As a garden coach, I’m often asked if there are any organic ways of getting rid of weeds that actually work. Nobody wants to spray harmful chemicals in their garden.
The good news is that there are a lot of organic alternatives. The bad news is, the alternatives are more labor-intensive, and can be pricier than that chemical spray. Still, if you have children or pets, like to walk around barefoot, or simply want to be a good steward of the earth, it’s worth a little extra effort to take care of the weeds in a sustainable way.
Removing weeds within existing garden beds
Weeding by hand
In garden beds where there are plants you like growing close-by, pulling weeds by hand is simply the best method of control. You don’t need to worry about herbicide drift (even organic herbicide drift) hitting your desirable plants, or making your soil inhospitable.
Also? There’re no dead weeds left behind. Any other method, you still need to come back and pull the dead weed out, or be patient and wait for it to break down and disappear on its own, which can take between a week and a year depending on how sturdy the weed was.
With a single great tool like the Hori-Hori or Japanese Soil Knife (I love the lightweight stainless steel version), you can get dandelions’ long taproots with the same tool you use for other weeds.
No-bend weeding using a hoe
If you don’t wish to bend, you can use a long-handled scuffle/ hula hoe, or a diamond hoe.
These types of hoe work by either dislodging baby weeds so that their roots are exposed and they bake in the summer sunshine, or by separating the young weeds’ foliage from the roots so that the plant can’t photosynthesize. It doesn’t kill everything on the first try, but works pretty well if you do it regularly and catch them when they’re tiny.
Spraying with Scythe organic herbicide (pelargonic acid)
Scythe is an organic herbicide made of pelargonic acid (which naturally occurs in many plants – even food plants) and other fatty acids. The nice thing about it is that it only kills things that get their foliage coated with it, so if you have bulbs underground, or tree roots nearby, you’re still safe.
It works, like most organic sprays, by burning off the waxy cuticle that protects the cells in plants’ leaves. You may need to reapply, but as soon as you feel the weeds are definitely dead, you are safe to plant without any waiting period.
The bad thing is that if you aren’t careful, it’s easy to spray your prized perennials with it, too. You can avoid this somewhat by spraying in the morning before the wind acts up, and by using a flat piece of cardboard as a shield between the spray and your beloved plants. But if you’re going to go to all that trouble – why not just pull the dratted weeds out?
Spraying or Injecting WeedPharm (20% acetic acid vinegar spray)
WeedPharm has gotten good reviews and is the only food-grade herbicide currently on the market. It’s 20% acetic acid (as opposed to the 5% acetic acid in household vinegar), and it works the same way as the other organic herbicides when sprayed – burning the waxy cuticle off above-ground portions of the plant.
It can also be injected into the taproots of dandelions or the base of the plant using a syringe (the manufacturer recommends a 40cc syringe without a needle, like you’d use to give your cat liquid medicines). The best thing about this method is that you can kill dandelions fully in any weather (all weed sprays, organic or not, need temperatures of 60 degrees and dry weather to work – but this method is effective even in the winter rain), and you can kill dandelions even if they’re coming up in the center of other plants or in your lawn.
I have heard a warning that vinegar and acetic acid may stain concrete and some kinds of stone, so if you are concerned, do a spot-test before spraying WeedPharm around hardscape.
Removing weeds in areas where you want to plant soon
Weed torches
Weed torches are an awesome organic solution. Like organic herbicides, they work by damaging the waxy cuticle that protects the cells in plants’ leaves. It isn’t immediate, and you may need to torch weeds a few times before they give up the ghost, but it works well without introducing any chemicals into the soil.
One caveat – it isn’t as quick as you might think. It takes about as long to torch a weed as it does to pull it. The advantages are that you don’t stir up the soil as you do with hand-weeding, so fewer weed seeds come to the surface, and you use a weed torch standing up, so there’s less bending.
The heat from a torch can damage desirable plants nearby, so this isn’t something to use next to your favored plants.
WeedPharm – safe for vegetable beds
The manufacturer says that after 24 hours, any remaining vinegar will have evaporated from the soil and it is perfectly safe to plant even delicate vegetable starts 24 hours after application. The weeds don’t die in 24 hours, of course, so you’ll want to spray a few weeks ahead – but it’s nice to know that any Weed Pharm applied will have evaporated within a day. It’s also food-grade, so it ’s safe.
Scythe organic herbicide
The manufacturer of Scythe says you can safely seed lawns or plant ornamentals soon after spraying, though they don’t specify that it is safe to plant edibles after spraying, so to be safe, in your veggie bed I’d use WeedPharm or another acetic acid/ concentrated vinegar spray,
Household vinegar
Normal vinegar has a 5% acetic acid concentration, which isn’t high enough to kill sturdy, mature weeds, but which will kill the baby sproutlets coming up in your empty veggie bed. You may need to apply vinegar twice to kill all the sprouts, but within a few days of your last spray, it will have broken down into the soil and should be safe to plant.
Removing weeds in places where you don’t wish to grow things
Sidewalk cracks, gravel driveways, and stone or brick pathways can be hard to remove weeds from, since the weeds toughen up quickly and we can’t reach their roots. It’s nice to have a few stronger options for areas where we aren’t trying to grow anything.
If you end up with a lot of dead weed foliage after treatment, try running your string trimmer/ weed eater along the weed tops so you can sweep them up.
Blackberry and Brush Block by Greenergy (citric acid spray)
Blackberry and Brush Block is OMRI Certified Organic, and is the spray that has gotten the highest marks from the people I know who have used it. A friend used it on actual blackberry brambles and reported 80% success after the first application, and almost total success after the second spray. It works on non-woody weeds like dandelions, too.
It’s made of 20% citric acid and contains vinegar as an unlisted ingredient (according to multiple credible sources – and it smells of vinegar too), and like Scythe, works by burning off the waxy cuticle that protects plants’ leaves. The advantage to this over Scythe is that it takes care of woody weeds/ brush as well. You can pick it up at Amazon here. Remember to spot-test on stones or concrete before using, as vinegar may stain some kinds of stone or concrete.
Boiling Water
Yeah, boiling water to kill weeds is totally inefficient – but if you have an area of weeds right outside your kitchen door, why not dump your leftover boiling water on the weeds in between the sidewalk cracks? It works about as well as the organic herbicides and makes more sense than dumping the water down the drain!
This will kill your beneficial soil organisms, though, so don’t do it where you’re actually trying to grow things.
Household vinegar with salt and soap
This is a rough solution, but multiple trusted sources have suggested mixing 4 cups of household vinegar with 1 cup of salt, then adding half a teaspoon of liquid soap to help the solution stick to plants. While it sure sounds as though it would work, I’m not entirely sure how to apply it – would a solution like this go through a sprayer smoothly?
You definitely don’t want this anywhere near your planting beds or lawn, but on the sidewalk I think it’d be fine (spot test first!). If you try it, let me know how it works.
What works for you?
There are new products and techniques being honed all the time for taking care of weeds. Have you tried any organic products that worked (or ones that were a waste of money)? Let me know how you get rid of weeds in the comments below!
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I like the first method of manual removal. I use a, um, erm, I guess I don’t even know what it’s called; I think weeder (the long narrow blade with a forked end). In fact, I use that for a million things. Sometimes I even use a trowel to weed. I’ve heard of the hori-hori but not seen it… think I may invest in it because it seems to combine the pointed sharpness of the weeder with the nice leverage of the wider blade of the trowel. Plus, it just looks serious, you know?! Also, I love the idea of weed torches because fire is just good, but I’ve not used them, either. When I have had to use Roundup (for poison ivy and buckthorn) I either paint it on with a sponge edging tool or, if spraying, I make a shield out of an opened cardboard bov to protect nearby plants.
Monica’s last blog post..Hooray Spring!
P.S. I know Roundup is non-organic (and I only use it for invasive or poisonous plants) but it DOES break down in the soil VERY quickly–in under 24 hours. This has been verified by several staff members of Ann Arbor’s Natural Area Preservation and by several conservation stewards I know. In fact, if you mix the concentrate with water you need to use it fairly quickly or the active ingredient breaks down.(I don’t remember the exact time frame, but I think it’s a few days. Am checking…)
Monica’s last blog post..Hooray Spring!
And, finally, I’ve heard making a paste out of vinegar and salt is equivalent to the type of roundup you’d bruch on stumps, but I haven’t tried that yet.
Monica’s last blog post..Hooray Spring!
Monica, what fantastic tips and insights. I really appreciate your input.
I too have heard from reputable sources that Roundup (or at least the active ingredient in some of their simpler products, glyphosate) breaks down quickly in the soil.
There are two things that worry me about Roundup. One is that they have a lot of products besides the simple glyphosate-only spray, and some of them contain chemicals like diquat that I really don’t feel comfortable with. So people could think that Roundup is safe because glyphosate is reasonably safe, but not realize what other chemicals they are getting into under that Roundup label.
The other is that there is concern that the “inert” ingredients in plain old glyphosate-only Roundup, which are meant to help glyphosate work more effectively on the plants, may actually increase the danger to humans who are exposed to it.
So while I’d tentatively agree that spraying normal-old glyphosate-only Roundup isn’t a big deal – I also have enough hesitation about it that lately I’ve been wanting to really explore the alternatives.
I love your tip about using a sponge applicator for Roundup. I love that idea. Anything that reduces the spray drifting about makes it that much safer to use.
Thanks too for the great tip about vinegar and salt on stumps.
If you do get a soil knife, I’d so, so recommend the stainless steel one rather than the carbon steel one. The stainless is so much sharper, stays rust-free, and is lighter-weight, which is better on the wrists.
Anyway, thanks for stopping by, Monica! As always, what a great contribution.
Hi Genevieve, thanks for the round up of week removal techniques. Sorry. I have the old heavy hori hori, it is my go to tool for everything that can be done by a hand tool. I pull my weeds by hand, hopefully before they set seed. As the plants have filled in the week problem has lessened. Intensive close together planting really makes weeds struggle, they get no light. I will check the bottle ingredients on the round up. I do use that on the paving where the weeds cannot be pulled. We have weeds and desirable plants growing where the curbing meets the street. Just goes to show the power of seeds.
Frances
Frances’s last blog post..Winters Of Spring
Weeding by hand is what came to mind when I read the title of your post. It doesn’t get much more organic or natural than that.
Still, I’m going to have to try vinegar or something drastic on the blackberry brambles trying to take over the ground over my septic system. I lopped them back over the winter, but even with a pickaxe and shovel I couldn’t get the root systems on the big ones out.
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Luckily, with container gardening, there aren’t very many weeds. I just pull out the ones that do have the gall to grow in my pots. It’s much easier than pulling weeds in the ground as the potting soil in containers is much less compacted than garden soil can be.
Fern’s last blog post..Outdoor Lighting For Balcony Gardeners
So nice to have stumbled upon your site, both lovely and informative. Though I was hoping for a weeding solution that included clicking your heels and saying Weeds-be-gone! So far no luck when I follow that protocol, but I’ll be working on it; I just need to find the right magic word. Thanks!
tom | tall clover farm’s last blog post..Violets: Sweet Scent of Spring’s Arrival
In regard to the blow torch implements that you hook up to a propane canister, I have one and it’s really good for one thing: roasting marshmallows or crusting over the world’s largest serving of creme brulee. Don’t waste a dime on those. They actually refresh dandelions; allowing them to resprout healthier and happier than ever.
tom | tall clover farm’s last blog post..Violets: Sweet Scent of Spring’s Arrival
Ever since I found a salamander that was sick and later died (probably of nerve damage), I’m even more cautious about round-up. Even fast-acting chemicals can be a big problem for amphibians. Vinegar with orange oil worked for me, but operating the spray bottle hurts my hand after a while, and the smell lingers forever. Back to pulling, while being serenaded by the birds…
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Yeah I will take the environment friendly path any day. Chemical Weed Killer’s only harm the environment!
We had a whole slope covered with weeds. We covered the area with flattened cardboard shipping boxes, covered the cartons with woodchips, and the weeds are GONE! And, the cardboard and chips are creating richer soil. Recycling, composting, and organic weed control all in one!
I used boiling water to remove a very large decorative grass that was larger than my porch. it took three boiling teapots but worked great.
Sounds like my gardener (all organic, no pesticides) who used a blow torch to kill a patch of clover in the middle of the lawn. Took about 4 times over a month to get it all, down to the roots, but it hasn’t been back. Kinda scary, but he did it during the wet season and with a hose nearby!
i sprayed my rocks with round-up-how soon can toddlers be back onto the rocks without any daner-like i said toddlers and rocks go in their mouths
Shirley, I really wish I knew, but I don’t know that anyone could say that with complete certainty. How fast roundup breaks down has to do, I think, with temperature, how much moisture, etc. This is why I go organic whenever possible. To speed the process, I’d remove the dead weeds that are there and wash the area with water a few times to try to get the residue off. Maybe your local agriculture extension office would be able to give you some scientific literature on it and interpret that literature for your area?
Was looking for the vinegar recipe and found it. Thanks. I have an acre of weeds and wish to grow an organic veggie garden. There is also an huge grove of blackberries that isn’t producing very much fruit so I have chosen to cut it back and “start”over with a smaller hedge. I trust this will work and not be to labor intensive. I will use a sprayer with a controllable nozzles. I have also found that cardboard is a great way to kill off the unwanted grass and weeds as I use it to prepare my yard for “no dig” raised beds. My yard dirt is hard as clay where the acre dirt is soft and doable for growing after I control the weeds. Plant veggies not lawns that you have to mow…..happy summer
corrected email address…oopssss!!!
If you have hard to control weeds and don’t want to grow anything else in the immediate future, one sure thing is cedar chips or sawdust. I had some unruly raspberries come through the fence from the neighbors garden. A good coating of cedar sweepings from the workshop made short work of the problem. It even leached into the neighbors garden and looked after her raspberries also. Good luck
Hi,
I been thinking about spring lately and gardening. I have a good sized vegetable garden but get an enormous amount of weeds, I do not feel comfortable using round up or any other chemical, as I have small children that like to be in the garden. Any suggestions anybody??
Janyn, try Weed Pharm. Very safe for veg gardens.