A post promoting vinegar (one gallon), salt (one cup) and dish soap (one tablespoon) as a replacement for RoundUp recently came across my Facebook feed. The active ingredient in Roundup is nasty, but effective at killing plants–and lots of other things. A more earth-friendly approach appealed to me.

Weeds pop up in cracks in the concrete, but keeping zoysia grass in bounds is the biggest challenge. Runners travel over barriers and roots creep under. I’ve been fighting the battle for several years and was ready to pull out the RoundUp when the recipe popped up.

I dumped the salt into a 4-cup measuring cup, filled it with vinegar, and stirred. After the undissolved salt settled, I emptied the rest into a pump sprayer, and refilled the measuring cup with vinegar, repeating until all the salt was dissolved. I added the dish soap last and shook the sprayer a bit.

The nozzle was already set to mist. I left it that way and sprayed the edges of all the flower beds, cracks in the sidewalk, and weeds between my house and the neighbor’s (supposedly a through-way to the land trust area behind my house).

The next day, I looked to see how it worked. A clump of red oxalis was dead. Grass along the edge of the beds was yellow in spots. Weeds in other areas didn’t seem to be affected. I changed the sprayer tip to stream and resprayed everything.

I’m pleased. For the most part, the stream took out what the mister left behind. I kept some of the mix in a spray bottle for repeat applications on hardier weeds. In a month or so, I’ll probably need to respray edges to beat back the zoysia grass.

A gallon of RoundUp is about $13. The salt and dish soap I used cost about a buck. Vinegar prices vary, but I paid $4 for mine. I’ve since learned extra strength vinegar (aka cleaning vinegar) works even better.

Judging from the comments my Facebook post, the vinegar/salt/soap recipe has been around forever and a day. Had it crossed my mind, finding alternatives to RoundUp online would have been easy.

Oh, well. I’ll keep you posted on the results. As always, thanks for stopping by.