You just finished a long day of manicuring your garden and lawn. It’s nearly perfect, ready for Instagram and Pinterest, and you are even considering writing a blog post about how you tamed nature. Little did you know that impeccable lawn care is more prone to weeds like dandelion, crab grass, or anything with a seed. No matter how meticulous your gardening skills, weeds will always ruin your hard work.

Weeds are the bane of every gardener’s existence and they never give up. They don’t need water, soil (they even grow in the cracks of the sidewalk!), and they thrive during every season. Weeds never give up, and that’s an admirable trait, but they need to die. Since scouring every inch of your garden or lawn and pulling weeds can be quite tedious, you may benefit from strong, non-toxic weed killers that get the job done.

A Brief History

Let’s take you back to 1970 for a brief moment. Love was free and John Franz was a chemist for Monsanto. He discovered that glyphosate kills just about every plant material you can imagine. Using this chemical, Monsanto developed the miracle weed killer known as Roundup. Farmers began spraying it on all their crops to get rid of weeds, but they ran into a problem: all of their crops died along with the weeds. So what do you think Monsanto did next? If you were thinking that they had scientists develop “Roundup ready crops” with genetically modified DNA that was resistant to glyphosate, then you were right. Now, people can spray Roundup on crops without killing them.

Well, as nice a story as that is, we value our health and don’t want to spray glyphosate, which has been known to cause cancer in animals and asthma in humans, on our gardens. To avoid exposure to more toxins, consider spraying several of the following DIY weed killers on those pesky weeds.

Boiling Water

This is probably the simplest, inexpensive, all-natural weed killer that is free of chemicals. If you have weeds that creep through the cracks in the sidewalk or your driveway, take a pot of boiling water and pour it on the weeds. The result is immediate death. Pour the boiling water slowly to avoid splashing. One important thing to note is that boiling water doesn’t kill the weeds from their roots, so you may need to repeat and keep yanking the weeds out until the spots clear up.

Vinegar Lemon Weed Killer

Some weed killer recipes only call for distilled white vinegar and a little salt, but this recipe goes for the roots by adding fresh lemon juice.

Ingredients:

• 1 gallon distilled white vinegar
• 1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 cup sea salt
• 1 tablespoon all natural dish soap (optional)
• Garden sprayer

Instructions:

• Add all of the ingredients into a garden sprayer and shake well to thoroughly combine.
• The amount you use will depend on how many weeds you have. Spray the mixture directly on the weeds. They should be dead within a week.
• Store the sprayer in a cool dry place.

Newspaper

You may think that it is silly, but professional landscapers use newspaper to prevent weeds from growing. After cutting the weeds down with a weed whacker, lay down the grocery advertisements or yesterday’s headlines to cover the weeds. This essentially starves the weeds of sunlight and air. Cover the newspaper with some mulch and the weeds will go away.

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The post It May Shock You But These DIY Weed Killers Really Work appeared first on Dherbs - The Best All Natural Herbal Remedies & Products.

Monsanto’s pesticides are sprayed on crops all over the world. These chemicals are associated with massive decrease in the bee population. Toxins also become airborne and if surrounding residents inhale them, they can develop health conditions. Could that all changed with one man’s patent?

Mycologist (fancy term for a person who studies fungi) Paul Stamens developed a patent in 2006, but it has received very little attention and exposure. The reason for this is because his patent could be “…the most disruptive technology we’ve ever witnessed,” said executives in the pesticide industry. Disruptive means good for the world, but very bad for the pesticide industry.

Paul has harnessed the power of nature to create a SMART pesticide. This natural pesticide is extremely safe and can control over 200,000 species of insects. He is calling it a “magic” mushroom. It keeps insects away from the crops without having to spray nasty chemicals on the crops.

Paul does this by taking entomopathogenic fungi (fungi that destroy insects) and morphing them so they do not produce spores. This attracts the insects and when they eat the fungi, they turn into fungi from the inside out. Pretty cool, right?

We live in a world where chemical pesticides are an integral part to modern agriculture. If you tolerate this, then you tolerate the destruction of the environment. Monsanto is a $16 billion per year business that has unlimited resources. Something that large has the ability to suppress or hide information, which could damage its reputation.

This is why it is important to educate yourself about the benefits of organic, sustainable agriculture and biodynamic farming. And sharing information, like this patent that Paul Stamens invented, only helps shed more light on the alternative possibilities to chemicals, GMOs, and herbicide-sprayed crops.

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