I know that pulling weeds is a great natural way to control the weeds in your yard. But look, sometimes you just want something easy. That’s where spraying weed killer comes in. But commercial weed killer is fairly expensive (about $15-$25/gallon at the time of writing) and filled with nasty chemicals you probably don’t want in your yard, especially if you have pets or kids. Instead, you can make a safer weed killer yourself that’s super effective for less than $5.
$5 Per Gallon DIY Weed Killer
Ingredients
- 1 gallon of white vinegar ($4.19 at Target)
- 1 cup of salt ($0.22)
- 1 tablespoon of liquid dish soap ($0.05)
Grand total = $4.46
Optional (but recommended)
A pump pressured sprayer. This makes both mixing and spraying the DIY weed killer a breeze. If you don’t have one you can get one for cheap on Amazon. Here’s the 2-gallon sprayer that I use.
Instructions
Mix Ingredients
Mix the vinegar and salt until the salt dissolves completely. Then, mix in the dish soap. I mixed mine in my pump pressure sprayer so it was ready to spray immediately. However, you could also mix in a different container and add to smaller spray bottles if you don’t have a pressure sprayer.
Apply to Weeds
Spray the weed killer on the surface of the weeds during a sunny day. The sunlight enhances the vinegar’s weed-killing effectiveness. If it’s late in the day, you may want to wait until the next morning to give yourself maximum sunlight.
Repeat
If you have stubborn weeds or weeds in an area with little sunlight, you may need to apply more than one application to achieve the desired result.
Please Note: This weed killer contains salt, which is not great for the soil or other plants. So apply w h caution. However, you do not need to get the solution into the soil or reach the weed’s root. This weed killer is an acidic solution that breaks down the plants’ cells, so you just need to get it on the stems and leaves of the weed. Of course, some perennial weed species might be more challenging to kill and require repeat applications or other techniques entirely. Also, if you spray a lot of this, be prepared for your yard to smell like vinegar for a day or two.
$5 DIY Weed Killer Results
To demonstrate the effectiveness, let me show you my backyard. We have the decomposed granite down, and despite a weed barrier, these little weeds and grasses keep showing up. Why the grasses can’t appear in the patchy areas of my front lawn is both a mystery and a source of constant frustration for me.
Before
Here’s what my yard looked like before using this week killer.
After
This is my yard about a week later. Most of the green weeds and grass have dried up and turned yellow. It basically looked like this the next day; I just didn’t get around to taking photos for a week.
Before
For a more current example, I just mixed up a half-batch to spot-treat some of the smaller weeds that were still growing. Here’s these weeds just after spraying.
After
And here they are just 3 hours later. Barely even visible.
Before
Here’s another patch of weeds before spraying.
After
And here they are 24 hours later, fried to a crisp.
Conclusion
The $5 DIY weed killer is amazingly effective, and should be safe for use around pets and kids. At less than five dollars per gallon, it beats the expensive chemicals at the store, hands down. I know what I’m spraying every time now.