Poison Ivy: Could You Please Pass the Salt?

Along with watching what we put in/on our bodies, my family also likes to watch what we're adding to the environment.  (Eventually, those chemicals can make it into our drinking water and/or food through ground water.)  During the spring and summer months, I see many people spraying their lawns with weed and bug killers.  I get it - you don't want to be "that neighbor" with all of the dandelions growing in your yard, and you don't want to be covered in mosquito bites after being outside for 5 minutes.  But we still have to think of the environment and our health.

Although there is a difference between an insecticide and herbicide (one is meant to kill bugs, the other is meant to kill vegetation), the EPA sets standards for them exactly the same.  They actually group insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc. into one group and call them all pesticides.

"A pesticide is any substance or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling, or mitigating any pest. Pests can be insects and insect-like organisms, mice and other vertebrate animals, unwanted plants (weeds), or fungi, bacteria and viruses that cause plant diseases. Though often misunderstood to refer only to insecticides, the term pesticide also applies to herbicides, fungicides, and various other substances used to control pests." 1

Therefore based on the EPA's definition of a pesticide, the regulations for weed killers are the same as bug killers.  And we already know from my previous post about pesticides that thousands of pesticides are granted conditional registration and are used before any testing for safety is even done.  (For a full explanation, please read my post about buying organic!)

So put down that bottle of Roundup and keep reading!

Besides being "that neighbor" that everyone silently scolds for a yellow lawn, in my opinion, there's another legit reason to use herbicides - poison ivy!  (Or oak, or sumac!)  According to WebMD, about 85% of the population are sensitive to it.  And even if you weren't sensitive to it when you were younger, you could be now, or vice versa.  Although I have never had a reaction to it myself even when others I had been hiking with got it, that percentage makes me cautious enough to avoid it.

Seeing it out in the woods is one thing, but what happens when it's in your own yard?  We have a patch of poison ivy on the lower, not-used-so-much part of our yard that we normally just avoid.  But this year we decided that we want to build our son a club house, and of course, that's the only spot that makes sense to build one.  I've heard (and seen the rashes from!!) horror stories of people taking heavy precautions to pull out the vines - elbow gloves and plastic bags covering their hands and arms that they use to just pull out and immediately turn into the bag - but they still end up covered in a rash!  So pulling it out ourselves was out of the question and hiring someone else to remove it was really expensive.  So I paid Google a visit for some help finding a natural herbicide.  We thought we'd have to go through a list of testing before we found something that actually worked, but we got it on the first try!  Here's an example of how it worked on one of many vines that were starting to take over a fence on our side yard.

Taken one week after application

I apologize, but I don't have a "before" picture of the poison ivy we killed.  I actually thought I had more time to take it after putting it on at lunchtime, but by the evening it already wasn't looking so hot!  This is the "after" picture, which is of a spot where it was infested with poison ivy - basically, everything you see in the picture that is dead was was once very vibrant poison ivy.  We still have a little spot-cleaning to do, but as you can see, the solution cleared it out very nicely and what is left of the ivy isn't exactly looking healthy.

Taken one week after application

So how did we get rid of our unwanted vegetation?

There are three parts to this solution and each serve a slightly different purpose.  (After trying it and researching why it works, I think we could have gotten away with just one, but I can't guarantee it because we didn't actually try them individually.  If I do, I'll let you know how it works!)

The first ingredient is vinegar.  Yep, plain old white or cider vinegar.  The acetic acid in the vinegar (found at concentrations of 5-8% 2) destroys the leaves of the vegetation, but not the roots in all cases.  If you use it by itself on a younger plant, the roots won't have enough stored energy to regrow the leaves, eventually depleting the roots of their nutrients and killing them too.  If you're using it on an older plant, applying it enough times to new growth will eventually deplete the roots of their leaf-making power also.  It's just going to take longer.

The next part to our homemade weed-killer is salt.  Salt will kill the plant and make the ground uninhabitable by future vegetation - at least until the rain dilutes it enough.  Apparently, "salting the earth" was a war tactic used in ancient times.  They would spread salt (or other minerals) over the conquered land so that the city could not be rebuilt. 3   So I'm assuming this would work on its own also, like the vinegar, but it focuses more on the roots.

The last part is dish soap.  Normally I'd be against this, but it only called for 4-5 drops, so I obliged in hopes that it would actually work.  The soap apparently helps the solution bind to the leaves of the plant.  (I would assume that you could use any kind of soap, including natural ones like Castile soap.)

Now, although this is a natural herbicide, you have to follow the same guidelines as you would when using/consuming something labeled "natural" - too much of a good thing can still be bad, so everything in moderation!  Vinegar and salt can also kill insects, including bees if too much is used.  It can also create issues if you're using the salt near a well, pond or other water source, increasing the concentration of salt to an unhealthy level.  I found that these effects can be so bad that even the Maryland Department of the Environment, along with other environmental groups, are researching better ways to deice the roadways than using salt. 4

So just use it sparingly and watch what you put it on - it will kill ALL vegetation that it touches, not just the weeds and poison plants!

Natural Weed Killer

1 gallon vinegar ($2.99)

1 cup salt ($0.49 for 26 oz)

4-5 drops of dish detergent or soap

Place the vinegar and salt in a pot on the stove and heat just until the salt dissolves.  Transfer to a spray bottle or yard sprayer and add the soap.  Spray on the leaves and root of the plant.

(It's effective AND it only cost me $3.48!  A 1 1/3 gal bottle of Roundup costs $23.94 at our local Lowes!)

Some other possible solutions we found after we already tried the solution above:

• Boiling Water (Wish I would have found this one initially!  How much more natural can ya get?!  Just pour it straight from the pot/kettle all over unwanted vegetation!)
• Rubbing Alcohol (Just spray on the leaves and roots with a spray bottle or lawn sprayer.) 
• Suffocation by Newspaper (Lay at least 4 sheets of it over the vegetation you want to kill and wait.)

If you try any of these methods, please leave a comment below to let me know how it worked out for you!  I'm planning on dumping boiling water on the remaining poison ivy to see how that does so I'll keep you posted!