Weed Eat No More

DesertRose
by DesertRose
4 Materials
$10
1 Hour
Easy

We have a fence for our fur babies that makes mowing and weed eating difficult. We go through way too much line due to our fence, raised beds, patio bricks, and cracks in the sidewalk. Our inspiration for eliminating the lawn fence trim came with the weed killer process we use in the cracks of the pavement.

We mow as close to the fence as possible, but as you can see, the wire fence is rough on our spools of weed eater cord. It eats the cord faster than we can buy it. We do try to aim at the ground, but doing both sides that way is very time consuming. We no longer have to do this now!

Our sprayer costs $8 at Walmart. There are several variations of this recipe, but this is the one that works best for us. It works best on a sunny day. Our recipe for the plant killer: 1 gallon of white vinegar, 2 cups Epsom salts, 1/3 cup Dawn Dish soap. This will not harm your fur babies or family members or children playing in the yard.

Spray the weeds in your sidewalk or driveway after the dew is gone in the morning. By evening they will be dead. Here are the sidewalk crack weeds this morning.

This is the same area this evening.

This is another place in the sidewalk or driveway this morning.

We won't have to cut the weeds in this crack again this summer.

But the best time saver and weed cord saver was along our fence. This is the same area as the first photo. You can see the grass is dead on both sides of the fence. Now we can just mow and be done.


We also sprayed around the outside edge of every planter and the edge of the foundation. We sprayed about 3 or so inches on both sides of the fence. Our community requires us to have no weeds or grass on the fences at all, so this will save us time every week when we mow our lawn.


This is a close up, the dead area really does not show at all and is not ugly when you do this along any fence. It is inexpensive, easy, safe, and allows us to have our morning free every week from our weed eating chores. One treatment per season is usually plenty.

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  • Linda Linda on Jun 08, 2020

    Wow! A timely article! This is our first year with our dog and we have this problem! The weedwacker yesterday was a disaster! So...what kind of vinegar did you use? My husband said regular salad vinegar doesnt work! Please answer quick! I gotta make this recipe before our next mowing!!

  • Catherine Catherine on Jun 17, 2020

    Will this work on poison ivy and virginia creeper that is climbing up my Pin Oak? I don't want to kill the tree. My lawn guy said to spray Roundup, but I hate to put the chemicals out there.

  • Hugger0628 Hugger0628 on Jul 14, 2020

    I used this exact recipe last weekend! This works great, previous owners put down lattice concrete outside our barn. Weeds just love growing in the open spaces!!

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  • Shelia Martin Curry Shelia Martin Curry on Jul 14, 2020

    I tried it I doesn’t kill it always comes back!!

  • Angela Ley Angela Ley on Jul 14, 2020

    I have tried multiple homemade vinegar receipes in varying amounts and ingredients, have used, Green Earth and Safers products due to pets and the weeds just kept coming back. In the end a friend told me what she did and it has worked like a charm, I boiled my kettle and poured the boiling water on the weeds and they have not come back. Certainly not recommended for lawns but on our interlock patio it has been amazing.

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