The Best Pet Safe Weed Killer On The Market
Publushed by:
RebeccaLast updated:
May 6, 2022
BEST OVERALL
Green Gobbler 20% Vinegar
- Organic
- Biodegradable
- 20% acetic acid
RUNNER-UP
Just For Pets Weed Killer
- Effective
- Easy-to-use
- Portion donated to animal shelters
ALTERNATIVE
Calyptus 45% Vinegar
- Fast-drying
- Removes pet stains
- High puriy ingredients
If you have weeds in your lawn, you’ll know how difficult it can be to banish them. Weeds compete with the grass of your lawn, suffocating it so that it can’t get the oxygen, nutrients, and sunshine it needs to grow.
Can you kill weeds naturally? You can kill weeds naturally with a variety of methods, such as by pulling them up or using a natural ingredient. These can be part of DIY methods or you can purchase a pet safe weed killer.
Instead of using chemical-based weed killers that can damage your grass and be harmful to your pets, there are safer alternatives that are formulated to be highly effective. If you’re not sure which one is best, here’s our guide to the best pet safe weed killers on the market.
Best Overall: Green Gobbler 20% Vinegar
Short summary
If you have lots of weeds in your garden, you’ll want to get rid of them as soon as possible. This Green Gobbler product can remove any type of weed in just a few hours!
Since it contains 20 percent acetic acid, it helps to tackle weeds and remove them without putting harmful chemicals in your lawn.
You can use this weed killer in a variety of applications, such as residential, agricultural, industrial, and commercial lawn maintenance. You can use it to kill weeds but also grass in areas of your property where you don’t want it to grow, such as on sidewalks, driveways, and in flower beds.
You don’t have to do anything special when using this product – just apply it straight out of its container. Best of all, you don’t have to worry about inhaling harmful chemicals during use, or about exposing yourself, your kids, or your pets to this weed killer once it’s been applied because it’s been OMRI listed as certified for organic use.
If you hate the smell of chemical-based weed killers on the market, you’ll love that this organic weed killer smells like salad dressing. It makes it a pleasure for you to walk around and enjoy spending time in your garden after its application, without any concerns for your health.
Quick Facts
- Weight: 8.91 pounds
- Herbicide Type: Vinegar
- Time to work: Less than 24 hours
Pros
- 20% acetic acid
- Organic
- Biodegradable
Cons
- Weeds might grow back
- Not effective on shaded areas
Runner Up: Just For Pets Weed Killer
Short summary
If you’re a pet lover, you’ll love that this manufacturer is too. This weed killer is safe for Fido and your other pets because it gives chemicals such as glyphosate a miss to give your lawn a healthier, weed-free existence.
It comes with a ready-to-use spray that makes the application simple and easy to use. It works quickly – you can expect to see results in a few hours – and it also dries fast too. This means your pets can safely return to playing on the lawn without you worrying about their health.
It makes use of completely natural and safe ingredients to tackle weeds in your garden. These include ingredients you might already have in your home, such as acetic acid (vinegar), glycerin, citric acid, sodium chloride, lemon juice, and clove oil.
This product works well to kill weeds, even when you have a large amount of them in your lawn because they’ve become invasive. So, don’t assume that just because it’s natural it won’t work as effectively as other, chemical-based, weed killers.
Quick Facts
- Weight: 8.31 pounds
- Herbicide Type: Natural
- Time to work: Less than 24 hours
Pros
- Portion donated to animal shelters
- Effective
- Kills the weed's roots
- Easy-to-use
Cons
- Uncomfortable sprayer
- Intense vinegar smell
- Leaking bottle
Alternative: Calyptus 45% Vinegar
Short summary
This is an effective product that’s nine times more powerful than regular vinegar. It’s a highly-concentrated and strong weed killer that contains 45 percent vinegar.
This can be diluted with water or used as is if you want a more effective solution to tackle stubborn weeds.
What’s great about this weed killer is that it’s versatile. It’s so powerful, it can be used for both agricultural and industrial applications, but you can also use it to clean around the house. Some people have said that it can be used to clean your laundry, for example!
While this weed killer is powerful and effective at killing weeds, it can also be used for other difficult tasks, such as removing rust. You’ll definitely want to have it at hand as it will make your gardening and home-cleaning tasks so much easier.
Just note that you should use it undiluted for tasks that require a more powerful formula.
Quick Facts
- Weight: 1 pound
- Herbicide Type: Vinegar
- Time to work: Less than 24 hours
Pros
- Fast-drying
- Effective in 24 hours
- Good for removing pet stains
- Made from high purity ingredients
Cons
- Gloves needed for application
- Burns if you inhale it
Alternative: Energen Carolina LLC 578
Short summary
This type of weed killer works quickly and is labeled as a non-selective contact herbicide. This means it can be used on a variety of weeds, such as crabgrass, dandelions, and others.
While it packs a punch on weeds, it’s safe for use in residential, industrial, commercial, and agricultural settings. You just have to apply it to any areas of your lawn or garden where you don’t want weeds to be a nuisance. You can use it safely on animal enclosures, driveways, and flower beds.
It’s a concentrated product that works well but then dries up quickly so you don’t have to worry about your pets or kids coming into contact with it and being unsafe. It contains an organic acid that degrades quickly in soil.
This is a wonderful alternative to use if you don’t want to use glyphosate, especially since this chemical ingredient has been making headlines for potentially increasing one’s risk of experiencing health problems after long-term use of it.
You don’t even have to dilute this natural product as you can use it right out of the bottle. Just one gallon of this weed killer will effectively treat approximately 1,450 to 2,900 square feet of lawn, so it will go a long way to treat your garden and eliminate weeds.
Quick Facts
- Weight: 8.58 pounds
- Herbicide Type: Vinegar
- Time to work: Less than 24 hours
Pros
- Works quickly
- Easy-to-use
- Rectangular bottle
- Long-lasting
- Vinegar odor doesn't last long
Cons
- Might also kill your grass
- Only for actively growing weeds
Alternative: Earth's Ally Weed and Grass Killer
Short summary
Earth’s Ally works hard to make products that protect pollinators such as bees, so it’s not just safe for you and your pets but also for wildlife and the environment.
This is therefore a wonderful product to ensure that you can still attract bees to your garden.
This product is a non-selective herbicide that’s easy to use. It’s a versatile, all-round weed killer as it can kill off a variety of weeds, such as dandelion, clover, crabgrass, and broadleaf weeds. It doesn’t contain harmful chemicals. Instead of toxins, it contains sea salt.
Another feature that sets this weed killer apart from other products on the market is that it can take effect in as little as three hours. Just make sure you spray your weeds with it on a sunny, dry day. You will need about four sprays per weed to kill it all the way down to the root, so that it will remove it effectively.
Quick Facts
- Weight: 8.97 pounds
- Herbicide Type: Salt
- Time to work: Less than 24 hours
Pros
- Perfect for high-traffic areas
- Prevents re-emergence
- Easy-to-use
- Not strong smell
Cons
- Non-selective
Pet Safe Weed Killers FAQ
If you want to learn a bit more about pet-safe weed killers, read our FAQs.
Here we cover some important information you should know about weed killers that are safe for your pets and the environment, such as why you should avoid regular weed killers on the market and how well vinegar works to kill annoying weeds in your lawn.
How safe are regular weed killers?
The problem with regular weed killers is that they usually contain chemicals. These are harmful to human health. Many weed killer products on the market contain a chemical called glyphosate, which is thought to be linked to health issues.
These products are also unsafe for pets because of their chemical content. There are also some ingredients that are especially toxic to dogs, such as glyphosate, paraquat, and organophosphates. These should be avoided at all costs. Always check the weed killer you want to buy to be sure it’s labeled as safe for pets.
Finally, chemical weed killers are harmful to the environment. They can enter the waterways and harm aquatic life. For example, glyphosate enters the waterways and attacks plants that have stems and leaves above the water. It’s a chemical that can also affect and kill moss, so it does have a negative effect on the environment.
What’s the best pet-safe killer?
As we’ve seen in our reviews of the best weed killers, there are many products that are worth purchasing if you have a weed invasion but don’t want to harm other living things in your environment, therefore ensuring you can use them with greater confidence.
The best pet-safe weed killer is Green Gobbler 20% Vinegar Weed & Grass Killer, which made the number-one spot in our reviews. It’s OMRI listed so it’s organic and safe.
It contains ethanol that’s been distilled from corn grain, so it doesn’t have any harmful chemicals. It’s also biodegradable. It will be neutralized after rainfall, which makes it safe for the environment.
Another good product is Just For Pets Weed Killer Spray, which contains all-natural ingredients to kill weeds in a safe way. These include clove oil, lemon juice, citric acid, and vinegar. When combined, these ingredients work well to effectively kill a variety of weeds in your garden.
Is Vinegar a natural weed killer?
Vinegar comes up a lot as a natural or DIY ingredient to kill weeds. The reason for this is because of its acetic acid content. This works by drawing moisture from the weeds so that they dry up and die.
If you find that regular household vinegar doesn’t work as quickly or effectively as you like, choosing a product that’s been formulated with vinegar can be tougher to kill off weeds.
Instead of household vinegar, there’s stronger vinegar that contains a higher amount of acetic acid to make it more powerful to kill weeds. It literally burns the weeds so that they are killed off effectively. It’s called Calyptus 45% Pure Super Concentrated Vinegar, and we featured it in our reviews.
This is nine times more powerful than regular household vinegar to eliminate stubborn weeds. A product such as this one will make weed killing effective and so much easier.
One of the potential risks with using vinegar to kill weeds is that it can kill off your surrounding grass and vegetation. This is why you have to be careful when applying it to weeds as you don’t want to harm anything in your garden that you don’t wish to eliminate.
Can baking soda be used as a weed killer?
You might have seen baking soda mentioned as a DIY weed killer. This is because it’s really an effective ingredient. How it works is that it draws water from the weed plants and this dries them out.
Sodium bicarbonate is phytotoxic to plants, meaning that it’s poisonous to them. This makes it useful for killing all types of weeds on your lawn.
To make a DIY solution of baking soda to kill weeds, you have to mix it with water (and sometimes a surfactant, such as soap) so that you can apply it to your weeds effectively. Baking soda can also be combined with vinegar to make an even more powerful weed-killing solution.
Although baking soda is an effective weed killer, it shouldn’t be used in high concentrations as it can end up in the soil where it will kill plants or grass that you don’t want to damage.
Is Salt a natural weed killer?
Along with vinegar and baking soda, salt is another natural ingredient that you can use to kill weeds in the garden. You can use salt in a DIY recipe. Just add table salt or rock salt to water until it fully dissolves.
You want the mixture to have a 3:1 ratio of water to salt. Apply this to your weeds. You can apply more salt to the solution if you need a stronger concentration to kill weeds. To boost its effectiveness, you can add some white vinegar and dish soap to the solution.
You can also purchase a pet-safe weed killer that contains salt in its formulation. An effective one to try is Earth’s Ally Weed and Grass Killer that’s kind to the environment and your pets without compromising on its weed-killing performance.
It contains sea salt that leaches into the soil and gets removed naturally with rainfall. It works effectively because of how it takes up the salt in the product once it’s sprayed on the weeds. Then it carries the salt to the roots so that they can be killed off. This prevents the roots from emerging again.
Conclusion
If you’re dealing with weeds that are trying to take over your lawn or garden, you need to tackle the invasion with the best weed killers. The problem with regular weed killers on the market is that they’re filled with chemicals that not only kill weeds but also harm the environment and your pets.
To avoid them, you should use a natural solution that you can whip up yourself with ingredients from your home or purchase a pet safe weed killer on the market. What weed killer is safe for pets?
We’ve provided you with the top five products that will get rid of weeds while allowing Fido to continue playing on your grass.
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BEST OVERALL
