For a couple of hours, every few weeks this past summer, my driveway smelled something like a jar of pickles. Though odd, it proved to be worth every strange look I got from the neighbors. The reason?
In my never ending search to have and maintain an earth friendly landscape, I sometimes need to rely on commercial “organic” products. One of these times was this past summer when Jack (ever patient husband) suggested that the weeds between the paving stones in the driveway were looking a little, well….weedy.
What! Weedy? For weeks I had convinced myself that these small green plants were like “steppables,” those low growing mat spreading plants that you plant on purpose. But, as the summer progressed and these little plants kept growing and spreading, even I had to admit that they looked weedy.
My first plan was to dig them up by hand but after twenty minutes I knew that was going to be far too time consuming. My next thought was to pour boiling water on them but after heating a pan of water on the stove and then pouring it on the weeds I knew that was going to be even slower than pulling them out by hand.
And then I thought of vinegar which I knew is sometimes used to kill weeds. Vinegar is a natural product, made when yeast feeds on the sugar or starch of plants such as fruits and grains. The liquid ferments into alcohol which, when exposed to oxygen and the acetic acid bacteria Acetobacter, produces vinegar.
I found a commercial grade vinegar called “Green Gobbler” which is 20% pure acetic acid (household vinegar is usually 5 – 8%) with a pump spray and tried it out. Within a few hours, the weeds turned brown. Success! But I was left with several questions.
- Would it last? Did it really kill the weeds? No. It kills the leaves but not the roots but it took about a month for the plants to begin putting out leaves again and another couple of weeks for them to look weedy so that was okay by me.
- Is it really a natural product? I’m not sure. A quick search determined that vinegar is natural but the process to get it is not always so. Petroleum is sometimes used to process vinegar. I could not determine whether or not petroleum is used to make “Green Gobbler ” but I suspect the answer is yes.
- How does the vinegar effect the pollinators, other insects and soil microorganisms ? Vinegar is lethal to bees. But, I was spraying directly on paving stones so I think few of the fumes became airborne. And, I think there is really no soil life under the driveway. It could impact the runoff from the driveway but I think this is a minimum risk.
In a world in which we all have to “pick our poisons” from politics to cocktails, I think this particular poison is a good choice, in spite of smelling like a pickle!
Great article!