Why you should NEVER use vinegar to get rid of weeds in your vegetable garden or garden

Vinegar is a seemingly eco-friendly solution to weed killing, it actually harms plants, soil and insects

He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him

Many still believe that vinegar can be a valid natural remedy for weeds. In reality, using this substance in the vegetable garden or garden, even if it is really effective, is not a good idea at all. We explain why.

Vinegar is considered an environmentally friendly natural remedy but we have already seen, for example when talking about use in the washing machine, which is not really so. Arriving in the water, in fact, it turns out to be particularly polluting. (Read also: Vinegar: when NOT to use it in cleaning and what to replace it with).

Although it is often recommended, even in the garden it would be advisable to avoid the use of vinegar as it is a very aggressive acid which, it is true that it eliminates weeds, but is not harmless for all other plants (which damages), as well as for the soil and for insects and microorganisms that populate it. The higher the acetic acid content, the more harmful the vinegar is on plants.

So there are so many reasons not to use it in our vegetable garden and garden that we could summarize as follows:

it does not distinguish between crops and weeds
damages the plant (but not the roots)
harms soil organisms and insects
remains in the soil and changes the pH value, which adversely affects plant growth

Incidentally, the use of non-expressly approved herbicides is prohibited on waterproofed surfaces (such as garden paths, terraces and more) and from a purely legal point of view, vinegar is not a permitted herbicide. According to the law, in fact, only plant protection products approved for the specific application area are allowed.

Vinegar also presents toxicity and health risks, as he writes Donatello Sandroni, agronomist and researcher in ecotoxicology:

Another bad news also comes from the toxicological point of view, because the acute oral toxicity of acetic acid is double that of, for example, the much maligned glyphosate. The LD50 of acetic acid - a chemical substance too, with all due respect to those who believe not - is in fact equal to 3.310 mg / kg against 5.600 mg / kg of glyphosate. Basically, to have the risk of death it is enough to ingest half of it.

We talk about pure acid but also formulations with contained acetic acid levels are questionable:

On the market there are formulations containing acetic acid at concentrations well above those of vinegar for food use. There is talk of percentages of acetic acid up to five times higher, also reporting on the label the organic agriculture sticker alongside the claim which, however, do not allow discussions on the recommended use, such as "natural solution for weeds". Translated, "herbicide", only that for legal reasons it cannot be written so directly. So much so that these products are generically described as "invigorating" and not as herbicides.

So let's avoid vinegar, as there are other valid solutions against weeds. However, among these there is no salt, another natural solution that risks drying plants and causes this substance to accumulate in the soil, damaging microorganisms and animals.

How to get rid of weeds

The most effective and sustainable method is always the good old one manual weeding to be done as soon as possible, when the plants are still small and the roots can be easily removed. The best time to remove weeds is when the soil is moist.

THEhot water it is considered another effective and environmentally friendly method and is now commonly used. Boiling water must be poured over the weeds, after which they can be swept away.

For weeds that grow in the joints or between the tiles, a joint scraper is suitable, which extracts the plants and their roots from the ground.

We have reported other systems to you in the following articles: