Pulling the weeds

[pegkerr]

There is a particularly unlovely concrete area in our backyard, abutting the eastern side of the house. It's about twenty-five feet by twelve feet. There is no shade whatsoever to make it pleasant, and we have no furniture or plantings or anything else to encourage people to linger there. The concrete is divided into about ten blocks, and weeds grow in the lines in between the blocks.

I hate it.

I don't know why we've never done anything with the area. We just haven't. I can visualize setting up a sort of outdoor room there, but everything I imagine seems so expensive (a pergola with vines overhead! Patio furniture! Planters!) We have furniture on the porch on the opposite side of the house, and we've always chosen to sit there instead. The concrete gets blazingly hot in the summer time. I have gardens in the backyard, but the yard is unfortunately blighted by my neighbor's high fence which blocks our view (and is on our side of the property line, if you please).

So I do nothing with this concrete area every year, except pull the weeds. And my god, what weeds. Every spring, they start pushing up between the concrete, and I vow I'll keep up with them. I'll use Roundup, I tell myself, and I'll keep them in check. Or I'll empty a teakettle of boiling water out there every day. But my life gets busy, and the situation is always exactly the same every August: I go out the back door and stop, appalled, at the tufts of weeds spreading across the ugly, bare concrete.

So I go out and pull them. Rob has never pulled a single weed in the ten years we've lived in the house. I use a dandelion fork to pry up the long, stubborn roots, which cling desperately to the small wedge of soil between the blocks. If I pull in the wrong direction or don't get a good enough grip, the weeds tear up just above the roots, and I have to scrape them out of the crack with the dandelion fork, cursing under my breath. It can take a half an hour to clear one line, and there are lines around ten blocks in all. And unlike a garden, which thrives when you pull out weeds, the only reward, when I have cleared them all out, is that the ugly concrete is bare again.

It seems like a particularly futile and infuriating task to be stuck with year after year.

Comments

Unasked-for advice

[jbru.livejournal.com]

I would think that it would be relatively inexpensive, though labor intensive, to replace the concrete with something else. Steps would include removing the concrete, digging a bit of the dirt under it out, leveling, putting down a weed-stopping barrier, and putting in the new surface. Any weeds that crept into new cracks would be living on the bits of dirt that had settled there and couldn't get a good purchase on anything permanent. Once you have a surface you like, you'd probably be inspired to do other things with the space.

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

I tend to more clip them back with a push mower than weed... the back not being quite what it once was. The front by the sidewalk is my area.

Nature abhors a vacuum so if you build it weeds will come. How bout thyme? That's what I use edging the gravel path... herbs in general would just eat up this sort of micro climate. Heads in the sun...cool root run. Mix in a few portulaca (moss rose) and you have the makings of not just a sol'n but another garden?

[semperfiona]

I have very much the same problem at my house: massive weeds coming up in all the concreted patio areas and between the segments of the sidewalk. And the same difficulty keeping up with them.

*sympathy*

[misia.livejournal.com]

As the co-owner of a Traditional Baltimore Rowhouse Backyard -- entirely paved with bricks, between whose cracks the most enormous weeds manage to find a way to grow -- I empathize fully with you both.

We had a similar problem, and applied the Alexandrian solution. *g*

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Once you have ascertained that there is nothing important near the surface under the concrete:

1) Get a barbecue and a rowboat full of beer and soda
2) Get everybody you know
3) Get as many sledgehammers and pry bars as you can lay hands on
4) Concrete leaves your life.

Or you could erect a shed. *g*

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

Roundup is certainly less work.

You can get a permit to drop off concrete and such at the Minneapolis (garbage something or other) by 28th & Hiawatha -- but it's work getting it there and work after you get it there.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Richard T. is looking for donations of busted up concrete to use to finish his Magnificent Project in their backyard.

K. [I'd use Round-UP personally. I've got a gallon, with a handy spray attachment that you are welcome to borrow. It's currently on loan to pameladean but she's probabbly done or maybe needs a noodge to finish up with it]

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

Now if it would only kill violets!

[pameladean]

She hasn't done a damn thing with it, but is very happy to pass it on to Peg whenever Peg wants it. It can then come back to her, or go back to its exasperated owner.

Pamela

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I'm not exasperated, particularly, nor in any rush. Should I see any loosestrife along the creek, I might want it right away, but otherwise I'm happy to let my stuff aid people in their projects.

K.

[kokopoko.livejournal.com]

I love those dandelion forks.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

One of my Cheep n EZ gardening books described a way to turn those into raised beds, if you want any. Searching google for "raised bed" and "concrete" gives a lot of hits.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I hate to be a vulture, but if you should just happen to decide that you want to tear up that nasty old concrete - Richard would REALLLY like the broken up concrete! He might even be willing to come over there and help you break it up, and he'll certainly haul it away for you. So let us know if you decide to do anything drastic.

[argentus.livejournal.com]

You could always, at the beginning of spring, spread Snapdragon seeds, or any other annual you please in between the cracks, and that way, you won't have to remove the concrete and you'll also have pretty flowers growing out over ugly concrete.

seal those cracks!

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the problem is the cracks in the concrete - you can get concrete-sealer if they're thin cracks, or fill them with actual concrete if they're wide cracks. Now you have a patio or a shed/garage foundation!

Chris

[ariannamalfoy.livejournal.com]

Don't you just love men sometimes!?! I don't think my husband has ever pulled a weed in his life. How is it that we get stuck doing stuff like that?

Jerks :)

Grievous Slander

[(Anonymous)]

While I have not put the effort into the yard (and that includes the concrete) that Peg has, I have certainly pulled up a fair amount of weeds out of the gardens, lawn, and yes, the cracks in the concrete, over the past ten years.

Rob