Flower Gardens

» Cottage_Garden - aphids and weeds kitchen tips

Aphids you can try smushing with your fingers or you can knock them off with a spray of water from the garden hose. Or just wait for the ladybugs to show up.

Some people will use a soap solution on aphids. The old standby was Ivory soap, they even had their own magazine ads about it many, many, years ago. Nowadays the so-called soaps are often detergents and not really soap, so you have to be very careful. Test your solution on a leaf and wait a few days before spraying the whole plant -- you don't want to have a bad reaction and defoliate or even kill your plant!!! The same goes if you are using the commercially formulated soaps such as Safer's. This is going to be a contact control, so you need to hit the aphids directly with the soap spray. You shouldn't need to use much at all if you are very careful or targeted with your spraying.

Flaming and boiling water will kill off the weed tops but not the roots, so it is not going to be that effective against perennial weeds. Old fashioned hoe and pulling them out by the roots are pretty eco-friendly controls, so is smothering with newspaper and mulch. But that's not kitchen stuff.

Vinegar! A stronger concentration of vinegar can be used on weeds, that might be easier/safer than walking (or running if it's a distance) to pour boiling water on them. It is not the same vinegar as you buy at the grocery store, the edible vinegar you have in the kitchen is more diluted. Kitchen vinegar might do in some baby annual seedlings, but those are so easy to whisk away with a hoe it hardly seems worth the effort.

The flamer scares me, I am sure I would hurt myself!

Boron will kill stuff, it is in the borax product for laundry. BUT it is SUPER toxic and sits in the soil for years and years. I would NEVER use this to kill weeds. Once it is in the soil, NOTHING will grow there.

Salt can kill some weeds, but it can also become a problem in the soil. It used to be suggested for weeding the asparagus because asparagus is more salt tolerant than some weeds. But I don't think I would recommend it. Better to mulch heavily between the asparagus.

One last kitchen trick for weeds is the paring knife, it can dig out weeds in between pavers on the patio. Some people find it relaxing to sit out after supper with a glass of lemonade (or whatever) and run the paring knife along the stones. Personally, that kind of job would drive me insane. LOL

I know there are many homemade garden "remedies" out there -- I love to hear when they actually work out.

I am starting some other discussion threads with topics like this. LOL

-- posted by Cottage_Garden