Maintaining your home's landscape during the spring and summer months can be enjoyable, but it can also be challenging if you have a lot of weeds trying to encroach on your property. Managing weed growth is an essential part of any home landscaping plan, and many people believe that toxic chemicals are the only way to kill off weeds for good.
If you are looking for a more natural way to control the weeds growing on your property, here are three non-toxic methods you can try in the future.
1. Spray weeds with vinegar.
Filling a squirt bottle with vinegar from your home's kitchen provides you with a powerful tool in the fight against weed growth. When you squirt weeds with vinegar, the vinegar damages the delicate outer layer protecting the plant from overheating.
The weeds will essentially cook themselves to death, allowing you to easily remove them from your property. It's important that you use caution when relying on vinegar to control weeds, since the vinegar will also kill other plants in your landscape if you don't control the mist from the squirt bottle properly.
2. Prevent weed growth with mulch.
In order for weeds to take root in your home's landscape, they need access to water and sunlight. Covering any areas within your landscape that are not already occupied by plant life with mulch can be a great way to starve weed seeds of the sunlight and water they need to grow properly.
Wood or straw mulch can completely block the sun's rays from reaching your soil, and these mulches trap water before it can seep into the soil and nourish weed seeds. These characteristics help to make mulch a powerful non-toxic form of weed control.
3. Use boiling water to eliminate weeds.
Another powerful non-toxic method for eliminating weeds from your home's landscape requires access to a ready supply of boiling water. Once you have brought a large quantity of water to a rolling boil in a sauce pan, immediately remove the pan from heat and pour the boiling water onto mature weeds within your home's landscape.
The boiling water will scald the weeds, causing them to die and become easy to remove from the ground. Although this method can be time consuming because you have to boil a separate pan of water for each patch of weeds, it is a natural way to get rid of weeds.
Removing weeds without toxic chemicals doesn't have to be impossible. Try using vinegar, mulch, or boiling water to rid your home's landscape of weeds without introducing toxic chemicals to your property. Check out sites like http://www.asepestandweedsupplies.com for more options.
