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Green Acres Landscaping Resource Center

Using Vinegar As Natural Weed Killer

You may live in Centreville, Fort Belvoir, Newington, Reston, or Springfield, VA. But no matter where your home is, when practicing natural weed control, take to heart the dictum: Know thine enemy! Study up on the weeds you're battling before you use the vinegar on them. Target annual weeds with your vinegar natural weed killer before they set seed, to prevent them from spawning a new generation to give you headaches next year.

By contrast, early fall is the best time to use this natural weed killer on perennial weeds. Early fall is when you'll want to apply vinegar to dandelions (but snap off the flowers whenever they appear, to prevent them from going to seed in the meantime). Dandelions, although their leaves die back in winter, do live on through their roots. So preventing them from going to seed isn't enough.

Fortunately, knowing a little botany can help you considerably in your battle with perennial weeds like dandelions. You see, in early fall, nutrients are transferred from the dandelion leaves down to the roots. This transfer, which continues until the first killing frost, presents you with an opportunity to hit dandelions where it really hurts! Vinegar natural weed killer applied during this time is absorbed by the leaves and passed on to the roots, following the same path down as the nutrients. The plants are killed -- naturally. Repeated applications may be necessary.

How to Apply Vinegar to Kill Weeds

Listen to the weather forecast, and find out when you’ll be experiencing a few continuous days of sunshine. At the beginning of this period, spray or paint the vinegar onto the weeds you wish to kill.

Why is a sunny period required?

Two reasons:

• You need to saturate the weeds' leaves with the vinegar, and rain would wash too much of the vinegar off the foliage.
• The real damage to the sprayed weeds begins the next couple of days after the application, when the sun hits the leaves.

Some people who use vinegar as a natural weed killer like to boil the vinegar, prior to application. Through such boiling, you may actually be able to gain a concentrate higher in acetic acid. Of course, it certainly can't hurt to boil the vinegar; in fact, many folks report success killing weeds by simply pouring scalding water on weeds!

Vinegar As Natural Weed Killer: The Stronger Stuff

It is possible to buy products with a higher acetic acid content than that found in ordinary vinegar. Such products can be purchased at farmer's stores or from restaurant supply businesses. But the potency of these acetic acid products can render them less safe to use than household vinegar. To me, that puts them at odds with the whole concept of using "natural weed killers." Besides, you have to go out of your way to find these products, and the idea behind the present article was to introduce a handy natural weed killer, something you can just pull off a kitchen shelf and experiment with.

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Green Acres Landscaping is a full service landscape design company, serving both residential and commercial clients in the Northern Virginia area since 1992. Our experienced team is ready to help you with any landscaping project, large or small.

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