How Can You Avoid Cancer Causing Herbicides?

Here’s a few less offensive ideas for use around the home and still be in compliance with Ordinance #631.

• Baking Soda- If you want to prevent grass and weeds from growing in the cracks of your walkways, driveways, and garden paths, keep a box of baking soda in your storage shed. Sprinkle a bit on the concrete when you see a weed, and sweep the baking soda into the cracks. Because it contains sodium, it can get rid of many different types of weeds, including dandelions.

• Borax- Borax is an excellent weed killer that should be kept in your garden shed. This solution can be applied in the crack of your driveway to prevent weed growth, and can even be sprinkled around your foundation to prevent insects from entering your home. A word of caution, however: do not use borax near your garden because it extremely toxic to plants.

• Carpet Scraps- Have an empty shelf in your garden shed? Fill it with carpet scraps. You can often find these scraps at local home improvement stores or carpet depots. Place the carpet scraps upside down around your garden and cover them with mulch. This will prevent any weeds from growing around your plants and garden pathways.

• Salt- Salt doesn’t just belong in the kitchen. Use a mixture of salt and boiling water on weeds and unwanted grass to destroy them effectively.

• Shower Curtains- The next time you think about throwing out that old shower curtain, stop. Take it out to your metal shed and store it instead. Shower curtains can be very effective weed killers when you are doing landscaping. Place them on the ground and cover them with mulching material or gravel to prevent weeds from covering your lawn.

• Vinegar- White and apple cider vinegar are both excellent solutions for getting rid of dandelions and other weeds. To use it, fill a spray bottle with an undiluted solution of vinegar. Then, spray the center of the flower and the bottom of the stem. If done early enough in the season, this will kill any seeds the weed have and soak into the roots for total annihilation. Make sure to watch the weather however. Rain can quickly wash away the vinegar and ruin your attempts at destroying the weeds.

• Bottles- Have a few weeds around your beautiful plants? If you don’t want to kill your plants, take 2-liter soda bottles and cut them in half. You will have a half bottle with the neck and and a half bottle with the larger bottom. Store them in your garden shed, and when you see a weed that needs to be target killed, place the neck end of the 1/2 bottle over the center of the weed. You can then spray many of these solutions into the large opening of that 1/2 bottle to kill just the weed you want and avoid harming your plants with over spray. If you have many weeds around many small plants, use the bottom 1/2 of the bottle you saved and place the large open end over the plants you don’t want killed. They will now be covered and you can spray the exposed weeds that are uncovered.  Hint: If you save the bottle caps, both halves of the cut bottle can be used for protecting plants.