How to Safely Use Salt to Kill Weeds

Did you know that you can effectively use salt to kill weeds?  These tips will help you do it properly and with amazing results!

Well, here we are. Another summer, another chance to try to do a little better job of keeping our huge yard a little more presentable. In the name of honesty, I have to tell you that every year, we start out pretty well, but we usually end up failing miserably by the end of the season. We do get a little better every year, and we always learn a thing or two. Sometimes, we learn things out of curiosity, and sometimes, it’s just out of plain necessity. I learned how to use salt to kill weeds one year when we had young kids and pets running around and a stone walkway full of weeds that I just couldn’t keep up with. I’ve perfected my method over the years, and basic salt really is the best, safest, most effective way to control weeds on a driveway, path, walkway or patio.

There are a lot of different ways that you can control your weeds without using harsh chemicals, but I have to say that salt has become my favorite for our particular weed problems.  We live in an open area where seeds from every weed known to man can blow in and land somewhere on our property. We have weeds hiding pretty much everywhere, and of course, tons of common weeds and wildflowers growing along the banks of the creeks. Getting rid of the weeds altogether is just not an option, so it becomes a balancing act, and this little trick has made all the difference.

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No Time for Yardwork

The biggest problem for me as a gardener is when we get different types of weeds growing in between the bricks on our walkway or driveway. This can lead to our house starting to look a little bit abandoned, and it drives me crazy. The worst part is that we, as a busy family, often go for weeks without really having any time at all to dedicate to yard work, and things just kind of snowball from there. A few years ago, I decided to take what little time I did have for yard work and try to focus mostly on learning how to keep the walkway weed-free. With kids and pets all around, using a herbicide like glyphosate was not something I was interested in, so I started trying out different alternatives.

I found this horrifying picture of one section of our walkway from the first year or two that we lived here. You can see that things were really bad at one point. It’s so great to have photos like this to remind us of how far we’ve really come.

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How to Use Salt to Kill Weeds

Start Early

You absolutely can use salt to kill weeds and get them under control if the problem is already out of hand, but if you can prevent them in the first place, that’s even better! The earlier you start with this program in the early-spring weeks, the better. Actually, you can do things to prevent weeds year-round. If you salt your walkways for the mailman in the winter, you’re preventing weeds! I noticed a huge difference one year in the places where I did a really good job of salting during the winter. In the areas where I didn’t salt, the weeds started to grow, and I ended up with something that looked like this after salting in the spring.

It was better than the green foot-high weeds that were there the year before, but definitely not ideal. If you have something like this, you can pull them out after they’re dead or just wait, and they’ll eventually just crumble away.

I’ve now learned to do a preliminary salting at the very start of the growing season in late March or early April. This works as a weed preventer and it really does make a big difference throughout the rest of the spring and summer.

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Use Water

Using water along with your salt can really help increase its effectiveness. Certain weeds and types of vegetation, like broadleaf dandelion leaves and certain thistle types, will react right away to just straight salt, while others, like crabgrass or chickweed, seem to need water added before you start to see results. If it seems like your weeds are resisting the salt, try adding water to your weed-killing methods using the process described below.

To use water with your salt, first wet the weeds and surrounding area by spraying with the hose or a watering can, then apply the salt to the offending foliage. If it’s a day when you know it’s going to rain, even better! Let the rain do the work for you by waiting until the rain is done, then sprinkle your salt as a spot treatment while the ground is still wet. When the sun comes out, you’ll really start to see some good progress.

The great thing is that once the salt gets to work, the results last much longer than other natural methods and even longer than some of the store-bought eco-friendly weed killers that I’ve tried.

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Re-Applying Salt to Problem Areas

While using salt is a powerful weed-killing method, it’s not quite as strong as you might think. I find my results last for about 3-4 weeks, and then I’ll start to see signs of growth again. At that point, I just spot-treat the new weeds. It only takes a few minutes, and the re-growth will happen less and less frequently over time if you continue to spot-treat once a month or so.

To Use in Flower Beds

Because this method does prevent any kind of plant from growing, it’s recommended only for areas where you know you’ll never want to plant again, like walkways, driveways, or patios. If you have a really stubborn weed in one of your flower gardens, though, you can safely use salt by cutting the top off of the weed and sprinkling about a half teaspoon of salt directly into the weed from the top. Once it’s good and dead, pull it out, and almost all of the salt should be removed with it. I’ve also shared a recipe in the past for a homemade weed killer that you can pour right on the leaves of any weeds you want to kill.  So that’s a good solution, too, if your flower bed is really overrun.

Use it Sparingly

As I’ve mentioned before, you want to use salt to kill weeds only, so you definitely don’t want to use this anywhere that you’ll be wanting to grow flowers, veggies, plants, or shrubs in the future. Be mindful of the fact that if you overdo it, you do risk some salt running off of your walkways and into neighboring flower beds and lawns. From my experience, this risk is pretty low as I can almost draw a line on the border of my lawn with the salt and have only the grass that I want to die turn yellow without harming the rest of the lawn, but of course, this is with very conservative use and only when necessary. I love the results I’ve been seeing, and I love that this method fits into my very tight schedule without me having to worry about kids running around in a yard where I’ve used harsh chemicals that may hurt them.

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After weighing all of the pros and cons of using salt to kill weeds, and after gaining such a sense of peace of mind now that I’ve learned to manage this problem, I completely recommend you try this out if you have the same walkway and driveway issues that I’ve had. It feels amazing to be weed-free, and everyone I’ve shared this method with has agreed that it really is almost miraculous to see how well it works.

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Here’s how my walkway looked the first year I really figured out how to use salt to control weeds. My flower garden has gotten much fuller since then, but my walkway is still weed-free!

Now, if we can just figure out a way for it to take less than three hours to cut our lawn, we’ll be all set! 🙂

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