“Weed-Free” Brick Driveway Update: 6 years later (aka how to make it even better)

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Intro by Robin Steps by Ed

Hundreds of thousands of readers have visited our post to learn how we made our brick driveway weed-free.  We’ve heard great success stories from lots of people!  Six years later it’s time to update you on how it’s doing – and to make a couple of improvements.

It’s held up really well.  The almost knee-high weeds from years gone by have stayed gone.  (This is a major success – those beasts were pretty embarrassing. It was getting a little bit Little Shop of Horrors out there.)

There are a couple of things we’re wishing we did six years ago.  That’s what we’re tackling out there today – and sharing for you here.

You can see in our latest photos – some weeds have returned.  They are quite small weeds, and are easy to pull, but they’re there.  They only started to plant themselves about 2 years ago – about 4 years after our big makeover.

We call that a success because every other strategy we tried previously lasted about two months tops. So this method works out to 24 times better!

We realize now that the problem we could have solved back then – and we’re forced to tackle today – is the edges.  Darn you, Edges!!!!  Don’t forget to address your edges, folks, they will haunt you later!  When we first completed the project we did not place an edging material along the sides of the driveway – and this we believe is the source of our problem.

When my dad first installed the driveway 30+ years ago he used pressure treated lumber to edge along the bricks.  (Our family has owned this house since it was built in the late 1950s.)  Pressure-treated worked well for the first 10 years or so – but then it started to shift and break apart.  Also, the PT edging heaved in spots and in our safety conscious wisdom we pulled them out completely to avoid tripping anyone.

In our naive dumbness, we didn’t replace them with anything. Womp Womp (sad trombone).

The reason the paver edges are important is two-fold:

1. Edging holds the polymeric sand in place.

We live in the harsh Canadian climate – that means snow, lots and lots of it – and the shovelling of snow.  We’re fairly certain that snow, shovelling and rain have eroded that miracle product from the edges.  It’s not nearly as sealed as the centre areas.

2. Edging keeps the roots of weeds and grass from sneaking under and through the polymeric sand.

We have a paver pathway that we made from scratch 10 years ago.  We did that one right the first time and used a paver edging product – and a decade later there aren’t any weeds creeping into it.  Lesson learned!

Materials:

• This crack weeding tool (We reviewed the top 3 crack weeding tools to find the best tool to pull weeds – The whole review is here)
• Paver edging 
• 10″ Galvanized Spikes (Basically, really big nails)
• Polymeric Sand (we used this one)
• Good work gloves
• Knee pads (we wish we had picked up these before we started!)
• Sweat.  So so much sweat.

Steps:

Our Plan for the Future:

Now that the edging is done along the side, we are pretty confident we won’t have to do this bigger job again.

Our plan going forward is to do a refresh every 3 years.  That’s how long the driveway stayed looking great before light weeds started to root themselves in tiny cracks.

In 3 years time, we will pull any stray weeds and then do a top-dressing coat of polymeric sand again. 

It will mean sweeping it into the cracks again, wetting it and letting it set.  Not a very tough job when you compare it to the hell that it hand weeding a driveway or patio!

You can find more of our Outdoor DIY Projects here.  

Including our beautiful Bubble Fountain Feature and our easy-to-build Raised Garden Beds.

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