An accident got me curious in organic weed killers. We made a giant volcano out on the lawn:

It effectively killed the lawn. I have read that household vinegar is not very effective as a weed killer. But this proved otherwise. So I filled up sprayer and sprayed a portion of the large weed field out back.

The advantage of this stuff is it is dilute vinegar so I didn’t mind when my little kids went out and helped looking like this:

After ten days, here are my experiences with household vinegar as a weed killer:

• You have to drown the plants to kill them, or even notice leaf browning.
• It works more as a contact herbicide, so to get it to die you have to spray it directly on the plant.

It did have some effect. You can see my spray path in the picture above. For some weeds vinegar would work. It didn’t kill the bindweed, but if I had a weed field full of small little annual weeds it might have done all right. If I really wanted an effective weed killer, I would go buy more concentrated stuff, and maybe mixed with clove oil. (Or maybe a product like Natural Weed Control.) However, concentrated vinegar is a strong acid and not something I would handle without protective gear. I would rather handle glyphosate (Round-up), as there isn’t a chance for acid burns with that.

Overall, I think I’ll stick with hand weeding and glyphosate if I need to kill off weeds. But maybe vinegar can have an occasional turn as well. In smaller concentrations, it is often recommended to mix with dish soap and lemon juice, or various oils. Here’s another article that’s interesting, if you’d like more information on vinegar as a weed killer.