Besides how short summer is in our area having to do lawn care and pulling weeds is another grumble I have about this time of year.

I have tried a homemade weed killer and it was somewhat effective, but the container that I bought to use it in is now clogged and so it does not have the same effectiveness.  Currently we have a rather large area in front of our house that wraps around the side of the house inundated with weeds.

I cannot keep on trying to get rid of them as they pop through the gaps in the rocks we have for landscaping, and it looks awful. I almost resorted to using a store bought weedkiller today until I came across this article. Simple solutions that should help.

  1. Salt: Yep simple table salt mixed with 3 parts salt to 1 part water
  2. Newspaper: wet the soil, lay down newspaper, wet the paper then layer mulch
  3. Vinegar:  Grab an empty spray bottle and blast away, If you don't mind the smell for a little while.
  4. Mulch: You need to make sure to heap on at least a 3 inch layer over the weeds to block the sunlight.
  5. Walnut Sawdust: It must be this kind only as it contains an ingredient that is toxic to plants
  6. Bleach
  7. Burn Them: I personally am not comfortable with this one, and it seems a little drastic.

I am planning on putting mulch over the rocks because I don't like the look of them anymore and we have hundreds of small rocks everywhere.  I was thinking of just dumping mulch right on top of the weeds, but thought they could still pop through. Well, now I see old newspaper will work great to go over the weeds and then lay down a thick layer of mulch.

As I have mentioned in previous blogs I have to be careful with chemicals in the yard because we have 2 dogs and 2 cats and obviously I don't want any of them exposed to these chemicals so any natural alternative I can find I will take. Stay tuned for a follow up blog on how this worked, and try some of these for yourself!

 

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