I think you would need to be careful to not get it on ground where you want to seed or plant.
Vinegar is a long lasting herbicide. So are sodium salts and baking soda.

That's a LOT of salt!

The good thing about salt is that it persists in the soil, and doesn't move much.

The bad thing about salt is that it persists in the soil , and doesn't move much.

So it's really good for cracks in the sidewalk, driveway or patio, and probably inconsequential where you spot-apply and use sparingly, and still want other plants to grow. Such a tiny amount would be is used.

It's all a matter of degree. You may not see any physical damage, but it could build up.
Caveat utilitor (User beware).
One would NEVER use this recipe to kill weeds in an entire area to be planted later. Just because something is natural, doesn't mean it is harmless!

With the vinegar in the recipe, I'll bet one can get away with using less salt? Where did this recipe come from? Jerry Baker?

This is NOT a Natural or organic weed killer.
It is actually less organic than glyphosphate which leaves no residue in soil.

I've used something similar in an area where I didn't want anything to grow...EVER...and it only was effective for about a year. And I mean, I dumped salt all over the ground and then poured vinegar on top of that. You'd never know I'd done it now.

It will depend on the concentrations of acetic acid in the vinegar.
I use 1 cup of vinegar and dilute that to 1 gallon.
I only use that were I do not want to plant or seed for several years.

Plants which like acidic soil might come back quicker.

CarolineScott said:It will depend on the concentrations of acetic acid in the vinegar.
I use 1 cup of vinegar and dilute that to 1 gallon.
I only use that were I do not want to plant or seed for several years.

Plants which like acidic soil might come back quicker.

Yes, that was why I posted it. Tons of weeds that I wanted gone for good!!
Rhapsody

My front yard is permanenty mulched with islands of plantings. Unfortunately, weeds still find there way up through the mulch. I will try this on these isolated weeds as I just used the last of the roundup.

http://www.ofa.org.au/papers/g...

Quote: Caroline Scott-above "This is NOT a Natural or organic weed killer.
It is actually less organic than glyphosphate which leaves no residue in soil."

It is not true that glyphosate does not leave a residue in soil, or in subsequent plantings grown on that soil. Above is one summary of this myth. There are thousands of others on the internet. The toxicity of glyphosate does depend on what other chemicals are used in the application, but it is still toxic used by itself.

Salt is also toxic to soil. (NaCl) as anyone knows who lives in areas where roads are salted to prevent icing over.

http://budgeting.thenest.com/r...

Here is an article on the toxic effect of road salt (NaCl) on soil.

Hazel! Hazel where do you get these from?
There is a lot of junk science on the web.

Caroline... I use RoundUp sparingly ...the only way to control tropical weeds here. I cannot use it on weeds around my Papaya Trees because if the weeds' roots (that are sprayed with it) come into the Papayas' roots...the tree is really adversely affected...can die.

Am going to try that recipe ... would rather use something less toxic.

Carol

Thinking we need to get some research from a source that is dependable. I know we have problems in the Southwest with our soil - just watering/irrigating here adds "salts" to the soil, and I have been told that it is a factor in desertification, aka loss of plantable soil throughout the world.

I'm with Carol - there is one weed and one weed only that I will use glycophosphate on, and only because it is *so* difficult to control and such an invasive plant here - Bermuda grass. But I still worry about it's affects on the soil and with our pollinators.

Rhapsody, I hope you don't feel like we're piling on top of you - this is a snippet of a huge discussion that is going on all over - I'm not sure has been completely settled yet. I appreciate you bringing it up, if for no other reason than some of us might now seek out a reliable resource to find out some of the facts. Thank you!

One person's toxic is different from the next persons toxic.
We each do what we consider is best for our gardens.

sheryl said:Thinking we need to get some research from a source that is dependable. I know we have problems in the Southwest with our soil - just watering/irrigating here adds "salts" to the soil, and I have been told that it is a factor in desertification, aka loss of plantable soil throughout the world.

I'm with Carol - there is one weed and one weed only that I will use glycophosphate on, and only because it is *so* difficult to control and such an invasive plant here - Bermuda grass. But I still worry about it's affects on the soil and with our pollinators.

Rhapsody, I hope you don't feel like we're piling on top of you - this is a snippet of a huge discussion that is going on all over - I'm not sure has been completely settled yet. I appreciate you bringing it up, if for no other reason than some of us might now seek out a reliable resource to find out some of the facts. Thank you!

Thank you for giving a hoot about my feeling! I was feeling a bit put out.

Sheryl is absolutely right; there is a great deal of discussion and controversy on this subject in many different quarters. Try doing a Google search some time!
Everyone's situation is different. I used the salt and vinegar because I didn't want to use chemicals around my dog's kennel; if I tried using Roundup, she would rub all up and down the fence, getting it on her fur. She ignored the salt and vinegar.

Oops! wrong thread! (deleted)

Folks interested in how Roundup affects a person's body, and compromises health
should read Jeff Cox's article in the August/September 2013 issue of Organic Gardening magazine.
It is a sobering message from a respected source with some science to back it up.

Thanks, wakingdream, and welcome . If you're ever able to provide a link, it can be helpful - there are many of us here that aren't as computer savvy as others...

Here is the link. The article quotes a study that seems to have scientific backing (review of a number of studies, published in a peer reviewed, scientific journal) and is sobering, indeed. Carol, you and I might be pouring any left-over wine on weeds from here on out! http://www.organicgardening.co...

Rhapsody, I understand how you feel - it is hard to interpret where people are coming from at times. I think Caroline is right, we all do as best we can given our individual circumstances .... and if it helps at all, I have conversed with just about all of the people on this thread for years now, and of those, none would want you to feel bad. As Woofie said, it *is* very controversial - and again, I thank you for bringing it up.

I have used White Vinegar and Rock salt to control weeds here in Tennessee around the Pool as it has White Granite rocks around the outside of the pool grounds . and even come back the next day with the Industrial Bleach (Green Jug at Lowes ) and sprayed it over the rocks this area has NO plants other then weeds and we do not want anything growing there . it will kill the weeds out right in just a few days to about a week with the heat and no rain then the weeds are removed and the rock area is nice and white as it should be it last the summer and until the next Spring with a little Maintenance of a lesser amount of the solution applied .

Sarge

I typed about five pages of diatribe about the 2013 paper by Seneff and Samsel.

Then lost it all. Oh, well, maybe it was for the best. Paging right past this post might be a good idea, but I couldn't let praise of the Seneff paper go un-responded-to.

Rhapsody, I don't mean this as criticism of you, it comes from weeks of debating Roundup in another garden website and 12-15 hours of following popular articles back to the junk science they came form, or finding where they totally misquoted good science. I had a 100% frustration rate! When i started, I expected to find mixed results and ambivalent science on both sides, but instead found 100% propaganda or phoney science on one side.

Probably from your citing the "Roundup Unready" article, we've come to different conclusions about Roundup. The fact that I get heated when I chase down that body of literature to its sources is no reflection on you, we just came to different conclusions.

My heat is directed at activist journalists who should know better and should use more integrity when they misreport and distort their sources.

Notice that the "Roundup Unready" article is very sanctimonious about encouraging us to check out the article and its citations ... but I did not see any link to that article that a reader might pursue!

This should bring it up, not that it is easy reading or necessarily makes any sense to anyone. Eventually I gave up because it seemed to be grinding an axe rather than critiquing or even demonstrating detailed comprehension of its source materials.

http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/...

The journal "Entropy" is a good example of the trend towards "open access" online "science journals". The short version of my opinion is that they will publish ANYTHING and then call it science. But please form your own opinion of them!
http://www.mdpi.com/journal/en...

Also, in their words, they are "devoted to the exploration of entropy in statistics and science." Not agriculture, toxicology or any other science relevant to glyphosphate.

A while ago, in a thread in another garden website, I took the time to follow through and read parts of the same article article and find some of her other work and primary research interests. She has no credentials, academic training or experience in agriculture or toxicology. She's a computer scientist with a background in AI and natural language processing.

Samsel and Seneff did not conduct ANY studies to write this article. None, zero. They cited other papers. I wish she had any training in the scientific specialties those papers were about!

Her hobbyhorse seems to be esoteric aspects of entropy and inventing new terms like "exogenous semiotic entropy". I'm not making that up.

Here's her home page on MIT's site:
http://people.csail.mit.edu/se...

And here is an extract from the abstract of her article:
"Consequences are most of the diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet, which include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. We explain the documented effects of glyphosate and its ability to induce disease, and we show that glyphosate is the “textbook example” of exogenous semiotic entropy: the disruption of homeostasis by environmental toxins. "

I think she realized that no one was taking her abstract ideas seriously, so she coupled them with things like "Roundup causes bad things" so she could be published in "open source journals", and be widely cited by unscrupulous or credulous activist journalists and widely bashed by everyone else.

Try to read the paper, it uses many very abstract words in very scary ways, but in my opinion is unscrupulous hot air. I couldn't read it all or understand very much of what she was really trying to accomplish.

The connection between what she cited and what she concluded did not exist as far as I could see, but that might come from my ignorance of the principles of "exogenous semiotic entropy", sarcasm intended.

http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/...

I don't know whether Seneff is sincerely trying to prove something abstract and incomprehensible about AI and information theory, or just a publicity hound. But they way she cites other people's articles suggests she either doesn't understand the subjects she has no training in, or plays very loosely with what might be relevant to her claims.

What I found consistently while following links that other people advanced as "real science" about glyphosphate (and, to a lesser extent, anti-GMO screeds) was that a very scary-sounding popular article would cite some hard-to-find and hard-to-read REAL scientific paper, and then totally misquote and distort it.

In this case, the Roundup Unready article stayed pretty close to Seneff's paper ... but I didn't respect that paper and had to list "Entropy" in my head as "they publish pseudo-science".

= = = = =
Tamar Haspel said this in the Huff Post:

Condemning Monsanto With Bad Science Is Dumb
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

"After reading the paper, I had to wonder -- who are Samsel and Seneff? Seneff is a Senior Research Scientist in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT. Her advanced degrees are in electrical engineering. She describes herself as having "recently become interested in the effect of drugs and diet on health and nutrition." Samsel describes himself as an "Independent Scientist and Consultant," and, for the last 37 years, has run Anthony Samsel Environmental and Public Health Services, which does "Charitable community investigations of industrial polluters." I think it's fair to say they probably went into this with a point of view."
= = = = =

This anti-GM site wasn't very kind either.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.p...

I don't know this site's bias, but they dump really hard on this "paper":
http://www.examiner.com/articl...

Back on topic - I personally would be disinclined to use NaCl and acetic acid to kill weeds.

Those are generally toxic to all plants and inhabitants of soil and water. If you have good drainage, they will rapidly leach out of the weed patch and contaminate soil and water downstream.

If Monsanto started selling it, people would rightly call them polluters.

But several people I respect HAVE or DO use vinegar or salt to kill everything in small areas, and most of them are MUCH better gardeners than I am.

So your mileage may vary.