Weed removal….organically ?

welbeck

anyone got any ideas of stopping next door's ivy from climbing up pebble-dash and covering over my upper windows.
did have so-called gardeners in about 2 years ago, seemed to involve pulling off by hand and using my snippers.
now crept back.
i can't get up a ladder easily, and no money to pay others.
don't care if it's organic. just want rid.
i've tried pulling it off from below, but it's firmly gripping.

Can you ask your neighbour to keep it on their house? It seems as though their plant is causing you trouble.

Can you reach the base of the ivy where it starts to come over onto your house? If you cut it off there everything will die above it. You can either leave it there to come away in its own time (it will take a very, very long time!) or pull it off, which will be easier once it's dead and dry but might be difficult without a ladder.

I think what your gardeners did was right as if you try to pull it off you could damage your pebbledash.

I have an electric weed burner. It’s massive drawback is that it has such a short lead.

Your weeds look primarily to be grass. Instead of using a sharp knife you can get special paving slab weeder knives which I’ve found to be very good as you remove the weed at once, provided you can get down there and back up of course!

We had more chuckies put on our driveway last summer as they’d gradually disappeared over the years. The drive was weedy and mossy so the chap laying down the chuckies used salt & vinegar in water to prepare it. He simply didn’t like paying high prices for chemicals!

I had my doubts but it worked. Being a driveway it doesn’t have much in the way of wildlife on it and in any case, as we are in Scotland, the rain soon dilutes it.

What’s wrong with a hoe that’s how I get rid of them

Good post Moorlandmooner, it looks possible to remove simply with a sharp knife run down the sides of the slabs, down one side and up the other, if the OP can get up and down easy enough, and uses a kneeler.

I for one would not use salt, vinegar or boiling water simply because I would be ruining whatever biodiversity there was in the weedy area. My aunt killed a huge tree by putting salt round the bottom, it was a sorry sight over a number of years while it died.

anyone got any ideas of stopping next door's ivy from climbing up pebble-dash and covering over my upper windows.
did have so-called gardeners in about 2 years ago, seemed to involve pulling off by hand and using my snippers.
now crept back.
i can't get up a ladder easily, and no money to pay others.
don't care if it's organic. just want rid.
i've tried pulling it off from below, but it's firmly gripping.

Oh well, I tried. Your garden looks very pretty Shinamae. A real wildlife haven.

The problem with the solutions is that you’ll have to keep on weeding, which I decided is too much effort for me, life’s too short to weed between the paving slabs when there’s so much else to do in the garden.
Once you’ve weeded, try getting some Easy Joint, which is a paving joint compound that you brush in. It works really well.

And it’s very doubtful that the frogs would even be on the patio they have plenty of long grass and the pond to be in…

Thanks for all your advice it is only a very small patio probably 16‘ x 8, I have attempted to get them out with a long handled contraption that has looks like brass wire bristles on the end, hasn’t really worked… I will definitely try the boiling water and the salt and vinegar which will disappear after a little while. I am just adverse to using chemicals…???

Nonny

Boiling water from the kettle or from cooking pasta or potatoes.

This. I do this. It works brilliantly. Time consuming, but set yourself a target of 10 weeds a day. Within 3 or 4 weeks, you'll be weed free. They take a couple of days to die, but you'll see them withering within 24 hours.

Salt burns frogs. www.reference.com/pets-animals/can-salt-kill-frogs-7d6a560193d884ed

Can I please ask why people are keen to put something on weeds rather than just dig them out?

I use this tool from Wilkos, it cost me a £1 and does a proper job of getting the weeds out. It's quick, easy and works. www.wilko.com/en-uk/wilko-patio-groove-knife/p/0504545

Winter salt on roads is bad for dog paws and so it can't do hedgehogs any good can it?

I know we're only talking about salt, vinegar and boiling water...but why would you want that stuff leaching into your soil where it might kill your grass and other plants? Also I don't like to think of burning/scalding/pouring caustic substances and all over beneficial insects.

Some people seem to think nature and the outdoors are the enemy rather than something to treat well.

Vinegar is an acid , we have a long handled v shaped tool that is great for cleaning between paving stones , try the boiling water first and let it do it’s work and give it a good going over with a stiff brush , that should help

We had pink flagstones all around a previous house. I used to pour boiling water on the weeds. We lived in the countryside and I didn't like using weedkiller on them because of all the wildlife we had visiting us.

I must say I am not keen on weed burners but I might try the boiling water and then after that maybe the salt and vinegar…??

Salt, or I have one of those gas weed burns, very light very cheap but they do the job, as another poster says, it takes several weeks of burning to really kill the intractable weeds.

I bought my weed burner on ebay.

Boiling water from the kettle or from cooking pasta or potatoes.

If you search for electric weed killer on Amazon you'll see a variety of burning devices for weeds. You'd have to choose one which has good reviews I guess.

I have a hot flame weeder - it works really well. Might have to do several times. The key as in all weeding, is to keep on top of it all the time. A stitch in time saves nine, a weed in time saves thousands!

It is pretty bad as you can see, I have read also about using a pressure washer but I don’t have one of those….