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["Gloria Morris" <gloriamorris59 AT gmail.com>]

Bill, I used straight white vinegar in a large hand sprayer. I sprayed the
entire plant. I found that if you spray on a sunny day, the kill rate was
much better. Not unlike Round-Up, vinegar works better in conjunction with
sunlight. On a hot sunny day, the plants would wilt and blacken within a
very short time.

With the smaller, less mature plants, one spray was generally enough. Some
of the really large plants later resprouted and required a second visit with
the sprayer, and that is when I started kicking them - partly out of
frustration, and partly with the idea that spraying an acid on damaged
tissue would help speed the demise of the plant. It worked, but I didn't do
a side-by-side comparison of kicked plants vs. plants that were merely
sprayed. So kicking may just be something that satifies emotionally. ;)

I don't recall spraying any a third time - as I recall, I only had to patrol
the 30 acres one additional time to wipe out the tenacious thistles.

I also tried Round-Up, the first day of spraying. I was not sure which would
work better, so I sprayed a few with Round-Up and a few with plain white
vinegar. After waiting for the results, the vinegar was clearly better (and
a whopping lot cheaper), so I used the vinegar exclusively from that point
on.

I posted about my experience with the vinegar on a couple of forums,
including a large Organic Gardening list. I tried to interest the University
of Illinois in doing a controlled experiment, but could not find anyone who
was interested in pursuing it.

Another university later did a study on vinegar and confirmed that it is an
excellent weed killer. They noted in particular its efficacy against thistle
in particular.

Gloria


On 9/7/06, Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com> wrote:
> Did that work with regular white vinegar, or was it higher
> concentration?  How often did you have to kill the top and for how long?