Are you tired of stooping over to pull stray weeds and errant grasses from your patio, sidewalk, or brick walkway?

Here's a super-simple NATURAL and organic solution to this problem.

Purchase a gallon jug of plain white or apple cider vinegar. (The store-brand or generic varieties are fine.) Pour the vinegar into a spray bottle. Be sure to use the vinegar full strength; do not dilute it with water.

We like to reuse empty Windex bottles, but you can also find empty spray bottles in the garden, cosmetic, and laundry sections of most drug and discount stores.

Spray vinegar directly onto undesirable plants. Vinegar is an excellent organic herbicide. Within a day or so, the green trespassers will shrivel up and die off. Basically, the fermented sugars in the vinegar (produced from apples or grapes) will burn the invasive weeds and encroaching grasses from your patio or walkway.

Of course, you must avoid watering these areas after treating them with vinegar, so you do not wash away its effectiveness. (If it rains before your weeds die, you may need to repeat the process, as the vinegar will be diluted.)

Be careful that you do not spray vinegar onto flowers, lawns, or desirable plants, as it will destroy them as well. It's a good idea to practice this on a calm day, instead of a windy one, as the vinegar will harm any plant it blows upon.

For this reason, it may not be advisable to use vinegar to kill weeds in lawns or garden beds, as neighboring plants may be destroyed in the process.

Also, try not to get full-strength vinegar into your eyes, as it will sting.

Vinegar treatment may slightly reduce the ph levels in your soil, if it spills into your garden, but this will re-stabilize fairly quickly, certainly within a few days.

This solution is so easy, but extremely effective as well!

Certainly, commercial herbicidal products are available at garden supply stores, but most of these products contain harmful chemicals. Vinegar is simple and harmless and readily available at minimal cost.

Did you know . . . vinegar is also an excellent insect repellant? While you are killing your weeds, you may also be protecting your family from bug bites on your patio? At the stables, we spray horses with vinegar to deter flies. This is excellent for pregnant mares, in particular. Sure, they smell a bit odd, but they are guarded without chemicals!

Learn more about this author, Linda Ann Nickerson.
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