I heard it works.And not harmful to birds. Need to spray my gravel driveway. Got so many ground feeding birds-like doves. Many on gravel area. want to kill weeds.-got them bringing more this month.
I haven't done it yet, but I found a recipe for weed killer using pickling vinegar instead of regular 5% acidity vinegar. I think you could use regular vinegar if pickling vinegar isn't available. 1 gal. vinegar 1 oz. orange oil 1 t. liquid soap mix together and put in a hand sprayer. spray as needed. I need to do this as soon as I get the orange oil.
Use Horticultural Vinegar for weeds, it has a 20% acidity level and is found in the garden supply areas of almost all nurseries and garden centers. Put it in a sprayer and spray directly on the weed only, don't use a hose-end sprayer on the whole area, it can kill grass and plants too. Kitchen vinegar has been reduced with water to only 5% acidity and while it could possibly kill the above ground part of weeds, it isn't strong enough to get down to kill the roots.
We use hort. vinegar when we can get it, regular vinegar when we can't. I use it in a trigger bottle with the spray set on "jet" to kill weeds in the flower beds. The hort. vinegar works quickly and effectively, the kitchen 5% works, but sometimes takes two or three applications (and nothing short of a missle takes out our thistles!).
If you mix a solution of 1/2 gallon vinegar, 1 cup salt & 1/2 gallon water, shake it up good so the salt dissolves, it definitely does kill weeds ( and your plants, too! So use it as you would use RoundUp... carefully.) I use because of the dogs, but it isn't toxic to any animal that I know of. If you're looking for a really cheap replacement for RoundUp, this isn't it. It's a bit less expensive but it isn't a whole lot, though.Vinegar has become pricey for some unfathomable reason.
I'm definitely going to give this a try by the new grates at the back steps. And on our gravel driveway.
Very good refresher for me. I recall years ago finding a similar post, but remember not being able to find the vinegar in the garden store. I'll have to take a look again, we have lots of dogs and kids here so I won't be using anything toxic. Thanks for the info.
I personally have not used this sort of therapy...but several of my gardening neighbours do and have had some success. Good luck with it. I have a feeling that it will not harm your birds....however, after a couple of days you could always water the drive and thereby dilute the residue of the vinegar that may still be present on the pebbles or just under them.
I ordered my orange oil last night. So I should be getting it soon and giving this a try, although I will use regular vinegar, I haven't found pickling or hort. strength, yet.
I found this vinegar today in the grocery store for less than $4.00. If the recipe calls for 1/2 gallon of vinegar at 20% acidity and 1/2 gallon of water... this one comes pretty close. It's a gallon mixed down to 9% acidity. ( photo / image / picture from cherylad's Garden ) So I mixed in a cup of salt and put some in an old window-cleaner spray bottle and sprayed this area with weeds and grass. test area for vinegar/salt mix ( photo / image / picture from cherylad's Garden ) Let's see how it works!
Cool Cheryl. My orange oil came this afternoon, but we are under a sever weather watch..1-2 inches this evening So I have to wait a day or two to do my experiment. AND I do have weeds to try this on , imagine that!
IT WORKS, I used 1/2 gallon 5% vinegar, 1/2 gallon water, and 1 cup salt. Sprayed sidewalk cracks at 9:30 am this morning. It is now 2:45 pm and weeds are dead. Thanks Koszta kid for bringing this to our attention.
My mixture seems to be working pretty good too. I don't know if it just killed the "surface" part of the weeds or it got all the way down to the roots. But there's definitely some killing going on! I'm going to give my complete test area a spraying again once I check the forecast and make sure there's no rain for a few days. And my thanks to Kozta for this tip too! I feel so much better about using this around my dog.
