Frugal Weed and Fungus Control

Typical suburban scene:

A "lawn care" van pulls up to the curb and a man gets out, fastens yards of hoses to the equipment inside. He sprays your lawn, front and back, with poison for your weeds and fungi and nutrients for your grass. Before he leaves, he sticks a flag on a skinny plastic rod in your lawn: "Keep children and pets off lawn for 24 hours."

Prices range from $35 to well over a hundred dollars a month to have a lawn chemically "taken care of." That does not include mowing, trimming, aerating or raking. You still have to do that yourself or pay someone else to do it.

Alternative to that, many of you do the weed and feed thing yourself, spraying commercial preparations and hoping for the best. It's cheaper, but it's still expensive.

Here's even more frugal weed and fungus control:

Vinegar. Heat it up and drench weeds with it. It works on young weeds, up to 6 inches tall, but not well on perennials or larger weeds. High acid (10 to 20%) vinegar works best. Feed and/or farm stores or outlets that carry commercial cleaners will probably have it, but if you can't find it, boil 5% acid vinegar (the kind you find in the grocery store) to half its volume to increase the strength. Add a little clove oil to increase the killing power.

Salt. If you have weeds in a place that you don't want anything growing, plain old table salt will kill at least some of them. It won't work well on extremely hardy weeds that grow well on poor soil. Thistle and sunflowers in particular hardly mind it.

Combination. One gallon of vinegar, one teaspooon dish detergent and one cup of salt, mixed thoroughly, will kill weeds in sidewalk cracks. Don't use this near any other plants as it is not selective in what it kills!

Heat. Pouring boiling water on weeds will wilt them and often kill them. Fire, from a torch or other source, will kill them. Native Americans used to burn the prairies to kill weeds and allow grass to grow more freely.

Modify the habitat. For instance, arranging other plants or garden paraphernalia to keep the area in shade will discourage weed growth. Some weeds will die out if you limit the water available, or add amendments to change the ph level of the soil.

Competition. Find plants that will overtake your weeds. Hardy, spreading ground covers and spreading bushy plants like trumpet vines can crowd out many weeds.

Once an area is free of weeds, mulch it to keep new growth down. Obviously, you won't want to do this in the lawn, but do use it in flower or vegetable gardens or around single plants.

If you have trouble with toadstools, moss or similar growth, baking soda suspended in water and sprayed directly on the area will kill them.

Broadcast plain corn meal over areas that have been attacked by fungus.

Soak a cup of cornmeal in a gallon of water for an hour or more, then drain the water off and spray it over lawns, flower beds or vegetable gardens to control fungus growth.

If you have an especially weedy area, dig it up and put a weed barrier down, then cover with mulch and poke holes to plant what you want to grow there.

Plain old fashioned pulling weeds works very well, but some weeds have very deep roots and will grow back from them. Use a combination: Pull the weed, then pour hot vinegar or boiling water over the root that broke off.

Choose whichever methods suit your purposes and save yourself some money to use for other, better, reasons.