Make your own natural weed killer

With the arrival of Spring, I swear a million weeds popped up in our back yard overnight!

Being in a different house this year, this weed problem was all new to us.

Obviously we didn’t want to use a chemical weed killer – they contain some of the worst toxins you can use around your home. Not great at all for the kids and pets.

I did a bit of research on the best way to kill them off naturally and discovered a few different things. Many people swear by boiling water which is great for a stray weed here and there but if you have the whole backyard of weeds, it’s going to get a bit tiresome.

Based on a few different recipes, we tried out this DIY weed killer and it worked really well. The recipe is so easy you probably already have this stuff at home.

You can use just vinegar but the weeds will grow back. The addition of the salt stops things growing in that spot again (so be careful where you spray it). The dishwashing detergent helps the mixture cling onto the weeds.

Homemade Weed Killer

This is what you need:

4 litres of white vinegar

2 cups salt (just regular old table salt is fine, don’t use your expensive pink salt for this!!)

2 tablespoons dishwashing liquid (anything is okay but we only have our favourite Kin Kin Naturals so we used that)

This is what you do:

Mix everything together in a bucket and then pour into a spray bottle. WE got a big pump action one from the hardware store as it was such a big area. For weeds in paving like ours was, you could even just pour it straight on, but otherwise just generously spritz all over the weeds.

It only took a couple of days for all the weeds to go brown and die off.  You can then pull out the weeds or whipper snip them.

After a few weeks, there has been no sign of new growth, even with some rain.

So I’m calling this one a winner.

Have you tried this? What do you use for weed killing? 

You might also like to make your own citrus cleaning spray!