[GrowinGrowinGone]

I've heard of people using Vinegar as Weed Killer, does anyone have any experience of this?
And my main question, do you think it would be effective against cooch grass and kill the underground roots?  When I first took my plot on, the first thing I did was rotovate it to death, hey I was having fun!  I did not understand how bad that would be a for a plot full of cooch grass, and I later learned the previous person who had the plot rotovated it also, then gave the plot up.   I have spent many hours and hard graft clearing a lot of it, but I still have maybe 40% of my plot infested with cooch grass, and so fed up of digging to get it all out.  I am hoping vinegar might work, as I don't want to use any nasty chemicals on my plot.

[Benandbill]

I would certainly put it on your potato patch, along with some salt as a slug deterrant...  See where I'm going with this??   

Seriously though, I've never heard of using vinegar but would be very interested to hear an expert opinion on it...  I have a lot of couch grass in my new plot...

[mumofstig]

this old thread may help
http://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=83000.msg926076#msg926076

[GrowinGrowinGone]

Seems to be effective to weeds on the surface benandbill, but from what I have just been reading, it won't kill off couch grass roots 
Thanks mumofstig, I guess it's back to back breaking stuff again tomorrow. 

[JayG]

Please remember that this forum is unable to recommend the use of home-made pesticides and weedkillers which have not been approved for such use by the EU (only a relatively small number of commercial products have actually gained that approval which means that all home-made preparations are technically illegal to use, whether they work/are harmless or not - it's clearly a difficult distinction for many of us and has been discussed to death many times in these forums.)   

Having made you aware of that, what you actually choose to do is of course up to you, but when it comes to vinegar as a herbicide I don't think commercial vinegar (about 5% acetic acid) is anything like strong enough to be more than a slight irritant to most weeds (and couch is no ordinary weed!) 

[mumofstig]

It says that in the linked thread jay   

[GrowinGrowinGone]

Ok, Thanks, JayG   

[casper]

Hi, I tried this last year, same thought as you rather than chemical. I read last year that because vinegar is acidic it alters PH of soil that weeds grow in. I read that vinegar is a short term solution but for a longer solution add salt, so not salt if you want to plant crops a short time later. I also learned that it has to be spirit vinegar which is more acidic, i think this is the white vinegar. I bought white vinegar from Asda and it actually did nothing, but I read you can purchase spirit vinegar in garden centres. So i probably used the wrong vinegar. To be honest though I used it on pathway to my allotment and there are not many weeds there this year

[leeks r us]

go back to the proven method hard work dig it out and keep at it

[casper]

Yep I agree no real short cuts