20% vinegar

Hi,
Would anyone know about the 20% vinegar Paul James talks about on his gardening show? He swears by it for weed killing, but I have, as yet, not found it. One nursery house has it combined with clove oil but is only okay and too expensive to use other than the isolated weeds in the garden. I need something for the paths and large planters I have.

I've seen it at the local garden center, but it was so incredibly expensive I passed on it. I'll be there later this week and will try to remember to take a look. In the meantime, I bought regular old vinegar at Costco and poured it on some troublesome spots. It worked on minor weeds, but the horsetail, etc., came back. I may have to splurge and get the expensive stuff. Apparently it changes the ph balance drastically so when the weeds are finally gone, the soil would need amending in order to re-grow stuff.

I've used the 9% pickling vinegar from the grocery store with some success. Johnson grass here spreads by enormous stolons that are tough to dig out - miss just one little joint piece and the crop comes back. I cut the foliage off at or below ground level and pour the vinegar slowly on to what roots I can see. Works most of the time. From what I've been reading about heat and the effect on
cellular structures of plants I plan to experiment with boiling water and hot vinegar. Yuska

Yuska, I was planning on trying boiling water too (it was suggested to me when I complained about sheep sorrel, the worst-spreading weed I've ever seen), but your idea of hot vinegar sounds perfect!!!!!

Just think about it if you boill 8% Vinegar you get 40% vinegar when it looses 12% volume of water.

Math alert!!! Math alert!!! (picture me running in circles screaming this with my hands over my ears and my eyes closed and you get the general idea..Maybe I should duck and cover?)
Boiling water works great on almost anything. And then there is the flame torch.........

Soferdig, I knew that.

(Yeah, right.)

And I would have to boil all of our little Honeymoon Lake to get rid of the sheep sorrel.

Murmur, a boiling lake would be a bad, bad thing!!

You're right, Pixy - and I love our little lake anyway!!! But wait . . . it could be Honeymoon Hot Springs!!!

Hey! A creative thinker! Add a warm mud pit and people could dip themselves in the mud, then let it dry and call it a 'body mask'!

Laughing over this thread!!!

I think boiling hot vinegar, like using 20 Mule team Borax, only kills top growth. I don't know if the expensive stuff is different. I'm just killing weeds in the cracks of the sidewalk.

Soferdig
help me with the math on this
did you mean boil off 40% of the water volume to get 12% vinegar ?

Dick

I really didn't do the math just having fun getting 20% Vinegar. Remove the diluent. I don't know how I got the numbers. Probably during a hypoglycemic event. LOL

Gosh, Sofer! Don't lead me on like that! here I was thinking you could just whip those numbers right out of your brain like plants out of a pot! When I read more than one number in a sentence, especially if those numbers have to be related in any way, a veil of forgetfulness comes down as if to protect my brain from having to work too hard.

BTW, boiling water does kill the whole weed for many things. I don't know how it does on woody vines like english ivy, but your everyday growing-in-the-crack-of-the-sidewalk weeds it should kill.

Thanks, I can save my vinegar for other things now!

Except Soferdig, she said the regular vinegar you get at the grocery store. That is 5% not 9%. Now you gotta start all over. LOL

Side walk grass can be killed using salt water in a pump sprayer on a warm day

Salt water??? Really!

~~~ eager to spare my back and/or never buy RoundUp again ~~~

Got to watch out with the salt water, though. Salt remains in the soil. It will kill things, but then you might have a problem with runoff into your grass, etc. Roundup is biodegradable, but I don't think salt Sodium chloride is. Sofer might know more about that than I do.

I don't think I would use salt or vinegar on concrete. Our highway department here has been doing ongoing research on the effects of salt on concrete, particularly on coastal bridges. Believe me salt is not good for concrete. Then there was the year we used salt on the driveway because it was so icy. It has been crumbling away ever since. Vinegar is an acid that *might* attack concrete. I say *might* only because I have no evidence one way or the other. I have used boiling salted water on weeds, especially after blanching vegetables, its a use for the already hot water; just add some salt. It kills the weeds and grass but at least in my soil it seems to leach on through so a few months later stuff is growing in those spots again. Just a few things to think about on this subject.

I think Plutonium works pretty good on killing grass also. ANY SALTS ARE DEVISTATING to soils and accumulate to kill most anything. The reason we do well in acidic soils is that it neutralizes or negates the salts that accumulate. I think the best weeder is a propane torch and it works pretty well with no side effects. Especially on the side walk. It kills roots, seeds, and any other item that wants to exist where it has blasted. Though I am really a 'Roundup' kind of guy. I personally feel that the little I use is pretty innocuous to my environs.

Ditto on the roundup, Sofer. Also, a BIG DITTO on the propane torch! I love mine, and my son loves it, too. I don't even have to ask twice to get him to weed using that!

Leave it to Soferdig to think up the overkill scenario. :-)

Lets see just how much salt did you think I meant to use on sidewalk cracks ? Hardley enough to denude the earth or cause the side walk to crumble. Glad you warned me about the dangers because I am barracading my sidewalks not going to have those sweaty joggers endangering me.

I would not use propane because it is bad for the ionisphere and you could burn yourself or a passing gramma on a recumbent bike lol not to mention the cracking the concreat. So with everythin outlawed let them grow let them grow LOL Ernie

The only problem with boiling off the water in vinegar is that you also boil off some of the acetic acid (vinegar), depending upon how vigorously you boil the stuff. The concentration might be high enough if you boil it, but then again, it might not.

You might be able to find concentrated vinegar under its alternate name, acetic acid. If you do choose to use concentrated acetic acid, please make certain you read the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) very carefully.

Unless you have a chemistry background, I do NOT recommend you acquire pure (glacial) acetic acid and try to dilute it to 20%.

Add acid to water not water to acid. I remember a few things about chemistry this far down the road. Or was it the other way. LOL. I remember in college extraction of caffeine out of coffee. It was a spring day and I had lab in the afternoon. Well I took too long to get to class and started behind everyone and needed to catch up. Well I never did so when by bunsen burner was lit for the last process of break down I because of everyone else was cleaning their glass ware in the sinks and using methanol... you can guess. I blew up more glass ware in the chemistry building than ever before. My sink blew into the next and the next and the next and then down stairs into the next and the next........ I had a bad day that day. My education cost the tax payer more than the average that day.

what a visual!

Oh, my. Sofer, I'll bet they still talk about it to this day!!!

I'm sure you're a legend!

You 're right, Soferdig.

I'm a chemist, so if anyone in the South Sound area needs a hand with acetic acid or other chemicals, let me know...

The only infamy was when I got into vet school the entire class knew me as the sink bomber. I felt sorry for the university for all the glass that had to be bought. It wasn't my fault that someone used the methanol when I was burning.

Sorry, but it's really making me smile!!!!

johnsonjrbm it is acid to water isn't it? I remember that it is explosive the wrong way. I think the best weed killer is a propane torch. You can kill only what ever you want. Unless dry grasses around. I especially enjoy using it on my gravel drive and on the concrete side walk.

Soferdig - Yes, one adds acid to water (and slowly, too). The combination of concentrated acid and water generates heat, and (slow) addition of the acid to the water allows the water to absorb much of the heat and reduce splatter.

This message was edited Dec 8, 2006 3:43 PM

Soferdig, thanks for the laugh! BOOM!

What an amusing, interesting thread! :-) I bet that acid to water will be a Jeopardy question soon!

I wouldn't have remembered from HS chemistry, as I was not successful at completing the course, even with two tries. What a reputation to have - the sink bomber...must have played like a movie scene.

Pixydish, what a riot, the image you painted for your math alert! lol I completely can relate. Thanks for the future chuckles I'll get when I think of it again!

I bought a Dragon Flame thrower thingie last spring, just before it got too dry to use it much, so I'm looking forward to zapping lots more than sidewalk weeds (no tottering grammas on bikes to burn), especially frying blackberries. :-)... I also use a smidge of Round-up, but I'm hoping I can use even less with this flame thrower gizmo.

4paws, I used to be good at math. Believe this or not. The estrogen decline is beginning to have a drastic effect on my math brain cells to the point where I constantly make mistakes with such simple math as adding up my deposit slips!!! I am not kidding! And I'm talking WITH a calculator! It is embarrassing! My deposit slips are not that big, I can tell you. And I add them more than once and get the exact wrong answer more than once. I live in a twilight math zone. So now, the idea of calculating things makes me run in circles screaming.

I would much rather flame weeds with the flame dragon! It is so satisfying!

bindweed...i need a solution to kill it....tried digging it out..smothering it...table vinegar..nothing works

I had 'mile a minute' plant here in Montana and I wrote up a whole thread on it and after about 6 rototillings and spot root shovelings, laying black plastic, digging well below root level and screening roots, and leaving unirrigated for the hot dry season I haven't seen any new growth here is the area this fall. I am preparing the site for tree plantings so I can continue to extract the vermin from the soil.

yes ive done all of the above and i do spot watering not the whole garden but water each plant...seems to help a bit but they still hang on

pamsue