Weeds between pavers, weeds between flagstone joints

I've seen some bad advice online about how to remove weeds from in between patio pavers and flagstones. One piece of bad advice, that comes up way too often is this: lift up the bricks/stones, lay a piece of plastic(!), re-lay the stones. Terrible, terrible idea. Totally unnecessary and really, such a method with not help very much at all.

Another piece of bad advice is this: seal the paver joints with polymeric sand. Terrible advice! Polymeric sand usually makes a mess, always cracks within a couple years, can be rather difficult to repair once it cracks up....and it's kind of hilarious how after all that trouble, weeds still grow, right through that expensive, difficult, messy polymeric sand. Ha!

Good advice:

If laying a flagstone patio, make sure the joints are fairly tight.

      1. Just pull the weeds. Old fashioned, right?

2. Use a small hand-held torch. They make extending wands that connect to a standard propane torch, the same one you use for your camp stove. Using one of these wands will save you from having to bend down, you can use it from a standing position. Good if your back just does not want to bend too often.
3. Use a solution of vinegar with a bit of salt added.
4. Plant a ground cover such as creeping thyme or moss.
5. Hire Devine Escapes to build the patio. Then hire us to do a yearly maintenance. Usually this takes only a couple hours and costs less than 200 per year. We remove any weeds, make sure there is no wobbling nor puddling, top off stone dust between the joints and like that, you're good to go. I've noticed that when clients hire us to perform this yearly maintenance in the spring, that if I stop by in mid summer, there usually is a weed or two, but nothing significant One or two weeds usually does not cause any great aesthetic offense—it can be charming, even.

People stress over weeds in the patio way more than they need to. Just build your patio well, maintain it maybe once a year and live with a weed or two. The more you fret over them, the faster they grow back. Years of experience inform that last statement—the more you fret over them, the faster they grow back..

 

Not my work. Sorry, I couldn't find a picture of one of my patios with weeds.....Anyway, hopefully this picture illustrates one of my points--one or two weeds in a patio is often no big deal at all. Sometimes, it even adds a pleasant bit of character.

Additional info:

Standard white vinegar, the stuff you have in your kitchen, contains one percent acetic acid. Agricultural vinegar contains up to thirty percent acetic acid. You can use the stronger stuff, if you must...well, at least it's better than using some of the nastier poisons that are on the market. When using any type of acetic acid/salt water combination care must be taken to ensure that you are not poisoning nearby garden plants.

In the beginning of this article I criticized the method of using plastic or landscape fabric beneath pavers. Now, I'll explain a little more. If your paver is 2” thick and sits on a one inch thick bed of sand or stone dust...what good does it do to have a weed barrier beneath the bedding sand/stone dust? Very little good at all—the weeds still have 3” of material in which to grow! And that is plenty. The really nasty weeds, with deep tubers, such as dandelions—sure, a weed barrier should at least stop the worst of the weeds from getting so deep, right? Wrong. Dandelions will surely bust right through you landscape fabric—if they've already gotten three inches down, a thin membrane is not going to stop them from getting further.

No commercial herbicides have been named within this article.  They might as well not even exist.








http://www.devineescapes.com/