow in that spot EVER again, what if you sell the house? What about future generations?

Remember, we do not own the world. We merely borrow it from our children.

This is not a criticism of anyone. Just please understand that the consequences of salting the earth last a very long time.

Sure fell in love with the ‘natural’ home remedy herbicide…Until I read about the toxicity of each and not to mention the permanent soil sterilization that salt does. As to price – Still not a winner. White Vinegar is between $2.50 to $3.50 a gallon, disregard the price of an oz of dishwashing liquid and skip the salt and you are going to use that straight no dilution. Eliminator (A glyphosate only weed killer is currently $34.99/gallon) in a gallon container using at the strongest recommended concentration is going to cost you just under $.70/gallon that’s bout 25% the price of just white vinegar and with white vinegar you get a top only kill of everything and with glyphosate you get a systemic kill. BOTH break down in the soil – that is unless you add salt to the ‘home remedy’ mix and then the price goes some more and you render that soil sterile for a lengthy period of time. And lest we forget, that salt will leach into the surrounding soil with affects determined by how high that concentration rises over time.
I’m not pro-roundup or any other chemical. BUT given that the EPA still has not found a reason to ban or provide any cancer-causing connection to glyphosate. Further at least one other report gives salt and acetic acid (the active ingredient in white vinegar) a higher toxicity rating to humans than glyphosate. I have to say – I’ll save my money and stay with Roundup or other glyphosate containing products.
One last point – in ancient times the conquering armies that wanted to infllict the most long lasting damage on their enemies – would salt their fields to prevent any crops from growing for years. Once dissolved into the soil the soil was rendered useless for crops.

We tried this concoction this Spring on our front yard. We used Epsom salt instead of table salt from a recipe I found on Facebook. We sprayed it on dandelions in the front yard and it killed the leaves and the grass around the plant. However the dandelions quickly went to seed and the seeds blew away. I don’t recommend this method.