[Thursday – Plants 101] The Best, Safest and Least Expensive Way To Kill Weeds

Oh dear.

The goatheads are back.

Little buggers!

Luckily, I knew the perfect way to fry them to bits.

I’ve written about using my favorite way to kill weeds before, here. So this isn’t new. But it’s so gratifying, I wanted to share it again.

How To Kill Weeds Easily

There are only two steps to killing weeds instantly.

Step One: Boil water. You can do this in a big pot, or in a teakettle. Depends on how much time you have. A big pot of water can take 15-25 minutes to boil. A teakettle holds less water so it can boil in less than 10 minutes. I’ve been using both at once.

Step Two: Pour the water on the goatheads:

Fries ’em to a crisp every time.

If you don’t believe me, simply try it once and see what happens.

Technically, using boiling water to kill weeds isn’t as safe as simply pulling them. There’s a chance that you could hurt yourself with the boiling water if you splash it on yourself. So don’t do that. You could hurt your fingers while pulling weeds, so I decided to leave my headline as is.

Pulling weeds is a great way to keep them from spreading. I especially like to use that method after a rain.

Since I live in the desert, the opportunities to pull weeds after a rain are few and far between.

I don’t like using pesticides, so when I found out boiling water works, I was delighted.

The boiling water works great for the goatheads that grow in the cracks of patio areas, like these:

You don’t want to pour boiling water in your garden or near flowers, obviously. But the method works great for weeds that grow in places which make it difficult to pull them, where there aren’t other plants you may accidentally harm.

These goatheads turned green after being doused:

Then crispy the next day:

The teakettle is nice for smaller weeds:

So far, boiling water has not let me down on any weed I’ve used it on (goatheads are the priority for me, but there are other pesky weeds in the back yard).

It’s time-consuming, but only in the time it takes to boil the water. So I’ve just been doing bits of the backyard at a time.

It only takes a little boiling water to kill each weed. If I’m carrying a heavy pot around the back yard, you can bet I’m trying to make that water go as far as possible. I want to be able to disintegrate the maximum number of weeds with the smallest amount of water.

Goatheads, consider yourselves warned!

I’ll be back manana with an all new Ask the Experts panel. We’ll also have some puzzler fun. Hope to see you back here.