Nothing Has Grown Between My Gaps In Two Years, Here's How

I pulled weeds out of the same patio joints every other Saturday for six years. Then I stopped asking how to kill them and started asking why they were there.

This is what mine looked like every May for six years straight.

I take care of my place. I mow in lines. I edge. I power wash the patio every spring before we start using it.

And for six years, part of that was pulling weeds out of the joints between the pavers.

I never really thought of it as a problem. It was just something you did. Coffee on the step, knees on the pavers, Saturday morning gone.

I tried everything, and all of it worked

Boiling water. That works. Kills them on the spot.

Vinegar. Works too, and it's cheaper.

I bought a propane torch off the internet, which I'll admit was the most fun I've had doing yard work.

Weed killer from the hardware store. Not the cheap stuff either.

Every single one of them worked. The weeds died every time. And two or three weeks later they were back.

Six years of this. Twice a summer, every summer.

Then I noticed something

They came back in the same spots.

Not randomly across the patio. The same three joints by the grill. The same corner by the step. Every single time.

That bugged me. Weeds are supposed to be random. Mine had favourites.

Every time I went out there with the sprayer, I was asking the same thing.

How do I kill these?

And I found plenty of ways to do it. That was never the problem.

So I got down and looked

Put my face right down next to the joint and actually looked into it, which in six years I had never once done.

There was no sand in there. Hadn't been for years.

It was dirt. Dark packed dirt, a bit damp, with seeds sitting in it.

Every joint on my patio had soil sitting in it. Which is a perfect home for a weed. Somewhere to root, a bit of water, nobody bothering it.

No sand left. Just soil, sitting there ready to grow something.

I never had a weed problem

I had a dirt problem that looked like a weed problem.

Killing a weed clears the joint for a couple of weeks. It doesn't do anything about the soil that's still sitting in there.

That's why the same joints every time. Those were the ones washed out the deepest, holding the most dirt.

Six years of spraying, and I'd been treating the thing that grew instead of the thing it grew in.

If the dirt is the problem, fill the gap

Once I saw it that way the answer was obvious.

Take the dirt out, fill the joint properly, and there is nowhere for anything to root.

Regular sand was out. That's what got me here in the first place, it washes out and the dirt moves in behind it. Cement was out too, it cracks the first winter the ground shifts.

So I went looking for something that pours in like sand but sets hard like cement. That's a thing, it turns out. It's called polymeric sand.

You pour it in dry, brush it level, then soak it with a garden hose. The water sets off a polymer inside the sand and the whole joint hardens into one solid piece. It stays slightly flexible, so it moves with the ground in winter instead of cracking.

Cleared the joints, poured it in, brushed it level, hosed it down.

It took me one afternoon

Bag, broom, garden hose. That was the whole tool list.

Cleaned the old dirt out of the joints with a screwdriver, poured the sand over the surface, swept it into every gap, then wet the whole thing down.

Three hours later it was solid.

And I fully expected to be back out there pulling weeds by July. That's the honest truth. Six years of nothing working does that to you.

Two years later

July, nothing came up.

September, nothing.

The next May, the month I'd normally be back on my knees with the sprayer, I walked out there out of habit and checked the three joints by the grill.

Nothing.

I power washed the patio that spring like I always do and the joints didn't move. Two years on and I still haven't pulled a single weed out of it.

Same patio. No spray, no pulling, nothing done to it since.

The one I used

There's a few brands of this stuff. I went with Permomix because it was the only one backing it for ten years.

What I'd tell you

I'm not going to tell you how to look after your patio. You've probably got your own way of doing it and it probably works.

I'll just tell you the question I wish I'd asked six years earlier.

Not how do I kill them. Why are they there.

Once you've had a proper look in that joint, you'll work out the rest the same way I did.