As the title says.
I feel like if I get all this pulled out, it will just grow again and again.
I am guessing that either the tarp was not laid out on the bottom of the concrete to stop weeds, or somehow it has managed to push its way through.
Is there an easy way to get rid of the weeds, or will I have to rip up the concrete tiles to deweed and re-tarp?
I am very green with gardening, so any help would be valuable
by Large-Ad2761
41 Comments
Before you “hire someone”? That’s looks like 10 minutes of weeding. Stop it!
Pull out what you can by hand, then run a weed burner over the rest or use weed spray if your comfortable with it. It doesn’t look that difficult at all just overwhelming until you get in and do it.
Go buy yourself a fancy pair of gardening gloves and get pulling ’em up, careful with those seeds heads, don’t be letting them spread around!
I am a professional Gardener and if presented with this I would probably rip out as much as I could by hand as someone else has mentioned. Then I would take a string trimmer and probably knock it down as low as I could. The ones that I couldn’t pull. Lastly, I would use horticultural vinegar mixed with a little dish soap. 45% is the best. It’s non-toxic but it is very caustic so don’t get it in your eyes and don’t take a deep breath! However, it will not cause Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and it should go a long way towards helping your problem. After that throw down 6-month delayed release. Preen which keeps new weeds from seeding. It will not help with weeds that spread by roots but it will help with anything that spreads by seed as it prevents them from germinating and it won’t hurt anything. After that. Just keep up with it. Either with the vinegar or with the string trimmer and the vinegar. It really shouldn’t be a big deal. You can do it! I believe in you! 😁
propane weed torch
These come up so easy just get after it! I see prickly lettuce. Also helps to get them before they seed
Pull up what you can, pour boiling water on anything you can’t pull up. Keep doing it every 2 weeks in spring.
Pull what you can. For the rest spray vinegar into the cracks. We do that 3-4x per year and it works great.
Pull or weed wack & spray with acetic acid.
I would guess those pavers have been down for years and I question when these were first put in if they were just put down directly on soil as those weeds look healthy! Regardless, eventually nature wins.
When I was faced with something like that (but not nearly as bad), I ripped up each paver & cleaned the dirt off of each one, piled them over to the side, got enough sand to cover the area in about 4-6″, leveled it, tamped it with a hand tamper a few times, leveled it again and put the pavers back down. I also got some polymeric sand and tamped that into the spaces between the pavers.
A professional job would’ve been to take out the existing soil below the pavers and put down gravel and then sand which will give you years of weed free enjoyment.
I think the choice is yours…..pull the weeds and live with pulling weeds every few weeks or put some elbow grease into it or hire someone and put a lot of $$ into it.
Cut them down and pour viniger on the bricks. It’s not a permanent solution but will keep them from coming back for a while.
Pour boiling Water on them or torch them as others mentioned
roundup works great. Fire can also be fun. You can also pull them up.
After that there is paver sand or whatever they call it. You pour it in the gaps after you scrape them out then water the stuff. If you are worried after that you can get Preen which I put down before and sometimes after mulch.
After that if you see a weed pull it immediately it just takes a second or two. Or let it grow back because clearing it with fire was a hell of a lot of fun.
A solution of salt, vinegar, and dish soap
Tackle it one section at a time. Pull what you can, cut off the rest, burn what’s left. Put down preventative like preen and KEEP UP WITH IT!!!!
It’s a war of attrition with weeds, every time. One of you is gonna get tired and quit, and they’re life depends on winning.
This looks like a very satisfying weed pull. Where you wiggle it back and forth and the entire root comes out. And you win.
Enjoy!
I didn’t see anyone else say it. Once you pull all the weeds, get some polymeric sand and tey to fill all those cracks. Use a tamper to try to get it down into the cracks really good.
Unless you create an impermeable surface or permanently poison the earth, weeds will ALWAYS come back. Yes, even with deep layers of gravel. Yes, even with landscape fabric/weed barrier underneath. If there is space and nutrients something will germinate. No amount of site prep will prevent dirt and seeds from blowing in.
if you keep pulling eventually they will lesson over time!
This absolutely will not take you long to pull them out. Follow the commenter who said ag vinegar and soap, followed by preen and you won’t have a tree farm on your hands again.
Good old elbow grease…
It’s free and it works every time. 😉
Adding to the suggestions to just pull them up for starters and repeat as necessary to see where things really are. I do this along the sides of my house and find it much easier after rains.
Garden gloves with leather on the palms.
Knee pads. Over long pants, preferably jeans.
Get pulling. Grasp at the base of the plants, to pull up, and see if you can get some roots. Put each into a bucket so the seeds don’t scatter and reseed. Go after as many of the bigger ones as you can pull.
Then, take a hand hoe with a pointy end, or a swan hoe, and run the pointy end along the cracks, which should do a nice job of taking out the tiny plants.
Sweep up the mess.
Bonus, hum songs you know that have to do with gardening, or listen for birdsongs.
And when you are done, get a pleasant drink and sit there and enjoy the achievement.
Every day get the coffee pot brewing, go out and pull weeds for just ten minutes until your coffee is ready. Do this every day until everything is wiped out. Then repeat for the little ones that pop up.
Just go to corner and start pulling
pull them up, string trimmer, then paver/polymeric sand. I would say this is a bit more on easy side vs a overgrown patch of yard(in my experience)
Flamethrower
I’d get a pair of gardening gloves and gardening hand shears and carefully cut the weeds down close to the tile level. Then, discard the weeds and as much debris as possible.
Then, rent a weed flame torch from the local hardware store (Home Depot, Lowes, Hornbach, Bauhaus, etc) and torch what’s left between the tiles, not doing the ones directly near any wooden fence, or other flammable major object.
Shown in this video:
https://youtu.be/oan3TIn44Gg?si=cPdFnLYqtT3Ka8us
This isn’t a gardening question because the end result is a paved area without any plants. Weeds will always return, make peace with it and pull them up when you have a moment.
Pull it by hand. It could take a hour or 20 minutes depending on the ground. Stay on top of it over the next growing season.
Use your hands.
Thumb and forefinger, grasp firmly at the base and pull. Repeat until weeds are gone.
Thumb and forefinger, grasp firmly at the base and pull. Repeat until weeds are gone.
Rip and tear until the deed is done.
First, you have to pull the weeds at that height. Wait until a good rain fall and they will come up pretty easy. Then I would use a pressure washer to clean out the joints. You have a lot of soil that has settled in between the cracks there. Then I would brush some polymeric sand over the top. Then finally my personal trick and I have a 600 square-foot patio so I know what I’m talking about, is spread baking soda in the cracks. Now I have natural stone pavers, so with cement first do it in a small area just to make sure there’s no reaction. it makes the pH of the soil between the cracks generally less than ideal for most plants.
If you don’t plant on growing anything there, boiling hot water with pickling vinegar and salt usually does the trick for me
If you get rid of the weeds *before* you hire someone, he won’t have anything to do.
Vinegar water hot in the tea pot after you cut them
Mini flame thrower
Lawn torch