Sunday, November 21, 2021

How to build a successful vertical farm

 How to build a successful vertical farm

 

The interest in growing plants indoors in vertical farms keeps increasing. But many investors who thought they could simply buy an empty warehouse, plug in some grow lights and turn out perfect heads of lettuce to make money have been disappointed. Here are a few key lessons learned from city farming expert Roel Janssen on successful vertical farm projects.

 

Part 1: Getting the climate, lighting and spacing right

The most crucial part when starting an indoor farm is to have a grower that understands how to grow plants indoors. New (sensor) technologies and the internet of things offer great opportunities for indoor farming, but if you don’t have a grower you will not get out the most of your operation. You can have great packaging and attractive marketing tools, but the product itself will determine your success. That being said; these are some of the most important factors that can determine the success or failure of your vertical farm investment:

 
  • Crop selection
  • Lighting selection and design-in
  • Airflow design and climate control
  • Spacing strategies for plants
  • Crop logistics and automation
  • Irrigation and nutrition
  • Data, sensors, control and software
  • Substrate choice
  • Target audience and sales channel

 

When we look at how to get the highest return on an investment for a vertical farm, we focus a lot of attention on creating a facility that allows you to produce the highest yield of crops (measured in grams) using the most ideal amount of light (measured in moles or mol). That’s because your LED grow lights are amongst the highest expenses in terms of the city farming infrastructure and operation. Keeping that in mind, here are a few of our most valuable tips for increasing your grams per mol. The information is gathered from research done at the Philips GrowWise Center as well as commercial projects ranging from US, Japan to Europe.
 
 

Step 1: Get the climate right

One aspect that many new vertical farm growers overlook when they are creating an indoor farming environment is maintaining the best climate conditions. If we assume 50% of the electrical input power is converted into light, the remaining 50% is converted directly into heat. A proper airflow can remove this direct heat, but also the light that will be absorbed by the crop will indirectly be converted into heat. Typically the crop evaporates water into the air to get rid of this heat, therefore this process will result in a higher humidity of the air. To keep increasing humidity and temperature under control, you must start with a good ventilation and air handling system in your vertical farm. Not installing a proper climate control and air handling system will decrease your yields, resulting in additional costs and hassle after installation to fix inefficiencies. 


Step 2: Get the lighting right

Once you have a good climate, how can you get the highest yields from it? We have done hundreds of research projects on growing plants indoor focusing on yield and the most optimal light intensity for a certain crop or variety. Yield however is not always the most crucial and single most important part. Let’s take red oak lettuce as an example. When this lettuce is grown outside in a field, it turns red because it is stressed by the sun or large temperature changes and it typically yields less compared to its’ green version. When the same variety is grown indoors, it remains mostly green because there is no UV light, but it does develop fast and shows comparable or sometimes even better growth than a green version. At Philips Lighting’s GrowWise Center, we have four full-time plant specialists who develop so-called light and growth recipes for specific crops. Based on their research, we developed a coloration light recipe for red oak lettuce that turns a mostly green head of red oak lettuce into a dark red lettuce in just three days. Growers can grow a large head of lettuce in their regular growth cycle, apply this light recipe as a pre-harvest treatment, and get a great quality crop with much higher yields and the proper appearance. Together with breeding companies we screen and help them develop varieties that could support growers to help them differentiate even more based on taste, quality or color. 




Step 3: Get the spacing right

The spacing strategy you use when growing plants indoors is another way to improve your grams/ mol. You want to space plants so that each one gets an optimal amount of light and you are lighting the plants instead of the shelves they are on. Knowing the ideal spacing strategy can avoid you having to invest in spacing robots because you can check the extra yield spacing plants delivers compared to the investment needed for automation of this strategy. For our vertical farm projects, we can contribute to your business calculations with advice on the best spacing and light recipe to use for each crop. Based on that information you can decide if manual spacing or spacing robots are the most cost-efficient choice for your facility. Next to that our cooperation with the leading breeders in the industry will enable you to pick the right variety for your crop specific requirements.

Essential Indoor Growing Tips

 

What is needed for effective indoor agriculture?

A well designed indoor growing system has 3 core components.

A typical system that's well thought out and is designed for the most chance of success will have:

1) Expert Lighting:

"I can’t stress enough how much we’ve seen increases in crop productivity and the proper checks and balances in place for plant transpiration, canopy saturation of light, etc. So having really good lights in a system really makes a big difference, if you’re looking at having the most yield possible. So, good quality lights (is the first pillar)."

2) Controlled Atmosphere:

"A controlled environment is one that controls all ambient or external influences, so, literally cutting off the outside world, so everything from water, to airflow, and the actual air itself is recirculated within the system.

What that really permits for us is to have a constant, or consistent environment for the plants to grow up in.  So an example would be today I’m just sitting on the east side of Toronto right now, in Ontario, it’s not too cold today but it has been very recently, about -20 degrees Celsius.

If we were using a containerized farming system or a shipping container farm, or even a modular farm that was using external air pulled into the system, it would be pulling that cold dry air, depending on the day, into the  farm, which means the system always  has to fluctuate, ebb and flow a lot.

That means increased cost for electricity as the system cycles through heat and cold, dehumidification, etc. but blocking the outside air means the farm is always a consistent 72 degrees or 74 degrees Fahrenheit in our instance. So controlled environment is very important, keeping out bugs, keeping the air temperature and the humidity exactly what they (the plants) need."

3) Growing Space:

"People will take this for granted a lot, especially in some of the tighter, condensed growing environments like shipping container farms, some of them are very well thought out, some of them try to pack too much stuff into very little space thinking that if you can just squeeze in an extra 500 plants it’ll make a difference.

The reality is, you get too tight in that space it restricts the airflow, it restricts proper dehumidification, it can cause mold and mildew issues.

You can’t really put in a high intensity lighting system if the plants are too close to the lights because it’ll burn the plants, there are a lot of advantages of having that extra bit of space.

Space is king for sure, in tight growing spaces, so, again, adequate space for the plants to grow, and for the environment to be treated properly, a controlled environment to begin with, and really good lights."


What are the best indoor grow lights?

"There’s a clear distinction to be made between somebody who wants to get their feet wet, so to speak,  in urban agriculture, and that’s how I got started, I started tinkering, before we got our first shipping container farm, I bought a  seedlings tray and a cheap LED light from Home Depot, and gave it a try.

So there’s a distinction to be made between somebody who wants to experience urban agriculture or just growing  indoors, which could be in the living room or in the basement, versus somebody who wants to grow commercially, so if you’re  starting on a small scale and just want to try it out, the reality is that the best solution is going to be the solution that’s within your budget, otherwise you’re not going to get started at all, so starting with a nice inexpensive T5 fluorescent light or T8 fluorescent light, I mean even if it’s something sitting in your shop, garage, or basement that you haven’t used for a while, it will still be a source of light for plants.

It might not be the best source of light for plants but it’s a source of light for plants. Same thing with scale, you don’t need to grow four thousand or five thousand plants at once, if it’s a trial and you just want to feed your family a little bit and experience maybe with ebb and flow or drip irrigation, it’s all about budget, so when we talk about enclosed environment or controlled atmosphere agriculture, the reality is that provides the optimal  environment for the plant, so it allows us to control the relative humidity, air flow etc, the matter of the fact is that plants will grow in almost any environment, most of them are hearty enough, like kale, for example, mint, those things will grow in the cracks of a sidewalk , given  the right conditions.

You don’t really need to really have high intensity LED lighting with the right spectrum , you don’t need high pressure sodium lights to grow kale and mint, for the first time, the reality is that it can be a joy and provide lots of health and benefits to your family if you just start on a very small scale  with a very small budget, my advice is to just, get started.

Some considerations will be the expected outcomes too, are really important to discuss. Some people say, man look at all these videos online with these big plant factories or the big rooftop farms, or modular farms for example, and they grow these huge heads of lettuce and this fantastic abundance of kale,  and it looks great, but then everyone’s at home at my dining room table, or in the basement in the corner, and I’m getting different effects, we’re getting kale that’s a little spindly, heads of lettuce, don’t look like they do in the grocery store. So as long as you have the right expectations starting out, and you know if you’re using a fluorescent instead of an LED or HPS, high pressure sodium light, that you’re going to get some apples to oranges comparison of the experience, then you won’t be disappointed."


LED Grow Lights For Indoor Plants

"Just to keep it as simple as possible when we’re referring to T5 and T8, we’re referring to the gauge and diameter of the fluorescent tube, primarily, without getting into all the tech specs about it, so a T8, would be what you would typically see in your office, or in your classroom, up above in the ceiling, that’s the standard diameter, typically a 4 foot length fluorescent light tube. T5 is essentially the same thing except smaller, typically the length is much smaller, or it can be smaller, as small as a foot or two feet, and the diameter is smaller, which of course effects the output potentially, etc, but we’re referring to fluorescent lights when we talk about T5 and T8, and then of course LED’s and high pressure sodiums.

The one recommendation that we always have when we’re talking about fluorescent vs LED, regardless of the quality of either of those lights, is to consider pets and children around those lighting solutions as well, so in classrooms for example, or at home if you have little ones running around, especially those that are just at the age where they like to grab things and test things out on their own, there are a lot of inherent benefits of LED lights in growing food of course, but there’s also a safety measure too, an LED light is much more difficult to break, depending on the design of it, but most of them are fairly durable, rugged, and can be knocked over, and picked back up and plugged back in, a T5 or T8 fluorescent light, most of them if not all of them have a mercury component in the lightand are considered hazardous materials if they break, so that’s certainly a consideration we make to all of our school clients, is to always consider an LED investment, because it can be a little bit more expensive, actually in most cases about twice as expensive as a fluorescent solution, but it’s worth it for safety reasons."

How to Select A Crop To Grow On Your Indoor Farm

"I would suggest that somebody grow whatever they want to grow, there’s no point in growing mint if you can’t stand it, because you’re not going to eat it and you’re not going to enjoy it, so that might deter you from proceeding, if you’re talking about simplicity, there’s a wealth of resources on the internet, I can’t even begin to scratch the surface of how much help there is on YouTube, obviously via Urban Vine, a lot of the collaborators and colleagues we participate in the industry with, there’s a lot of information out there, not only to help people decide what to grow but how to grow that crop.

I would say the most important thing is to be realistic, and those two matters or two principals: (1) one is grow something that you think you’ll enjoy eating, even if you’re head of lettuce isn’t huge like it is at the grocery store, or from a commercial hydroponic or aquaponic farm, the reality is that you’ll actually enjoy eating that romaine lettuce, even if it’s a little scraggly looking and the head is only half formed, at least you’ll be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor.  (2) And the other one is the footprint of the plant as well, and the growth cycle, so, as an example, as a vegan, I eat a lot of quinoa, but I wouldn’t grow quinoa in my basement in a hydroponic set up, because the lifecycle and the footprint of the plant just don’t make sense.  Just like corn too, you might say, well “man I’d really love myself a good cob of corn”, but growing corn in a seedling tray in your basement is not going to be the best idea, so be realistic about the lifecycle and the harvest cycle of the plant, and the physical size of the plant when it grows up.

Another good example would iceberg lettuce as well, a lot of us as North Americans consume iceberg lettuce, it’s not a bad thing, at least we’re eating some veggies, but the reality is that growing iceberg lettuce hydroponically is not the most effective plant, especially for beginners, the plant has a longer life cycle than a loose leaf lettuce like oak leaf or salad bowl or butter crunch or something or something of that nature, but the physical size of the plant if it was to grow properly is much larger, takes longer to harvest, so I think those would be the two considerations.

I wouldn’t recommend cucumber, as a start, fruiting plants, actually that’s another good point, fruiting plants are going to be a little more difficult as well, so strawberries, cucumbers, tomatoes, anything that develops a flower before it turns into a fruit or vegetable, is going to be more challenging.

Some plant varieties are self-pollinating, so we don’t need to worry about pollination so much, just air movement in the house, the dog walking by and wagging its tail is enough to pollinate some species  of flowering plants, but you’d have to pick the specific breed or cultivar of plant to make sure you’re getting something that is self-pollinating, and most self-pollinating plants, or flowering fruit plants, will also mean that they’re going to be vine or creeping plants, which are going to be cumbersome to handle in a small system at home too, again, perfect example, the cucumber did fairly well in our farmwall, the vertical towers that  I have in my living room, but the vines were literally growing across the floor, and wrapping around the lights and things like that,  and things were difficult, so there’s a variety of reasons to not try fruiting plants at first, it will be less rewarding, almost assured, than it would be to just grow a simple head of lettuce or herb, or brassica of some sort."


Creating a Profitable Indoor Urban Farming Startup

"Technologies are starting to provide answers to profitability questions for urban farming companies at this point, the cost of LED lights, the cost of technology in general, the accessibility, so the advent of IOT the internet of things, and the ability to connect remotely with our devices and therefore our farms, to be able to monitor and remotely control aspects of those farming operations, small and large, are really helping  with accessibility, so again the cost and connectivity of those technologies is really helping out, but there’s room for everybody  to be honest with you.

While a very large commercial operation, like a warehouse farm, let’s say, 20,000 square feet in size, will obviously feed a larger community, the reality is that you can now get an awful lot of food out of  a small containerized farm, or even a garage or basement f arm if it’s done properly and operated safely, to feed portions of a community, so the return on investment is now really related to the farming practices and the motivation.

So we don’t discourage anyone to get started at a hobby level for sure, but if we’re talking about transitioning from hobby to commercial, generating revenue and an ROI, it seems that most systems, if properly thought out, and that would include a look at the market the system is being  deployed in as well, should provide an ROI in 3-5 years, which is within the expected range for new business startups, for successful business startups, so people shouldn’t expect to have an ROI in year 1, if someone is promising you that then be cautious of course, we’re  seeing 3-5 years on average for the systems that we generate, sometimes it can be less if the crop that you’re growing is  serving a particular market and has a very high value."

Examples of Profitable Indoor Urban Farming Niches

"Medicinal herbs, and I’m not referring to cannabis, I’m referring to more traditional Chinese medicines that are being explored in urban farms as well, an example from my perspective would be a niche client looking for a niche product all for themselves, so it could be as simple as kale, kale can generate a really good return in the right system, if you have a client  that is willing to pay for it, a good example would be a client, a smoothie shop, and this is a real experience that I had about a year ago, I approached one of Canada’s larger smoothie franchises and introduced our product and our prices, they absolutely loved the product, but made it very clear that their core message was not, non GMO, local, organic, it was just cheap smoothies for the masses, so they had no interest, but their competitor, one of their competitors, was willing to pay the high value that they were seeking, because their core brand was, local, non-GMO, organic, sustainable, and they got it, it was marketing partnership for them, in essence, where the story was easy to tell and their customers were seeking those solutions at that brand and that banner.

So if you’re addressing the market properly and you’re starting on a small scale, as small as 200 or 400 square feet in a containerized f arming system or even in your, I don’t want to say home because I don’t people to think that they can just grow a commercial outfit out of their home, you can but it requires a lot of consideration for zoning and health and safety etc, but the opportunity to receive an ROI within 3 years is certainly realistic."


Vertical Farming for the Future

Indoor vertical farming
Indoor and vertical farming may be part of the solution to rising demands for food and limited natural resources. Photo credit: Oasis Biotech

Imagine walking into your local grocery store on a frigid January day to pick up freshly harvested lettuce, fragrant basil, juicy sweet strawberries, and ripe red tomatoes – all of which were harvested at a local farm only hours before you’d arrived. You might be imagining buying that fresh produce from vertical farms where farmers can grow indoors year-round by controlling light, temperature, water, and oftentimes carbon dioxide levels as well. Generally, fresh produce grown in vertical farms travels only a few miles to reach grocery store shelves compared to conventional produce, which can travel thousands of miles by truck or plane.

Beyond providing fresh local produce, vertical agriculture could help increase food production and expand agricultural operations as the world’s population is projected to exceed 9 billion by 2050. And by that same year, two out of every three people are expected to live in urban areas. Producing fresh greens and vegetables close to these growing urban populations could help meet growing global food demands in an environmentally responsible and sustainable way by reducing distribution chains to offer lower emissions, providing higher-nutrient produce, and drastically reducing water usage and runoff.

Recently, USDA and the Department of Energy held a stakeholder workshop focused on vertical agriculture and sustainable urban ecosystems. At this workshop, field experts shared thought-provoking presentations followed by small group discussions focusing on areas such as plant breeding, pest management, and engineering. Workshop attendees from public and private sectors worked together to identify the challenges, needs, and opportunities for vertical farming. A report on this workshop will be released to help inform Departmental strategic planning efforts for internal research priorities at USDA and external funding opportunities for stakeholders and researchers.

We’re excited about the potential opportunities vertical agriculture presents to address food security. 

Urban Farming: Growing Vegetables in Cities

 Sharing this article from https://www.bayer.com/en/news-stories/urban-farming-growing-vegetables-in-cities


Empty shelves, lines of shoppers waiting to get into grocery stores, worried people panic-buying – scenes from the novel coronavirus pandemic have suddenly made us aware of how fragile the supply chains for everyday items that we assumed were secure can be in times of crisis. In order to feed the world in the future, there need to be new solutions for farming. One such solution is urban farming.

More people, less arable land

Some numbers demonstrate the topicality of these deliberations: The United Nations estimates that there will be approximately 10 billion people on our planet by the year 2050, with some two-thirds living in cities. The world’s arable land per-capita is likely to shrink by 20 percent over that same period, due in part to increasing climate change and advancing erosion.

 

Innovative solutions are needed for feeding more people while using less land. Urban farming – particularly vertical farming – is one such solution.

 

vertical_farming_galerie_02.jpg

 

Rooftop vegetables

This cultivation method offers a whole range of advantages: In fact, a single vertical farm can grow 4 hectares (10 acres) — or roughly five Olympic-size swimming pools — worth of food on less than half a hectare of land, making it ideal for urban areas and in preserving space for biodiversity (by relieving pressure on natural fallow land that otherwise would be turned into farmland, thereby aiding wildlife conservation).
Vertical Farming also helps to meet the increasing need and desire for locally-grown produce. Local production eliminates long-distance transportation from producer to consumer, while also reducing food loss along the journey and food waste.
Tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, and mushrooms : These crops thrive in the controlled microclimates of the fields on each floor - free of the harsh extremes of climate change and seasonality. Correspondingly, these urban farms promise higher yields. At the same time, these self-contained, precision growing systems protect the exterior environment by reducing dependency on synthetic chemistry and other crop inputs, optimizing water use and allowing food growth in challenging environments with limited arable land. And of course, the benefits don’t end there.

 

  1. Frost can’t bite
    so farmers can grow their crops year-round.

  2. Pests can't pester
    so farmers can dramatically reduce inputs.

  3. Nutrients stay put
    so farmers can conserve natural resources.

  4. Moisture is recycled
    so farmers can use virtually every single drop to increase water efficiency by up to 90%.

  5. Land is (barely) needed
    so farmers can grow enough with less.

 

vertical_farming_galerie_04.jpg

 

Technologies make a significant difference in vertical farms

New sensors, smart energy systems, and other technologies make growing more efficient. Just like the many people using smart devices and automation to make their homes more convenient, vertical farms are typically automated to control light, temperature, and water use. They allow farmers to optimize the conditions required for growing to produce the food that consumers want most at the store.

 

AI and machine learning help to bolster efficiencies, save resources, and reduce the cost of growing crops vertically. Some systems can even use cameras and sensors to assess when crops are ready for harvest. Identifying exactly when to pick specific plants, this process has already been shown to significantly reduce the food waste that sometimes comes with full-field harvests.

 

vertical_farming_galerie_03.jpg

 

Even subtle innovations like advanced LED bulbs are helping to cut costs, increasing energy efficiency while drastically reducing heat waste within the system. Taken together, vertical indoor farms and automated technologies are producing a 100-fold increase in efficiency to generate 10 times the harvest while using only one-tenth of the resources.

 

However, no metropolis will be able to feed itself solely from urban farming. A 2018 study suggests that cities will most likely be able to produce enough vegetables for their population. In any case, experts anticipate increasing yields in the near future.

 

There are currently 204,387 sq m (about 2.2 million sq ft) of indoor farms operating across the globe, and that number is expected to increase almost tenfold to 2 million sq m (about 22 million sq ft) in the next five years.

 

Will vertical farming replace other farming environments? No, but as climate change and a growing global population continue to raise the stakes for our food system, vertical farming is emerging as one of many complementary solutions in our collective pursuit of sustainability and food security.

 

vertical_farming_galerie_01.jpg

 

Bayer unveils new company focused on developing breakthroughs in vertical farming

Leaps by Bayer and Singapore-based Temasek have already joined together to form the startup Unfold. The new venture will focus on innovation in vegetable varieties tailored for the unique indoor environment of vertical farms that deliver optimized quality and sensory experience.


Jürgen Eckhardt

Head of Leaps by Bayer

Companies like Unfold hope to supply restaurants, airlines, schools, hospitals, businesses, grocery stores, and on-line delivery services — both in city centers and throughout food deserts and especially in times of crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic — with fresh, sustainable, and hyper-local produce with a smaller ecological footprint.

 

The formation of the new company Unfold aligns with our vision of “Health for All, Hunger for None”, a commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals the United Nations has set for 2030, especially the goals of assuring healthy lifestyles and putting an end to hunger.


Thursday, May 20, 2021

Acetic Acid (Vinegar) as an Herbicide

Many of us have heard about the benefits of using vinegar in gardens, mainly as an herbicide. But how effective is vinegar and what else can it be used for? Let’s find out more about how to use vinegar in the garden. 

Using Vinegar in Gardens It has been said that one of the benefits of vinegar in the garden is as a fertilizing agent. Nope. Acetic acid only contains carbon hydrogen and oxygen — stuff the plant can get from the air. Vinegar has been recommended for use to up the pH levels in your soil. Apparently not so. The affects are temporary and require large amounts of vinegar in the garden before anything noteworthy occurs. 

The last, but most commonly suggested use for vinegar in the garden is as an herbicide. Household white vinegar, at its 5 percent acetic acid level, does indeed burn the tops of the weed. It does not, however, have any effect on the roots of the weed and will toast the foliage of any other plants it comes in contact with. Vinegar as Herbicide Woo hoo! Vinegar as herbicide: a safe, easily found (often in the kitchen cabinet) and inexpensive product to use in the control of weeds. 

Tell me all about it! Okay, I will. The use of vinegar in the garden to retard weed growth has long been recommended by your neighbor, your neighbor’s grandmother and your own mother, but does it work?


Read more at Gardening Know How: Garden Uses For Vinegar – Tips For Using Vinegar In Gardens https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/info/use-vinegar-in-gardens.htm

Vinegar contains acetic acid (about 5 percent), which as the nomenclature suggests, burns upon contact. Actually, for any of you who have inhaled a whiff of vinegar, it also affects the mucus membranes and causes a swift reaction. Due to its burning effects, using vinegar in the garden has been touted as a cure all for a number of garden afflictions, most notably weed control. 

The acetic acid of vinegar dissolves the cell membranes resulting in desiccation of tissues and death of the plant. While this sounds like a splendid outcome for the plague of weeds invading your yard, I suspect you wouldn’t be quite as thrilled if vinegar as herbicide were to damage your perennials or garden veggies. A higher acetic acid (20 percent) product can be purchased, but this has the same potentially damaging results as utilizing vinegar as herbicide. At these higher concentrations of acetic acid, some weed control has been shown to be established (80 to 100 percent of smaller weeds), but be sure to follow the manufacturer’s instructions. Also, be aware of its caustic effects on your nasal passages, eyes and skin, not to mention garden plants and take the appropriate precautions. 

Despite the longstanding proponents for using vinegar in gardens, little beneficial information has been proven. It seems that research conducted by the USDA with solutions containing 5 percent vinegar has not been shown to be a reliable weed control. Higher concentrations of this acid (10 to 20 percent) found in retail products may retard the growth of some annual weeds and will indeed kill the foliage of perennial weeds such as Canada thistle, but without killing the roots; thereby, resulting in regeneration. 

In summary, vinegar used as herbicide may be slightly effective on small annual weeds during the lawn’s dormancy and prior to garden planting, but as a long-term weed control, it’s probably better to stick with the old standby — hand pulling or digging. Additional Garden Uses for Vinegar Don’t be alarmed if the benefits of vinegar aren’t what you thought they would be. 

There are other garden uses for vinegar that can be just as good, if not better. Using vinegar in gardens goes far beyond weed control. Here are more options for how to use vinegar in the garden: Freshen up cut flowers. Add 2 tablespoons vinegar and 1 teaspoon sugar for each quart of water. Deter ants by spraying vinegar around door and window frames, and along other known ant trails. Eliminate calcium buildup on brick or on limestone with half vinegar and half water. Spray on and then just let it set. 

Clean rust from garden tools and spigots by soaking in undiluted vinegar overnight. And finally, don’t forget the animals. For instance, you can remove skunk odor from a dog by rubbing down the fur with full strength vinegar and then rinse clean. Keep cats away from garden or play areas (especially sandboxes). Just sprinkle vinegar in these areas. Cats hate the smell.

Read more at Gardening Know How: Garden Uses For Vinegar – Tips For Using Vinegar In Gardens https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/info/use-vinegar-in-gardens.htm

How it works as a pesticide Acetic acid is applied as a liquid spray or drench to weeds after they emerge from the soil. It is a contact herbicide, meaning it only affects plant tissue it touches. The acid breaks up cell membranes and makes them leak, causing the plant to dry out and die. Depending on plant age, air temperature, humidity, and direct sunlight levels, this may take from a few hours to several days. The drying effect is not limited to just certain plants; any new plant tissue can be affected. 

Avoid getting drops of spray onto plants you do not want damaged. 

Young seedlings and new growth have a thinner leaf cuticle than older plants or woody parts, making it easier for acetic acid to break down cell membranes. For example, in one study acetic acid sprayed at 5%–20% concentration killed 80%–100% of weed seedlings that were from 3 inches–9 inches tall. However, when 10% acetic acid was sprayed on mature blackberry plants, only 5% of leaves were burned back. 

Thick, waxy cuticles and woody plant tissue are more resistant to liquid entering, thus harder to kill. To overcome this, trim perennial weeds so they regrow tender new growth. Follow this with a spray application to the new growth to deplete the weed’s energy stores. Many cycles of trim-and-spray are likely needed to effectively treat stubborn perennial weeds such as Canada thistle (Figure 1). Acetic acid is sometimes mixed with citric or other acids. It can also be listed as an inert ingredient on some herbicide labels. 

The point to remember with acetic acid is that high concentrations are more effective on woody perennial weeds, while low concentrations will work effectively only on very young weed seedlings.

Some of the articles, research papers that may interest you:
https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/46234  
Evaluation of acetic acid based herbicides for use in broad-spectrum turfgrass and weed control

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/weed-technology/article/abs/integration-of-vinegar-for-inrow-weed-control-in-transplanted-bell-pepper-and-broccoli/43068DA3775AC0CB4B1287C043B82DFD
Integration of Vinegar for In-Row Weed Control in Transplanted Bell Pepper and Broccoli

Herbicidal Effects of Vinegar and a Clove Oil Product on Redroot Pigweed (Amaranthus retroflexus) and Velvetleaf (Abutilon theophrasti) 
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232684399_Herbicidal_Effects_of_Vinegar_and_a_Clove_Oil_Product_on_Redroot_Pigweed_Amaranthus_retroflexus_and_Velvetleaf_Abutilon_theophrasti

What's the benefits of wood vinegar for different crops?https://www.researchgate.net/post/Whats_the_benefits_of_wood_vinegar_for_different_crops

Read more at: https://newcropsorganics.ces.ncsu.edu/2013/08/acetic-acid-vinegar-as-an-herbicide/