How Not To: clear weeds from a patio.

This is a bit of soapbox of mine: don't use weedkiller on your patio.

Now, I shall say up front that I quite cordially hate, loathe and detest weeding patios, it's right up there on my Top Three Most Disliked Gardening Jobs, along with scraping off herringbone paving, and planting bulbs.

You may be wondering what those three jobs have in common, to make me dislike them so much, and the answer is that they are all physically hard work, but you don't get any obvious reward: bulbs don't come up for many months, obviously: and as for the other two, well, quite often the Client can't really see what's been done, once I've cleared away the mess.

For instance, this is how much debris comes off, when scrubbing a herringbone block paving drive - left - but once I've swept it all up, the drive looks "nice" but within a day or two, everyone has forgotten how horrible it looked before I scrubbed it.

And within six months or so, it needs doing again... this is possibly the closest job to "housework" in the garden.

Likewise, with weeding patios, they start off looking horrible: (right)...

....I spend an hour or so hand weeding them...

.... they look great, as everyone agrees, but ten minutes later they've forgotten just how bad it was, and have stopped seeing the improvement.

And within a few months, they need doing again.

So these three jobs are my least favourite.

You might well be wondering why I still weed patios, if I hate it so much: and in brief, it's because I don't approve of using weedkiller on patios, nor those disgustingly non-eco gas wand things, which I consider to be an invention of the devil, about as un-eco as it is possible to get, and - but wait, rather than listening to me ranting about them, just type "weeding patio" into the search box, top left of the screen, and you can read all about my opinions on the subject...

So, in brief, even though it's a job I really dislike, I still get on with it, and hand-weed the darned things.

This time, I'd like to clarify something which I always say, but which is often queried.

One of my objections to using chemicals is that the weeds die off, but you have to look at them for weeks, while they die, and then nine times out of ten, the Client gets so fed up with it that they ask me to hand-weed out the dead stuff. So I might just have done it by hand the first time!

And this is what I mean:

Just look at that. 

This photo was taken about five weeks after the Client used weedkiller on their patio.

As you can see, a horrible brown mess, plus a whole load of nice new green weeds already re-growing.

"But I sprayed it!" the Client wailed, "Why is it still covered in weeds?"

Well, my dear (*laughs*), that's because weedkiller may kill the weed, but it doesn't clear away the dead foliage, in the way that a gardener does. 

Nor does it sweep the patio afterwards, including round the backs of all the pots, clearing out the mess of previous-winter-leaves which have been lurking there for months. Nor does it put the pots back neatly, having weeded, watered and mulched them for you. 

Even worse - even worse!! - is using weedkiller on weeds growing in shingle.

Isn't that horrible?

(Especially to the right, where the Garden Owner has over-sprayed the weedkiller onto the grass, with predictably disastrous results...)

All that dead material is going to - eventually - fall apart, and work its way down into the matrix of the shingle, thus providing lovely organic matter for the next generation of weed seeds.

So, not only are the owners not getting rid of the weeds in the shingle - you can still see them - but they are actually laying the foundations for more weeds to grow.

In my opinion, it is far better to ask your gardener to hand weed, than to splash around a load of chemicals, have to endure looking at dying foliage until it sets your teeth on edge, and then ask your gardener to do it, anyway. 

After all, it's my back that gets the ache!

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