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Old 20-12-2009, 12:54 PM posted to aus.gardens
FarmI FarmI is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Feb 2007
Posts: 2,358
Default vinegar for weeds?

"Loosecanon" wrote in message
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote in message
"0tterbot" wrote in message


i was just surprised to read in the smh you can spray weeds with white
vinegar, (to kill them, not to make them taste better ;-)

(snip)

Gardening Aus recently had a show where the elderly chap in Qld (Colin by
name if I got his name right) had a whole lot of organic solutions for
probs. One of the organic solutions was the vinegar weedkiller, but it's
not just vinegar. The recipe is 1 Cup cooking salt (not iodised)
dissolves in a Litre vinegar - brush on weeds and dont' get it on
anything else because he says it'll kill it.

(snip)

You know I tried that vinegar and salt and you could leave the 2 togeth
for 10 years in a jar and you would have salt grains on the bottom and
vinegar on top. The salt doesn't dissolve even if you shook the jar for a
week


After reading what you wrote, I went and made up the mix.

I made up 4 batches using both malt vinegar and white vinegar and using
cooking salt and iodised salt and added a teaspoon of salt to half a cup of
the vinegar. Both types of salt dissolved in both types of vinegar.

The cooking salt in the white vinegar dissolves and leaves a clear solution
that looks like water.
The Iodised salt in the white vinegar leaves an opaque liquid but all of the
salt is dissolved.
The cooking salt in the malt vinegar looks like the normal malt vinegar.
The iodised salt in the malt vinegar has tiny bubbles on top whihc
dissipates in a short time and leaves the vinegar looking slightly murky (so
probably the eqivalent of the opague look of the white vinegar).

I put the mix in glasses so that I could look at the mix from underneath and
there is no sign of undissolved salt in any of the 4 glasses.

I then wondered if it had something to do with saturation levels of salt in
the solution so I then added an additional Tablespoon of cooking and iodised
salt to each of the vinegars and that too dissolved.

I wonder if a Tablespoon plus a teaspoon of salt in a half cup of vinegar
works out to be more or less proportionally to a cup of salt in a litre.
Anyway, the salt certainly does dissolve in the vinegar at least to a much
greater extent than your post implies.

I'll use these mixes tomorrow and see if they work.