- 1 week ago
🔗 Save $6,000 A Year with My Complete Amish Home-Saving Method I teach:
https://eliasyoder.com
There is a garden down the way from a neighbor of mine — an old woman who has tended that plot for thirty years, and in all that time you will not find a single weed in it. Not one. Clean soil between every row, paths without a blade of grass in the cracks, beds like something out of a picture book, all season long. For years I told myself she was just lucky, or had special soil, or spent every waking hour on her knees. But one day I swallowed my pride and asked her how she does it — and the answer was so simple and so cheap I near laughed, because I had spent years fighting weeds the hard way while it sat in a cupboard in my own kitchen the whole time. In this video I give you her whole secret.
I am Elias, and I have gardened this Lancaster County ground my whole life, and I will tell you — weeds are the one war that never ends. But here is the thing my neighbor understood that most folks never do: her secret is not one magic spray that kills every weed dead forever. It is two parts working together — a cheap homemade spray to knock down the weeds that are there, and, far more importan
https://eliasyoder.com
There is a garden down the way from a neighbor of mine — an old woman who has tended that plot for thirty years, and in all that time you will not find a single weed in it. Not one. Clean soil between every row, paths without a blade of grass in the cracks, beds like something out of a picture book, all season long. For years I told myself she was just lucky, or had special soil, or spent every waking hour on her knees. But one day I swallowed my pride and asked her how she does it — and the answer was so simple and so cheap I near laughed, because I had spent years fighting weeds the hard way while it sat in a cupboard in my own kitchen the whole time. In this video I give you her whole secret.
I am Elias, and I have gardened this Lancaster County ground my whole life, and I will tell you — weeds are the one war that never ends. But here is the thing my neighbor understood that most folks never do: her secret is not one magic spray that kills every weed dead forever. It is two parts working together — a cheap homemade spray to knock down the weeds that are there, and, far more importan
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00There is a garden down the way from a neighbor of mine, an old woman, who has tended that
00:05plot for thirty years, and in all that time you will not find a single weed in it, not
00:11a one.
00:12Clean soil between every row, paths without a blade of grass in the cracks, beds like
00:18something out of a picture book, all season long.
00:21For years I told myself she was just lucky, or had special soil, or spent every waking
00:28hour out there on her knees, but one day I finally swallowed my pride and walked over
00:35and asked her how she does it, and what she told me was so simple and so cheap that I
00:41near
00:41laughed, not because it was funny, but because I had spent years fighting weeds the hard way
00:47while the answer sat in a cupboard in my own kitchen the whole time.
00:51Today I am going to give you her whole secret.
00:54I am Elias, and I have gardened this Lancaster County ground my whole life, and I will tell
01:01you, weeds are the one war that never ends.
01:05From March clear to November, every gardener fighting it.
01:09And here is the thing my neighbor understood that most folks never do.
01:14Her secret is not really one magic spray that kills every weed dead forever.
01:19It is two parts working together, a cheap homemade spray to knock down the weeds that are there,
01:26and then, far more important, a way to keep new ones from ever coming up.
01:31It is that second part, the preventing, that is the real secret, the thing that keeps her
01:37garden clean all season.
01:39So let me give you both parts honestly.
01:42Let me tell you a thing my grandfather understood about weeds that took me years to learn for myself.
01:48He never seemed to fight weeds the way I did, frantic and behind, on my knees all summer losing the
01:55battle. His garden was clean, and he was never out there battling it, and as a boy I could not
02:02understand how. The answer, I see now, was that he did not fight weeds. He prevented them. He kept
02:09the ground covered. He kept ahead of it. He never let it get away from him in the first place.
02:14He used to say that a weed pulled is a weed you will pull again, but a weed never given
02:20a chance
02:21to sprout is a weed gone for good. It took me half my life and a neighbor's reminding to truly
02:28understand what he meant, that the whole secret is in the preventing, not the fighting. That is the
02:34spirit of everything I am about to give you. Quick word before I go further. The old methods my family
02:41uses, there is more of it than fits in any one video. I gathered the whole of it into a
02:47book at
02:47EliasYoder.com. The book is the long version. If you want it, it is there. I will not mention it
02:55again. But first, let me be straight with you about why the things most folks try do not work,
03:01so you understand what we are doing. Hand pulling, hours on your knees with a sore back,
03:07and a week later, it is all back as if you never touched it, because the root broke off and
03:13grew
03:13again. The harsh chemical weed killers from the store, the strong stuff, yes, they work, but I do
03:20not care to use them, for they harm the very life in the soil, the little creatures and fungi and
03:26bacteria that make your garden grow at all, and I would rather not pour something I cannot pronounce
03:32onto ground I mean to eat from. And the homemade tris, the vinegar, the boiling water, they burn the
03:40tops of the weed, but leave the root alive, so it comes right back. And salt, well, salt kills a
03:47weed,
03:47sure enough, but it also poisons that patch of ground for years. Nothing will grow there. So salt is no
03:55answer at all. It is surrender. I say this plainly because folks hear that salt kills weeds and go pour
04:02it
04:02about, and then wonder why nothing will grow in that spot for two or three years after. Salt does not
04:08wash out
04:09and break down the way our soda does. It lingers in the ground and sours it for a long, long
04:15time, so that you
04:16have not cleared a weed patch, you have made a dead patch where not even your good plants will grow.
04:22Never put salt
04:23where you ever mean to grow anything again. Our baking soda, by contrast, breaks down in the soil
04:29before long, and rain washes it through, so used in sensible amounts, it does no such lasting harm.
04:37That is a chief reason the soda is the better choice. So we want something cheap and safe that does
04:45better
04:45than all of those, and that is what my neighbor gave me. Here is her recipe, and it costs pennies,
04:52made of things you likely have in the house this minute. Into a good bit of hot water, not boiling,
05:00but hot, you stir a generous amount of plain baking soda until it dissolves. Then you add a spoonful of
05:07plain dish soap and a couple spoonfuls of ordinary vinegar and stir it gentle, and that is your spray.
05:15Each part does its work. The baking soda is the heart of it, for it is strongly alkaline,
05:21and most weeds want a sour, acid sort of ground. So when you coat the leaves in that alkaline soda,
05:29it burns and dries the leaf, drawing the water out of it. The vinegar helps the soda cut through the
05:36waxy coat on the leaf, so it can do its work. And the dish soap is the clever part, for
05:42it breaks the
05:43water's tendency to bead up and run off, so the spray spreads in a thin film over the whole leaf,
05:50and clings there instead of rolling off onto the ground. Mix it fresh each time you mean to use it,
05:57for it weakens sitting around. And a word on the why of the dish soap, for folks wonder at it.
06:05The leaf of a plant is coated in a fine, waxy skin that sheds water, which is why a drop
06:12of plain water
06:13beads up and rolls right off a leaf, and does nothing. Spray plain soda water on a weed,
06:20and most of it would run straight off onto the ground, wasted. The soap breaks that beading,
06:27so the spray lies flat and clings in a thin film over every part of the leaf, and stays there
06:34to work,
06:35instead of rolling off. It is the same reason a bit of soap helps any garden spray cling. A small
06:43thing,
06:43but it is the difference between the spray working and running off useless. Now, here I must be honest
06:51with you, more honest than some who sell this idea, because I will not promise you what it cannot do.
06:58This spray works wonderfully on the young weeds, the annual weeds, the grass and seedlings in your
07:05paths and cracks, burning them down clean. On those it is a fine and near complete kill. But on the
07:14tough
07:15old perennial weeds, the ones with the deep tap roots, like the dandelion, that goes down a foot
07:21or more, or the bind reed whose root can go down several feet, or the ground elder that runs its
07:28roots
07:29in a network underground, one spraying will not kill the whole root. It burns the top down and that
07:37weakens the plant, but those deep tough roots have reserves and will send up new shoots. For those stubborn
07:46ones, you must spray again each week for two, three weeks, hitting the new growth each time, and each time
07:54it comes back weaker until at last the root is starved out and it gives up. So this is not
08:02one magic shot that
08:03kills every weed to the root forever. It is a fine, cheap knockdown for the easy weeds and a patient
08:11weakening for the hard ones.
08:14Anyone who tells you a spray of baking soda kills a bindweed root in one go is fooling you, and
08:22I will not.
08:23The reason is simple enough. A weed like the dandelion or the bindweed stores its strength down deep in that
08:31long root, like a man with food laid by in the cellar. When you burn off the top, you have
08:38taken away its leaves,
08:39but it still has all that stored strength below to grow new ones. So it sends up fresh leaves from
08:47the reserve. But here is the thing, every time it must do that, it spends down its stored strength to
08:56grow
08:56leaves that you then burn off again before they can feed the root back up. Do that two or three
09:03times
09:04running week after week, and you bleed the root dry of its reserves, and at last it has nothing left
09:11to send
09:11up and it dies. So with the tough perennials, patience and repetition is the whole game. You are not killing
09:20it in one blow, you are starving it over a few weeks. Know that going in and you will not
09:27be discouraged when
09:28it comes back the first time, for that is expected. And now the most important rule of this spray,
09:35the one you must never forget, for it cuts both ways. This spray kills any green thing it touches.
09:43It does not know your weed from your lettuce. So you use it only where you want nothing at all
09:49to grow,
09:50on your paths, in the cracks of your paving and driveway, along the edges of your beds,
09:55and you spot spray a weed standing on its own. You never, ever spray it broadcast over a garden bed
10:03where your vegetables grow, nor over your lawn, for it will kill your vegetables and burn brown patches
10:10in your grass, just the same as the weeds. In your vegetable beds you pull by hand or you mulch,
10:17which I will come to. When you must spray a weed standing close among your good plants,
10:22hold a piece of cardboard up between them as a shield, or paint the spray right onto the weed's
10:28leaves with a little brush. Spray it on a dry day with no rain coming, toward evening when the sun
10:35is
10:36off it, for the evening sun will not dry it too fast and there is no dew yet and it
10:41has all night to work.
10:43There is good sense in each part of that. You want a dry day with no rain coming for a
10:49day,
10:50for a rain soon after just washes your spray off before it can work. You want the weed itself dry,
10:57not wet with dew or rain, for water on the leaf only dilutes your spray and weakens it. And you
11:04want
11:04the evening rather than the hot noon because the blazing midday sun dries your spray to a useless
11:11crust in minutes before it can soak in and work, while sprayed in the cool evening it stays moist and
11:18working on the leaf all through the night. Dry weed, dry day, toward evening, those of the three conditions
11:27and they make a real difference. And keep it well away from any pond or well, for in quantity it
11:34can
11:35change the water and harm the fish. So that is the first part, the knock down. But here is what
11:42my
11:42neighbor knew that makes all the difference, the second part, the preventing. And this is the real
11:48secret of her clean garden. Killing the weeds that are there is only half the battle, for the soil is
11:55full of weed seeds, thousands of them in every square foot, waiting years for their chance. And the
12:02moment you clear one weed, another seed sprouts to take its place. So the real art is stopping those
12:09seeds from ever sprouting, and the way you do that is mulch. Mulch is simply a blanket of material laid
12:17over the bare soil, and it does two great things. It blocks the light from the soil, and a weed
12:24seed
12:25cannot sprout in the dark, so covered ground simply does not grow weeds. And it holds the moisture in
12:32the soil, so you water far less. This is the most important and most overlooked thing in all of gardening,
12:39and it is the whole reason my neighbor's beds stay clean while everyone else fights weeds all summer.
12:46Now what you mulch with depends on where. For your flower beds and ornamental plantings,
12:52use a good bark mulch, a layer a few inches thick, which looks handsome, suppresses the weeds, and breaks
13:00down slow to feed the soil over a couple of years before you top it up. You can often get
13:05wood chips
13:06cheap or even free from a tree man glad to be rid of them, which is cheaper still than the
13:12bagged bark.
13:13For your vegetable beds, do not use bark, which can sour the soil for some crops, but use straw or
13:21your dried
13:22grass clippings, a few inches thick laid around your plants, which is cheap, smothers the weeds, holds the
13:29moisture, and rots down to feed the ground. And for the cracks in your paving and your pads, after you
13:36have
13:36sprayed them clean, fill the cracks with sand, and the old woman mixes a little baking soda into that sand,
13:43about a part of soda to ten of sand, and that alkaline sandy fill keeps the weeds from rooting
13:50back in the cracks. Once a year she freshens it and has her peace. And here is the deeper truth
13:57of mulch
13:57that makes it worth more than any spray. The spray fights the weed that is already up, but the mulch
14:04stops the war before it begins, for it never lets the seed wake at all. A patch of bare soil
14:11in the
14:11sun is an invitation, every weed seed in it just waiting for the light. But a patch of soil under
14:18a
14:19good blanket of straw or bark stays dark, and the seeds sleep on, unsprouted year after year. So while
14:27your neighbor sprays and pulls and frets over his bare beds all summer, your mulched beds
14:34simply do not grow the weeds in the first place. Lay it thick enough, a few good inches, for a
14:40thin
14:41scattering does little, the weeds push right through it. But a proper thick blanket of several good inches
14:47smothers them and keeps them down. And it does a second kindness besides, holding the moisture in the
14:55ground so your plants want far less watering in the dry of summer, and rotting down slow to feed the
15:02soil.
15:03Mulch is the nearest thing to a free lunch there is in all of gardening. It stops the weeds,
15:10saves the water, and feeds the ground all at once. And there is one more honest helper I will mention
15:18for those who want it, though it is not needful. There is a thing called corn gluten meal, a natural
15:25byproduct which, spread on the soil in early spring, before the weeds sprout, will stop many seeds from
15:32germinating, a natural preventer, while not harming plants already up and growing. It costs more than
15:40baking soda, but far less than the store chemicals, and you sow it on the surface early in the season.
15:47That is an extra, not a must, but it works, and it is one more cheap, natural thing in place
15:54of the dear
15:54chemical preventers. So put the two parts together and you have her whole system, and it is simple.
16:02Early in the spring, when the weeds first sprout, you spray your paths and cracks and bed edges with
16:09the baking soda spray, knocking down what is there, going back over the tough perennials weekly till they
16:16give up. Then you clear away the dead weeds which come up easy now. And then you lay your mulch,
16:24bark on
16:24the flower beds, straw on the vegetables, sand in the cracks, blanketing the bare soil so new weeds cannot
16:32sprout. Do that, and where you spent forty hours a year on your knees weeding before, you will spend a
16:41few hours all season, just walking through every couple weeks to spot spray the few stragglers that
16:48blow in and root on top of the mulch. That is the difference between a garden that is a joy
16:54and a
16:55garden that is slave labor. My neighbor put it to me in a way I have not forgotten. She said,
17:02a garden is like keeping a house. You can mop the floor a little every single day forever, or you
17:09can
17:09give it one good deep cleaning and then simply keep it up with a light touch after. The spray and
17:17the
17:17mulch together are that one good deep cleaning done early in the spring, and the rest of the season is
17:25just the light keeping up, a walk through and a spot spray now and then. Do the hard work
17:32once at the right time and reap an easy, clean garden all the rest of the year. That is the
17:40whole of her thirty years' wisdom in a sentence. Now let me say the small, honest word about why
17:47your neighbor's grandmother's cheap weed answers got forgotten and you were sold the dear chemical
17:54jugs instead. Not to rile you up just so you see the shape of it. There is good money in
18:02the forty
18:02dollar jug of weed killer, bought again and again every season, and in the bags of this and that from
18:10the garden center. And there is no money at all in a man knowing that a box of baking soda
18:16and a bale of
18:17straw will keep his garden cleaner. You cannot patent baking soda. You cannot charge deer for
18:26straw and bark and sand. So nobody advertises them, no business is built on teaching them,
18:33and over the years these cheap old ways simply fell out of the common knowing while the deer jugs got
18:41all
18:42the telling. I am not saying a man schemed to hide this from you. No one had to. It is
18:49worse than a
18:50conspiracy because it is a system nobody had to coordinate. It simply pays to sell the deer jug
18:58and pays nothing to teach the cheap box and bale. And so the old ways went quietly untaught,
19:05not hidden by any plotter, just left unsaid because no one profited by saying it. And you know, the
19:13thing that struck me most in all this was not the recipe nor the science of it. It was that
19:20the answer
19:20I had hunted for years was right over the fence the whole time. In the head of a neighbor I
19:27saw near
19:27every day, and all I had to do was set down my pride and ask. How often is it so
19:34in life that we hunt
19:36the complicated answer and buy the deer product while the plain answer is held by someone right
19:43beside us if we would only humble ourselves to ask? That is a lesson worth more than the weed spray
19:50to my
19:50mind. Now I want to hear from you, and I ask honest because I learned the whole country from these
19:57comments. Tell me in the comments below which weed plagues you the worst, the dandelion, the bindweed,
20:06the creeping charlie, the ground elder, and I will gladly tell you how best to deal with that particular
20:12one, for each wants a slightly different hand. And tell me your county and your climate, because the
20:20weeds differ greatly across the country, and I like to map it by where you all write from. I read
20:26every one.
20:27Next time, I want to show you how to make a homemade fertilizer from cheap, plain things that will
20:34swell your tomato harvest like you would not believe. The old way of feeding your tomatoes for next to
20:41nothing instead of buying the deer-bottled plant foods. For a well-fed tomato plant gives back ten-fold.
20:50The old people kept their gardens clean, not with a shelf of deer chemicals, but with cheap,
20:56plain things and a bit of knowing. A box of soda, a bale of straw, a blanket of bark over
21:04the bare ground,
21:05and the patience to prevent rather than only to fight. There is a deep wisdom in tending a garden
21:12as a living thing to be kept in balance rather than a battle to be won with poison. The garden
21:19kept clean
21:20by knowing and prevention, rather than by the chemical jug, is the garden that remembers how the
21:26old people really gardened. The people who built this country with their hands knew that, and we are
21:34only just starting to remember it.
21:36near the
Comments