A gardening expert has praised a cheap household item for its versatility and effectiveness in the garden. Garden designer and TikTok creator Ish recently sang the virtues of using white vinegar in your garden, which will set you back just 35p.
Useful beyond its cleaning abilities, vinegar can also be used for tackling one of the most annoying occurrences in gardens: weeds. Ish wrote in the video’s caption: “A simple 35p bottle of white vinegar from your local supermarket can do a lot in your garden – from helping repel pests and weeds to cleaning tools and even freshening your blooms. My gardening tips for beginner gardeners will help you use white vinegar safely in your garden to keep the bad away, but your plants happy.”
White vinegar can be used to make a homemade weed killer, a great homemade alternative if you want to avoid commercial chemical products. Ish explained that you only need a handful of household ingredients to do so.
Along with white vinegar, you’ll need some salt and washing-up liquid. Firstly, you’ll need a rinsed-out spray bottle.
Add a tablespoon or two of salt, a drop of washing-up liquid, before filling the rest of the bottle with white vinegar. He instructed to spray the solution directly onto the foliage of the weeds.
Ish said the results should be visible within hours.
So what makes white vinegar such a good natural weed killer? It contains acetic acid, which acts as a herbicide, and in turn making them easy to remove from the ground.
Acetic acid helps to break down the cell walls of the weed, causing them to dry out and eventually die. Vinegar will damage any plant it touches, and it has no residual effect on the soil, so new weeds can still sprout.
However, it’s important to remember that vinegar-based solutions may not work on all types of weeds. As Better Homes & Gardens previously explained, vinegar solutions work best on smaller weeds.
When mixed with vinegar, washing-up liquid acts as a surfactant, helping kill weeds. This means it helps the solution stick to the weed’s leaves, allowing the vinegar and salt to penetrate and dry out the plant.
Gardening Know How explained why salt can be an effective ingredient to use in a homemade weed killer. It explained that salt dehydrates plants and disrupts the internal water balance of plant cells. Salt is best used for small-scale gardening where it will be easily diluted by rain or watering.
Despite Ish advocating for the use of salt in this weed killer, just be warned. Better Homes & Gardens said that a weed killer solution can build up in the soil and damage it so nothing else will grow in that area. So if you are going to use salt, make sure you don’t use it too much in the same areas.