DIY a stay at home dad can do: Kill weeds without chemicals-Update!

Just over a month ago we started an experiment killing weeds around the house.  We had two areas as our sample, one was treated with boiling hot water and the other with white vinegar. 

The area that the boiling water was treated has had no growth.  Zip, nada.  That, plus the weeds pulled out effortlessly.  Obviously the downside to boiling water is the danger factor and the energy required to boil the water.  If you have access to lots of boiling hot water, that’s the way to go.  However, since most of us don’t have an industrial kitchen or boiling water coming out the pipes; let take a look at how the white vinegar did.

The white vinegar killed the weeds effectively.  A reader tipped us off that if we added salt to our white vinegar mixture it would do an even better job.  I do recall something about ‘salting the Earth’…and that reader was correct.

Adding salt to the white vinegar mixture killed the weeds even quicker.  You do have to spray the mixture on the weeds again, but there are no chemicals, is 100% natural and much cheaper than name brand weed killer.

We did put the vinegar mixture in one of the large spray containers that used to belong to a name brand weed killer.  That was a mistake.  White vinegar makes things rust easily, add salt to that and it does it even quicker.  The spray container has small metal screws inside it which rusted the moment that the mixture went across it.    It even stained concrete.  That stain does fade a bit with time, but it’s still there after a couple weeks.

The salt-white vinegar mixture was transferred back to the small bottle with no metal parts.  You need to pull the weeds in-between applications, but the salt-white vinegar mixture kills anything very quickly.  Be very careful not to spray it near anything metal as it will stain on impact.  It will also kill anything, so don’t spray it on plants that you want to see again.

Are there any other organic garden tips that you have that we need to know?