Vinegar is one of my favorite household tools. Indoors, it can be used as an alternative to most cleaning products, and I use a zillion of it during canning season. Outdoors, however, vinegar has fewer uses. This goes against much gardening knowledge, and while experiences may vary, I’ve tried almost every gardening trend out there. Here are a few ways you can (and can’t) use vinegar in the garden.

This is the best way to use vinegar in the garden. Fill a plastic spray bottle with a 5% vinegar solution and keep it near your tools. Carry it on your tool belt and spray your tools (especially pruners) with it before you make a cut, and then again between plants. Humans are the best spreaders of viruses and fungi in the garden, so it is essential to clean your tools, grates, and seed trays. While you can use a bleach solution or Lysol, I find vinegar works just as well.

If you have powdery mildew or a fungus on your plants, one possible treatment—and one that I use—is a vinegar and water solution. Add four tablespoons of vinegar to each gallon of water and saturate the leaves of just the affected plant. The vinegar will change the pH on the surface of the leaves, which will hopefully help cure your powdery mildew. While powdery mildew is a real problem in summer gardens (especially around zucchini and other squash), if you keep it under control, it is very treatable and will not affect production.

Weeds suck, I know. I agree and will try anything to rid my garden of them. But spraying them with vinegar is problematic. If you are near a plant you want, excess spray or a little wind can carry the vinegar to that plant and it will harm that plant as well. The acetic acid in the vinegar will penetrate to the surface of the plant. I can see how it could be useful for some limited applications, like on a deck or patio where you are far away from other plants, but be careful. Even in those situations, there are a lot of better, faster ways to get rid of weeds. (Burn them or dig them up.)