How to Get Rid of Weeds Without Weed Killer: Boil Them Away

by TFF, posted in Daily Living Tips, Home Maintenance
Intolerable weeds! I’m planning my attack with boiling water….you can see a few boiled weeds on the lower part of this photo from a water attack earlier this week.

I’ve had ENOUGH of these weeds growing through the cracks of my front walk. No matter how much we weed, they double in size and it looks terrible. Since we refuse to use weed killer spray, we just kept pulling weeds. But this year they just blossomed out of control. Off to the Internet I went in search of something, anything that could get rid of these sidewalk weeds. I found some solutions with baking soda, vinegar, and other ideas. But, the best, cheapest solution I found was to pour boiling water over the cracks and over the weeds to scald the roots. Since this couldn’t hurt to try, I did, and it worked (so far). Never in a million years did I think of using boiling water to get rid of weeds, but then again, I’m not a gardener.

This is another section of our walk that we boiled two weeks ago. It’s 99% weed-free right now. I’m keeping my eye on it and will update this post if it’s truly successful.
Here’s what a scalded weed looks like. I read that you should “behead” the weed first for optimal results, but I didn’t here. I carefully poured boiling water on this weed — you are NOT supposed to use this method in a garden bed. But this particular weed haunted me for a couple of years! R.I.P.

It’s not as easy as it looks, believe it or not. You have to boil a lot of water! You have to watch your toes and make sure that the water doesn’t splash into roots you want to keep (on the edges of the sidewalk, for instance). But by this time (two weeks later), I would have already spotted more weeds, and it looks clean so far. I did read that I’ll have to pour some water over the walk every so often to kill off any weedlings. I’m happy to do so! And, after you boil the weeds, you have to pluck them up but they come out of the ground much easier.

Next I need to research how to get rid of chipmunk holes in our lawn! Don’t worry, I won’t pour boiling water down the holes!

 

Any other weed-killing tips are welcome here!

Update: July 26th: Still 99% clear! I see some violet weeds peeking through the cracks so I will get some boiling water down as soon as possible to thwart any growth. Violets spread like wildfire!

 

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5 thoughts on “How to Get Rid of Weeds Without Weed Killer: Boil Them Away”

    1. Sounds great! Thanks for the tip! (I also heard baking soda and vinegar works, but haven’t tried that since the boiling water seems to be working well except for those darn voilets that I have to reboil. But, they are coming back much thinner and weaker, which is fantastic news!) ~Marilyn, TFF

    2. Thanks for the alternative idea, Suzanne! It’s great to have a variety of “tools in the toolbox” to try out for the fix. ~Aimee, TFF

  2. WOW! Good job. It looks fabulous.
    We just set our mower head down lower and cut the weeds out that way over our driveway. In the scope of things, not a priority on our list. Plus we don’t have a patio. Just a driveway overgrown with weeds. 😦

    1. Thanks!! It wasn’t a priority for us until I couldn’t take it anymore ’cause who in the world has time for this stuff? That’s why I figured this would be quick/free. (Not so quick, but free, at least :–) Home maintenance isn’t much fun most of the time… ~Marilyn

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