Though this cold and snowy January might be making you think of no other wellness stressors than colds and flu, family wellness is still important during the summer and bears thinking about, if only to give you an excuse to fantasise about sunnier days. During the early part of summer, you begin to see weeds taking over your patio and creep into those hard to reach crevices where they stay forever, unless you kill them off with something harsh and full of chemicals, but this could put the wellbeing of curious children and prying pets at risk.
However, what you may not realise is that there are safe, easy, low- or even no-cost solutions to killing weeds that are scientifically proven alternatives to commercial weed killers with toxic chemicals. According to the PhD thesis research project of University of Copenhagen student Anne Merete Rask, you can kill stubborn weeds between hard surfaces (like paving stones) with boiling water! Even if you know about this inexpensive method, you may not be aware of the amount of water and times you need to implement this strategy to prevent weeds from reappearing.
Rask advises that pouring boiling water on weeds needs to be done to the point where the thermal damage is just enough to blanch the leaves of the weeds, as this causes them to wilt and prevents the roots from storing carbohydrates, without which the weed cannot re-grow or recover. This also needs to be repeated up to six times throughout the summer. According to Rask ‘We have conducted several kinds of experiments since 2004. Controlled field experiments, experiments where we have planted weeds in hard surfaces and then burned them, as well as experiments with ‘real’ weeds on stones. We have observed that the treatments work.’
If that is too labour-intensive for you, then there are also other effective weed killing solutions. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommend applying household vinegar with a spray bottle, as long as you coat the plant evenly. You can also smother weeds and keep them at bay with a light-blocking layer of mulch three inches deep, such as one made of shredded bark or sawdust from Black walnut (Juglans nigra) or butternut (Juglans cinerea) trees. However, these produce a toxic substance called juglone that is harmful to plants so don’t use this mulch near non-weed plants as it will kill them as well. Finally, on a hot, sunny day you can wash those weeds to death by dousing them with soapy water made from 5 tablespoons of liquid kitchen soap in 4 cups of water.
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