Green Weed Removal

I'm melting...melting.....Oh, what a world!

My family moved into the house we're currently in about a year ago. We love the house! It's a great place with lots of space, mature trees, and most importantly, a safe and friendly neighbourhood. We bought the house in the winter, so I wasn't sure what to expect with the garden. The previous owners were avid gardeners, boasting about all the beautiful plants they had growing. In the spring time (before we moved in) the owners were even kind enough to photograph some of the beauties that we would miss, as we were moving into the place in the summer. I love the idea of gardening and have grand plans on the worst of days on what I would like my property to look like, but I thought that having an already landscaped yard would be amazing. Just move in and enjoy! Well, when we moved in, I did enjoy. There was a variety of perennials, beautiful colours and an abundance everywhere. Unfortunately, there were lots of things to do on the inside of the house, so 1) I didn't really get to enjoy the out of doors all that much and 2) I wasn't able to keep up with the maintenance such a lovely garden needed to keep it looking beautiful. When fall rolled around I didn't want to start moving stuff around because I wasn't sure what was planted where...so I told myself that I would keep track of all the beautiful things that were growing and by the next fall, I would know what to remove and what to keep.

Well now I'm paying the price. Everything is overgrown, and much of the perennials are self-propagating and are finding ways into the weirdest of places. I can't do much right now because the weather is SO hot, if I moved anything, they would instantly die. So I have to wait, and barf at how ugly the garden is. I'm sure the previous owners of the house must drive by and have a heart attack as they see what I've done to their precious garden (or not done, really...). Anyway, in addition to my overrun garden, I have a concrete slab patio in the backyard that is to weeds as bees are to honey. Each crack is a veritable garden of its own. Those self-propagating columbine have also found new homes in each of the cracks, and because my free time is so minute I just can't find the time to make it look nice (the heat is a HUGE deterrent as well!).

I probably should be embarrassed at how bad my patio looks...rather than advertising it.

My aunt suggested I use "Round-Up", but I wasn't keen on using something chemical based because I have two kids that play in the backyard ALL THE TIME. It probably wouldn't be so big a deal except for the fact that one of my children seems to put EVERY SINGLE THING SHE CAN FIND IN HER MOUTH. "Round Up" just wasn't the answer for this particular problem. So, what I needed was a quick fix. One where I didn't need to be on my knees for a whole afternoon in the blazing sun, pulling each flower and weed out one by one. That's when I came across this pin. Advertised as a natural weed killer, this seemed like the perfect solution. I had a look at all the ingredients, of which I was sure I had all, but I started second guessing my regular vinegar. The post suggested using pickling vinegar because of the higher acetic acid content, and I definitely didn't have that. So, I grabbed my bag and ran up to the grocery store at the top of the street. When I was there I came across ANOTHER kind of vinegar, one with an even higher acetic acid content: Cleaning Vinegar, weighing in at 10%!!!! This was gonna kill those weeds DEAD! 

When I got home I gathered all my ingredients together (for full weed killin' recipe, click here) only to find that the only kind of salt I had on hand was sea salt....and not even fine sea salt, but the super course rock kind...GAWD!!! Why don't I do a proper material check BEFORE I START THESE STINKIN' PROJECTS???? I had my mind set on getting this job done, so I was going to do it with the rock salt...

Here are my weed killin' ingredients...Hope this works!

 ...so I put everything together and shook that spray bottle, and shook it and shook it AND SHOOK IT. The rock salt sounded like sand in there, shifting around to and fro...I was hoping that once the vinegar hit it, it would instantly dissolve, but that wasn't to be. I continued to vigorously shake my bottle until my arms started to hurt. That's gotta be good enough, I thought! I took a step outside and was instantly floored by the heat and humidity outside. This day is JUST PERFECT!!!!  I sprayed that mixture like a crazy lady. Nothing was going to stop me now! Then back inside I went (THANKFULLY - I was sweating buckets out there!) and waited an hour for this magic potion to work!

After the hour had passed I was a bit apprehensive as to whether or not this stuff did the trick. Was the rock salt going to foil my plan??? When I came out, this is what I saw:



Gotcha!

 My before and after shots weren't as obvious as the blog's, but those weeds certainly looked like they were having a hard time surviving. I grabbed my yard bag and started pulling. For some reason I thought they'd come out almost instantly, and a lot came out with ease, but some I had to fish out with my weeding tool. I just hope the mixture got to the root of the problem and I won't have to be doing the same thing again in a couple of weeks.




Looks pretty stellar, if I do say so myself!


All in all, this was a success to me. It was minimal effort for a maximum return (for now anyway). The patio looks great (as great as a concrete slab patio can look, anyway)...and it's one thing that's now checked off my ENORMOUS outside To-Do list! YAY ME!

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Get some more frugal ideas/projects from: Full of Great Ideas