How to Control Weeds Quickly
For weeds in cracks of paving stones.
Boiling Water
Get out the boiling water. When poured slowly over dandelions and grass plants, boiling water cooks them dead. I am not suggesting you then eat them but you will kill them if you pour nice and slow. The plants will wilt up in a few minutes and you'll know the deed is done.
There are weeders that work like small knives to manually pull them out. These work.
Vinegar
Vinegar is being touted as a herbicide for the same purpose but you can't just use the regular household vinegar. Regular vinegar is 5% acetic acid and did not work well in my garden trials. Pickling vinegar is usually 7% and is effective on some weeds. I'm told you can sometimes find stronger vinegars than that and these would be even more effective.
Vinegar as Weed Control Recipe
A recipe that does work well on most weeds is to use 1 gallon of 7% pickling vinegar, 2 cups of salt, and 1 teaspoon of liquid soap. Gently heat to dissolve the salt in the vinegar and add the soap.
The soap spreads the spray out nicely and makes it apply evenly.
The vinegar burns off the plants and the salt helps this process.
Note that this material burns almost everything it touches. I killed of Aegopodium (Goutweed) with 5 sprays - 7-10 days apart. I killed a grass lawn with 3 applications. I whacked sumac by cutting the adult plants down and then 5 sprayings of the shoots. This was a tough one. Poison ivy would take a similar number of sprayings.
You have to repeat spray perennials because there is strength in the roots that throws up new growth. You wait until the new growth is just expanded but not too long to allow that new growth to feed the roots again. You spray and burn off the new growth. Sooner or later (depending on the size and strength of the root) it will run out of energy and the plant will die.
