Oklahoma Dreaming: Vinegar
by Donna Schoenkopf
(Written at Chigger Lake, five days ago.)
I was driving down the 40 just west of Shawnee a couple of months ago, over hill and dale, green stretching on either side, white billowing clouds in the deep blue sky, listening to NPR, when I heard some very important information.
It turns out, that after thorough scientific research, the best disinfectant (better than bleach, which may be very, very bad for the ozone layer) is vinegar.
Yup. Scientists treated cutting boards and counter tops and all kinds of things with a host of disinfectants, then measured bacteria, and the winner is vinegar.
Also vinegar (as I’ve been told on the backs of health food magazines) helps with weight loss, cancer eradication and digestion.
And not only THAT ... vinegar kills weeds.
I stumbled across THAT piece of information while googling for a natural way to control bamboo.
The vinegar we use regularly is actually a 5% solution—5% acetic acid, 95% water. That’s pretty diluted.
If you use full strength vinegar (you can find out where to buy it on the Web) you can kill any kind of vegetation immediately. You are supposed to wear gloves because it is so caustic. But vinegar’s redeeming quality is that it is not a new-fangled pesticide making its nasty way down to our aquifers to poison us all.
There is nothing I love more than my children, my pets, and aquifers. Just imagine, somewhere below most of us, is a vast underground lake—an aquifer. The water sits in a long, low, rock bowl. Pristine and pure.
Pristine and pure until lately.
Lately the collective we, the global we, the humankind we, have been putting stuff on top of the earth—pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers—that are BRAND NEW molecular structures, created by chemical companies. Living things of the affected ecosystem have never experienced these new molecular structures before and consequently the affected plants and animals react as though they were being attacked by foreign invaders.
You all remember your biology teacher (or fifth grade teacher, or father, or comic book) telling you about the white corpuscles attacking foreign invaders.
So the chemical companies are unleashing foreign invaders onto and into the earth. Worse than War of the Worlds.
And guess what else? It’s happening all over the world.
So, seeing as how vinegar is a pretty old molecular structure, which the planet has been experiencing for millennia, I’m betting it’s much safer for eradicating the grass under my deck than the new stuff. I mean, by now we MUST have adapted to it. After all, we EAT it in salad dressings and catsup.
That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it. Unless proved wrong. Yes, I know. I took Philosophy 101. Nothing can be proved absolutely. So let’s just say I’m hedging my bet. Whatever that means. (What the hell DOES hedging a bet mean, anyway???)
So. Vinegar it is, to kill the grass that grows under my deck and makes pretty patterns (which I love) between the boards, because I’m told by knowledgeable people that the grass will rot the boards AND, Joan adds, knowing my predilection for the health of the environment, vinegar will kill the grass!
I was dreading the job—spraying grass, cutting and sweeping dead grass off decks, spraying sealer on the wood. (I have sort of made peace and acknowledged, privately and publicly, that I am indeed a lazy person.)
So it was with a less than eager eye that I surveyed the job.
I wondered if I could just spray sealer over the grass poking through the slits of the deck, killing it and making the deck job a one step operation.
But, as I went through the process in my mind, I realized in two seconds that the dead grass would be stuck to the wood of the deck and provide fodder for organisms that probably would go for the wood after they had eaten all the dried grass. Or they would leave air space on the surface of the wood after having consumed the dead grass, thus creating a pocket of air, which would definitely weaken the surface of the sealer. OR they would do something horrible that I’d not even thought of.
I swear to God, I wear myself out before I even get started.
I had already bought a sprayer for applying deck sealer (according to Peewee’s handy helpful hints) along with a giant vat of said sealer for the wood of my many, many, MANY decks. So I filled my sprayer with a gallon of vinegar and sprayed the first deck until the vinegar was used up. And then I poured in another gallon and sprayed the second.
We’ll see if it works.
(Written at Chigger Lake, yesterday.)
I am looking at the front two decks and see that, yes, most of the vinegar-drenched grass that poked itself between the boards of my deck in thick clumps is dried and brown, but there is SOME grass that has sprung up green and healthy.
Hmmmmm.
I guess this grass-killing process is going to be a two-step operation.
And I am a lazy person.
And there are NINE decks to do.
Ugh.
Maybe I’ll pay someone to do it.
Naaaaahhhhh. I’ll do it.
Dammit.
(Written at Chigger Lake, today.)
Today I have googled “vinegar” and “natural weed killers” and have found out some important information. It is as follows:
Vinegar only kills the LEAVES of plants.
Oh.
THAT explains the fresh green clumps happily pushing through the slits of the deck.
The other interesting bit of info is that there are many kinds of natural weed killers:
1. Boiling water. Yeah. Just scald them to death. Like lobsters.
2. Bleach. Well, I am prejudiced against bleach, even though I’ve just been on line and Wikipedia says that bleach becomes harmless immediately. But I have doubts about this information and wonder if Clorox has written the piece. MY information is that chlorine bleach molecules have an oxygen component which floats to the ozone layer and combines with an ozone molecule in such a way that the ozone is destroyed.
Hence the destruction of our ozone layer.
But I’m not totally sure any more about any of it and will wait to make final pronouncements. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.
3. Salt. You can salt the earth. This leaves a Biblical taste in my mouth. I tend to back away from that one, seeing as how it’s pretty infamous in history and all.
The Google says that salt will dissolve and blend with everything and become harmless.
Yeah, well tell THAT to an aquifer.
4. Rubbing alcohol. Seems a bit expensive. And harsh.
5. Corn meal. THIS is pretty cool. It keeps seeds from germinating, like plant birth control. And it’s cheap.
6. Newspaper. Cut off plants’ light, starving them to death. I have tons of newspaper. BUT, the sides of my deck, even though they are very close to the ground, ARE on bricks at each corner. And this lets light in.
7. Combine any of these for a double or triple kick.
AND if you add dishwashing soap, that will act as a binder and make it stick to the plant.
I am beginning to have feelings of remorse for the grass. It’s innocent enough. And I am trying to kill it.
But I worked hard on the decks and it has to go.
So, it being Sunday and all, and the day being PERFECT for yard work (cool breezes, clouds dappling the light) and even though I am lazy, lazy, lazy to the bone, the outdoors calls me to action.
I think I’ll start with boiling water, even though there are six one gallon containers of vinegar sitting alongside my sprayer and vat of sealer on the north side of the house.
That’s a lot of salad dressing.
I wonder if boiling water will hurt the wood.
Back to the Google.
Jeez.
donna@fourstory.org
Comments
Is the decking laying flat on the grass? If it were raised up, you could put down rolls of this woven black weed-pruf matting (lets water through but blocks weeds, available at any Home Depot-type place?) under the decking. I’ve got that stuff under the gravel-covered side yard. After 25 years, a few weeks are poking few, but they’re easily pulled up.
2009-08-25 by Ann CalhounAnd I have discovered that Vinegar splashed on the bottom of my dishwasher (oh damn, is a dishwasher “bad”?) and only that, no detergent, nothing else, will make my glasses and dishes shine and sparkling clean. This is almost impossible where I live because the water is so hard and causes everything to cloud and cake up like crazy, even my skin.
I buy large quantities of white vinegar every month and use is almost exclusively for cleaning and especially washing dishes.
Good writing again Donna, thanks.
I use vinegar for everything: sinks, toilet, salmonella juice on the counter. I also used it to kill aphids on my tomatoes five minutes before deciding to google it and finding out it kills tomatoes.
2009-08-25 by rebeccaI love you and your writing, so natural, informative and funny!
2009-08-25 by margo landryHow about getting a goat to eat the grass that pokes through the deck beside the house that Donna build?
2009-08-25 by Stan Suskidon: i will send you the results of the experiment from my copious notes.
ann: the deck is too low and heavy to install weed pruf webbing.
jo anne: the sin of the dishwasher is erased by the use of vinegar. in fact, you’re allowed to use all the appliances you want to. vinegar forgives all sins.
becca: it is always good to google when doing ANYTHING with tomatoes.
margo: i love you back.
stan: i have dreamed of owning a goat. but, alas, i have no fencing and they roam. and your sentence sounds like the nursery rhyme, “The House That Jack Built”.
love,
donna
Donna, if your deck is just sitting on the ground, lift it up and put down some weed cloth. That will at least slow them down.
2009-08-25 by JoIf the decks are “liftable,” have a Deck Lifting Party—lots of pizza a beer, then like a barn raising, everyone can lift up one edge (Heave Ho! Volga Boatmen!) then roll some weed cloth down, then let ‘r drop. Problem solved.
Vinegar in the dishwasher. Oooo, I like that. Having a bazillion dogs, I use vinegar for almost everything around the house. Also read that dishwashers actually use less water than hand-washing? I’m sure the newer models are both energy and water thrifty.
Ijust bought one of those new side loading washers and I am dubfounded. Damned thing is smarter than I am. “Weighs” the clothes and figures out how much water to use (Looks like about 2 tsps per load) then sloshes away. Called the mfgr. and found out the thing has a water use of between 10 gallons - 22 max. 10 gallons for a load of non-heavy stuff, i.e. panties, sheets, shirts? 10 gallons??? Bwahahahahah. My 30 year-old Maytag used 3-4 times that just to wash a “small” load. I’m telling you, technology is wonderful!
2009-08-26 by Ann CalhounA Deck Lifting Party sounds like a great idea—as long as beer is involved, not vinegar. John and I will be there next month, and you could probably sweet-talk Larry; and I’ve bet you’ve met a few other muscley people who’d like to show off for you. Get your weed cloth. Fire up the grill. We’ll lift everything!
2009-08-26 by DonMother (who knew everything)used roll roofing material to keep grass from growing under bushes and in garden paths. It’s fairly easy to cut to the size you want, stiff enough to slide under something and stay in place, and you can get it in green grass or dirt brown (or maybe red, as the case may be).
2009-09-02 by Nelda
NINE decks? A perfect laboratory for comparative experimentation: use a different treatment on each deck! (Remember to take notes.)
2009-08-25 by Don