Easy Weeding of a Bush Rock Path

Bush rock paving creates a relaxed feel, especially for a native garden, or for an eclectic, informal East-meets-West garden such as ours. As my wife would say about our garden, it is ‘rojak’ or ‘Malaysian fruit and vegetable salad’. In more familiar terms, it is organised chaos.

Relaxed by nature, but not by effort, the path can be difficult to maintain. One is always hesitant to utilise inorganic herbicides like ‘Roundup’ to keep it clean, instead preferring to be on bended knee, toiling away, pulling and digging weeds which are reluctant to part company with their narrow patch of turf… it is a never-ending battle of wills between weeds and weeder! A battle until I read the article below…

http://www.agardenforthehouse.com/2011/06/got-weeds-use-vinegar-not-roundup/

I have experimented with the writer’s suggestion to use white vinegar as a herbicide. These are the photo results…

Morning

Evening

Morning

Evening

  

Most of the weeds were killed ‘instantly’ by applying a spray of pure white vinegar. Others were mortally wounded. The white vinegar is not a selective treatment, and if we are inattentive it will damage valued plants. Therefore, we need to be careful to limit any spray drift when using this treatment.

Importantly, white vinegar is inexpensive and easily obtainable from supermarkets.

Kikuyu grass is no match for white vinegar

A tufted grass appears to be resistant to the vinegar spray