Can Hot Sauce Really Get Rid Of Pesky Weeds?

Tackling the downright persistent weeds in your landscape can seem like a never-ending job. Besides trying to find natural substitutes for weed killers that don't contain harmful chemicals, using organic pesticides is often cost-prohibitive. If you're seeking a hot idea to deal with pesky weeds, quite a few recipes out there use hot sauce to banish a yard's unwanted plant life. But is this spicy solution to your yard's crabgrass problem actually legit?

According to Ask the Builder, you can use Goya salsa picante hot sauce straight out of the bottle to kill weeds. Not only that, but it will kill them within 12 hours! Pictures show impressive results of yellow-white dead weeds popping through the cracks of a cobblestone sidewalk. However, a bottle of this costs $11.57 for 6 ounces on Amazon. This means even if you diluted it by half, it would get quite expensive if you had more than a few small weeds. But what about other tongue-tingling recipes with hot sauce as the "secret" killer?

There are many other recipes for killing weeds that use hot sauce, but only as one of several key ingredients. As such, most of these recipes call into question the validity of hot sauce being the actual instrument of death. For example, you might know about using boiling water to kill weeds, which seems to work quite well and doesn't cost a cent. It's also perfectly safe for the environment, which makes it a win-win. Of course, it may present a challenge getting the boiling water to the weeds, especially if you have a large property. You may also know about using vinegar — either distilled white, apple cider, or horticultural vinegar works well. The point is most other recipes that use hot sauce have either boiling water, vinegar, or both as additional ingredients.

With so many other inexpensive ways to accomplish the same thing, using straight hot sauce to kill weeds has got to be one of the most expensive "natural" methods out there. And surely there are plenty of tacos and quesadillas in your future where that hot sauce would be better used.