Metadata

Wednesday 5 March 2014

Killing weeds without deadly chemicals ...

Today I 'm waging war. I'm having my revenge on all the nasties that grow between my paving stones. And I'm determined that my battle will be won without recourse to chemical warfare.

Normally this is an issue that gives me serious pause for thought. The thing is that, whilst I don't much like the nasties growing in the gaps, I don't want to poison my son, my dog, myself or any of the other little critters who happen to pass this way. I'm sure that whatever they put into commercial weedkiller these days doesn't pack the punch of weapons-grade plutonium, but we just don't know what its long term effect will be on the chap with the fluffy paws who's forever trotting over the residue left behind, or on his human pets for that matter. So, you see, I'm all in favour of not taking any chances.

And that's why I'm using this little lot:


That's right, my arsenal for the fight consists of some super cheap, no-frills malt vinegar, salt and my any-old liquid soap that happened to be stationed at the kitchen sink.

I usually keep the spray bottles that household cleaners and laundry sprays come in. It's one of my little foibles: I can find a hundred uses for those things.

So I got this one, washed it out and put a label on so that I'd know what was in it. It would, after all, be a bad result if I sprayed it on the laundry, and we all ended up smelling like left-over chips!


Next I added a good pinch of salt to the spray bottle, along with a decent squirt of the liquid soap and then I topped it up with the vinegar and gave it a good shake to mix everything together.

Now for the before and after photographs ... .

 Some of my flowerbeds are bordered with flat-end bricks, where the nuisance weeds are difficult to dig out and like to make their home. This is how this one looked after I'd had a go at pulling them out in a hissy fit:


You can see that the leafless stumps still looking infuriatingly green and healthy, with a sort of 'I'll be back in no time' smirk on their weedy faces.

I sprayed them with my magic potion a couple of days ago, just after I took this photograph.

And this is how they're looking today:


Ha ha ... not so perky now! 

The spray bottle makes it really easy to direct the weedkiller to the cracks between the stones so that there's minimum wastage. And there's nothing in the mixture that's likely to cause much harm to man or beast ...

... which is a really good result for these guys!

Happy zapping,


Bonny x

No comments:

Post a Comment