Beating Weeds and Garden Pests

anything i've read about the vinegar says that over the counter white vinegar alone won't do it, it needs to be more concentrated, one site talked about distilling the vinegar

the commercial vinegar based weed killers are still expensive (i've tried a few) and really don't do much, i only use roundup on the drive way (gravel) to keep the weeds down, the gardens i mulch and weed by hand

Poison oak will probably respond better to a painted on brush killer - if you're man enough to stand around painting poison oak. My elm suckers probably need the same, but I don't have that kind of determination.

First, re the vinegar.
Edgar, a few years ago I had to get rid of morning glories. The suggestion dys made was a flame thrower, and he wasn't far off.
I did make a solution (found on the interweb) of water, dishsoap and vinegar....actually I think there was salt in it too.
It killed enough of the plants that I could much more easily pull the roots up.
I thought the smell of the combination of the dish soap and vinegar was nauseating. If I thought the full strength vinegar alone would work, I'd go with that. Even if you don't like the smell, it fades quickly.

roger, another use for salt that seems to be working....flea control

I scattered fine salt (sea salt that wally didn't like), about a pound, all through the carpets, and left it there a couple 3 days before vacuuming it back up.

Oddly, I don't have much salt scattered around the carpets, but lots of grains of cat litter. Whatever it's supposed to be good for, it doesn't seem to be helping.

I just came in from stone duty. Long story, but I have these developer spread stones I hate - they're hard to walk on and they're in my parking strip to 4 or 5 " deep. I've gotten rid of bunches of them by using them on hellacious wind days to keep my trash can upright on trash pickup day. I'm transferring the rest gradually to places that both need mulch and that I'm unlikely to want to walk. Anyway, this all takes longer because of the perilous goathead stickers. I can only do this with my thick leather gloves, and even then....

Luckily, those things are not in the whole yard yet, she says as she picks goatheads off her shirt, jean legs, socks, and so on. I can roundup the greening new goathead plants (so cute, they look like grass for a short time in spring), but these are stickers in the soil from years gone by.

K, I'd never heard of goatheads, so I looked them up. The first site I came to didn't really show the plant but it did sell Puncturevine eating Weevils and propane torches. Jeesus, I hope that stuff doesn't migrate further north. Anywhoo, thought you'd be interested. It's either bugs or a full on burn the forest down power.

This is what I have --- the little darlings. Those cuties in the photo get dry and hard and are nastybodies, as an old friend used to say.
http://juliedarcy.blogspot.com/2010/09/if-theyre-not-goat-heads-what-are-they.html

Dunno the latin name yet, despite my thinking I knew it on another thread. We call 'em goatheads hereabouts. The pictures I see of Tribulus terrestris seed are similar but the grown plant doesn't look the same.

Vinegar worked on all my weeds but the thistle. That needed several efforts and only the baby ones died. You just have to be careful to funnel the vinegar near the roots.

Boiling water will also kill weeds but what a PITA!

it helps them find their way back to the litter box.

I think even the cats refer to it as the hansel and gretel theorum...

I hate thistles. I pull them as soon as I see them, it's the only thing that seems to work aside from going nuclear. Edmonton is now ticketing people who let them get out of control.

What we called goatheads when I was a boy in Fresno are not the same as in the link above. Our goatheads grew on what looked to be huge doilies. Our yard was filled with them when we moved in. I thought our parents were off their rocker for sending us to play barefooted. We stepped around and over these things in the beginning, but there were enough of us that we walked them out of existence within a few months. The large red ants took a few years to chase off.

Right - those are the ones that start with T. Yeh, Tribulus terrestris.

I'm not sure mine qualify for the common name - except that Dys told me - since I don't know the latin name to search it and it doesn't come up right away if you search goathead, except, far as a I looked, the blog I showed the link for.

I'll search some more later. Probably something under obnoxious weeds of Albuquerque.

Oh, goodie, looks like I have one of the Field Sandspurs -

Nice photo of the sticker thing at the bottom of the page -
http://okeechobee.ifas.ufl.edu/News%20columns/Sandspur.htm

Once at Home Depot I saw cement bleach being sold by the gallon. I thought that’s what I need to clean the front walkway. It worked great.

My neighbor across the street told me I should delude some of it in a spray bottle and spray the weeds, so I did and it worked like a charm!

I am very allergic to poison oak. So I generally attack it in the cold months, when it is down a bit. This year we had no cold months. I don't think the variety we have here is as potent as what we endured in California. I didn't have to touch the leaves back then. Or perhaps it is because I am older that I have to make contact with the kind I have now. I will try something on it in a few weeks.