Vinegar is great on chips, but the stuff you find in your kitchen cupboard is unlikely to be useful at keeping away weeds.
Homemade solutions can often be very effective at getting rid of weeds in the garden, and while kitchen vinegar will be able to dry out weeds, it will not keep them away for good.
Larry Hodgson, a gardening author and expert with over 40 years of experience, wrote: “Many websites recommend using vinegar as a weedkiller (herbicide) and yes, the typical white vinegar found in your kitchen does have some effectiveness in controlling weeds.
“But it’s not a miracle cure. In fact, far from it! I suspect that most gardeners will be a little disappointed with the results.”
On his blog the Laidback Gardener, Larry explained that white vinegar is not able to penetrate plant cells and reach the roots of any weed plants, making it a weak weedkiller, but has explained the most effective way to keep them at bay.
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To keep weeds away, Larry says vinegar will need to be mixed with another ingredient to make it stronger, and recommends mixing soap and vinegar together.
This will help vinegar stick to weeds and be much more likely to kill them.
Larry wrote: “To make the herbicide more effective, add a little pure soap, such as insecticidal soap, to the liquid, perhaps one teaspoonful (5 ml) per quart (litre) of vinegar, to help the product stick better to the foliage.
“Many websites further recommend adding salt to vinegar, but you’ll then be playing with a much more dangerous product. Remember that salt can sterilize the soil permanently and is certainly not an environmentally friendly weedkiller.”
Make sure to spray on a sunny day and this homemade solution is more likely to work in springtime when weeds are just growing.
Larry wrote: “Spray vinegar on a sunny, dry day and certainly never when it’s windy. Ideally, the air temperature should be above 70 F (21C).
“Avoid applying it on surfaces that can be tarnished by acidity and that includes many metallic surfaces including those found on garden furniture.”
For more mature weeds that need to be removed, Larry recommends using a cleaning vinegar solution with more acetic acid, which will be a much stronger product.
Larry wrote: “Cleaning vinegar or double strength vinegar (found in the cleaning department of most hardware stores) contains 10 percent acetic acid and you’ll find it a more effective weedkiller.”
Stronger vinegar with more acetic acid of more than 10 percent will be stronger, but is a harsher chemical and will need protective goggles and gloves, so it is not recommended.
