# Gardeners, a question



## Northerner (Aug 4, 2019)

What's the best way to remove weeds that have grown into the cracks in the paving/edging stones in the garden? Is there some sort of JML tool that can deal with them or is weedkiller my only option? Would like to avoid the latter as I don't wish to poison my neighbours' animals  

I've been using a hoe and trowel, but it's hard work and hard to get the roots  Mind you, I'm guessing this isn't a problem for the real gardeners amongst you as you never allow things to reach this stage!


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## Robin (Aug 4, 2019)

Northerner said:


> What's the best way to remove weeds that have grown into the cracks in the paving/edging stones in the garden? Is there some sort of JML tool that can deal with them or is weedkiller my only option? Would like to avoid the latter as I don't wish to poison my neighbours' animals
> 
> I've been using a hoe and trowel, but it's hard work and hard to get the roots  Mind you, I'm guessing this isn't a problem for the real gardeners amongst you as you never allow things to reach this stage!


I use an old kitchen fork (I mean, a piece of cutlery, not a garden fork I use in the kitchen), because the prongs are narrow enough to get down to the roots. My sister has bought a weed gun, which burns the tops off. (I haven’t seen it, it sounds like a sort of flame thrower.) I have reverted to spot weeding with glyphosate for things like dandelion and dock, where you can never get the whole root out, however hard you try.


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## Northerner (Aug 4, 2019)

Robin said:


> I use an old kitchen fork (I mean, a piece of cutlery, not a garden fork I use in the kitchen), because the prongs are narrow enough to get down to the roots. My sister has bought a weed gun, which burns the tops off. (I haven’t seen it, it sounds like a sort of flame thrower.) I have reverted to spot weeding with glyphosate for things like dandelion and dock, where you can never get the whole root out, however hard you try.


Thanks @Robin  The weed gun sounds fun   I've tried with a wallpaper scraper, which is quite effective at pinching off the tops of things, but as you say, leaves the roots  I may have to resort to the poison


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## belugalad (Aug 4, 2019)

I used Weedol Path Clear on a sunny day from a watering can,I use the sachet version and mix it with water it's safe after it has dried for pets, and I have always had cats that have been fine


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## grovesy (Aug 4, 2019)

There many differnt types of tools to scrap between cracks some short or long handled.


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## belugalad (Aug 4, 2019)

I've also got one of these  https://www.webbsdirect.co.uk/burgo...4DrdfT_ksVCJiAUMPO-4Xk2ZaCx2GOlkaAjeFEALw_wcB it has a long handle to save your back


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## Pumper_Sue (Aug 4, 2019)

Weed guns work a treat you can get electric ones or ones that run for gas aerosols.


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## grovesy (Aug 4, 2019)

belugalad said:


> I've also got one of these  https://www.webbsdirect.co.uk/burgo...4DrdfT_ksVCJiAUMPO-4Xk2ZaCx2GOlkaAjeFEALw_wcB it has a long handle to save your back


I have never used one of these the ones I were thinking of are more like a blade.


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## belugalad (Aug 4, 2019)

When I was being a cheapskate I used salt on my patio between the bricks,I bought 4 or 5 big platic tubs for about 30p for 750g each tub from Sainsburys


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## Ivostas66 (Aug 4, 2019)

I have tried lots of things over the years (the owners of the property put in a lovely brick drive before we moved in, but we think it was done by cowboys as there are so many weeds every year, it's ridiculous!)

Anyway, this year I went all out - blasted them out with the Karcher, along with a lot of soil that had accumulated. I bought several bags of kiln dried sand from a DIY shop, brushed it in the cracks and no sign of any weeds since. Fingers crossed it lasts that way for at least a couple of seasons!


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## welshy1 (Aug 4, 2019)

The block paving brush I have had for years, it did a great job. Now I use a geranium based, pet and animal friendly weed control. Use it in a sprayer. We find that within an hour you can see results of the many weeds are starting to die. I would definitely recommend it. It is available through QVC.


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## belugalad (Aug 4, 2019)

welshy1 said:


> The block paving brush I have had for years, it did a great job. Now I use a geranium based, pet and animal friendly weed control. Use it in a sprayer. We find that within an hour you can see results of the many weeds are starting to die. I would definitely recommend it. It is available through QVC.


I will have a look at that


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## welshy1 (Aug 4, 2019)

Great, I buy a lot of things from QVC, they used to call me the QVC queen when I used to work.


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## nonethewiser (Aug 4, 2019)

Northie, go to B&M and look for a Groove Knife, only a £1 and it does the job nicely, gets right under the root and pulls it all out.  Also purchase a kneel pad, worth there weight in gold believe me.


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## belugalad (Aug 4, 2019)

welshy1 said:


> Great, I buy a lot of things from QVC, they used to call me the QVC queen when I used to work.


I like some of the cooking products,I got a halogen oven after seeing them on QVC


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## welshy1 (Aug 4, 2019)

HeHe, I had one  too, just gave it away a few weeks ago to a charity, never used it once lol.


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## TheClockworkDodo (Aug 4, 2019)

We have a weed wand, @Northerner and it's very satisfying to watch the weeds burn up, if a bit smelly (ours runs on gas canisters).  It does take a few goes with it to get rid of stubborn deep-rooted weeds like dandelions though, and I wouldn't use it without having a watering can handy, just in case it sets light to something it shouldn't set light to!

If your weeds aren't close to any plants you want to keep you could also try squirting them with vinegar - that shouldn't poison your neighbours' animals, but it should certainly kill the weeds.  It's now sold in spray bottles by the organic gardening catalogue as organic weedkiller, but it's cheaper to just get a bottle of white vinegar from the supermarket and a cheap spray bottle from a garden centre and create your own.  It might not be too good for any insects which might be on the weeds, but then nor would chemical weedkiller, and vinegar would be a lot less harmful to you and to the environment than that would be.

Alternately you could pour boiling water over the weeds - that will kill them too.  Just think beforehand about where the water will run afterwards, as you don't want it running down onto your garden and boiling your plants.

All this does rather depend what weeds you have - if you have something like bindweed or horsetail (or Japanese knotweed ), nothing's going to get rid of it permanently!


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## welshy1 (Aug 4, 2019)

Clockwork dodo
We also have one of those. I forgot about that, think we maybe out of gas. Does a good job, just make sure like you said to have water handy in case.


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## Northerner (Aug 5, 2019)

Thanks for all the suggestions, those smug weeds have no idea what I'm plotting!


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## Sally W (Aug 6, 2019)

I add a couple of drops of washing up liquid to a bottle of white vinegar, put in spray bottle and spray on weeds between paving. They then shrivel up and die & makes for easier removal


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## belugalad (Aug 6, 2019)

Sally W said:


> I add a couple of drops of washing up liquid to a bottle of white vinegar, put in spray bottle and spray on weeds between paving. They then shrivel up and die & makes for easier removal


I will try that,I've got wispy bits of grass as well at the moment between the blocks


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## Northerner (Aug 6, 2019)

Sally W said:


> I add a couple of drops of washing up liquid to a bottle of white vinegar, put in spray bottle and spray on weeds between paving. They then shrivel up and die & makes for easier removal


Sounds a lot cheaper than a weed gun  On the shopping list


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## TheClockworkDodo (Aug 6, 2019)

The washing up liquid helps the vinegar to stick - otoh, unless you get very mild and relatively environmentally-friendly washing up liquid (like Ecover zero) it's not so good for the environment and wildlife - most washing up liquids are a cocktail of chemicals and are harmful to things like aquatic creatures.


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## Northerner (Aug 6, 2019)

TheClockworkDodo said:


> The washing up liquid helps the vinegar to stick - otoh, unless you get very mild and relatively environmentally-friendly washing up liquid (like Ecover zero) it's not so good for the environment and wildlife - most washing up liquids are a cocktail of chemicals and are harmful to things like aquatic creatures.


The breadth of knowledge of forum members never ceases to impress me  I'll hunt down some Ecover


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## TheClockworkDodo (Aug 6, 2019)

I'm not 100% sure about the Ecover as they changed the ingredients recently, but it used to say on the label that it was not harmful to aquatic animals.  Failing that you could have a look at Fairy Liquid, that's pretty mild, though I don't know the ingredients of it, so again I couldn't be sure.  Or you could just get pure liquid castile soap or liquid soap flakes - they should do the same job.  You basically just want a surfactant of some sort, I think.


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## Andy HB (Aug 10, 2019)

On the gardening theme, I have a question for the green fingered amongst you too. I have two apple trees. One's a bramley and the other a russet. They were planted as small trees three years ago. The first crop, which came pretty quickly after they were planted were ok for the bramley (1kg of apples) but the russet suffered because of initial drought conditions followed by lots of rain (the apples then split horribly and the crop was ruined). The second crop for both trees was then pretty mediocre as well, but the russet had some decent apples. The third crop was excellent for both trees. We had apple crumble pies for weeks as well as nice eating. 

Anyway, this year, whilst the trees flowered nicely, we didn't get many apples on either tree. The russet has around 8, but the bramley has only 4. It is looking like the trees are doing the one year on, one year off routine (that seems familiar to me). Both trees have plenty of pretty good foliage this year and good branch growth.

Does anyone know what you need to do in order to get a more consistent and reasonable crop of apples year after year?

Andy (takes a long time to get to the actual question) HB


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## Robin (Aug 10, 2019)

Andy HB said:


> Does anyone know what you need to do in order to get a more consistent and reasonable crop of apples year after year?


Some of our apple trees are a bit hit and miss, but most of them are quite old. But this year, we had late frosts, which prevented the blossom on our five year old  Bramley getting fertilised because there weren’t any bees around. The earlier flowering apple trees escaped. So this can explain anomalies in cropping (I don’t  know whether this is what happened to yours or not).


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## Andy HB (Aug 10, 2019)

Yes, it could be a bit of that. We had some late frosts too (really set our fig tree back, but the recent good weather has allowed it to really throw some leaves out and grow some new branches).


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## TheClockworkDodo (Aug 10, 2019)

The problem may be partly that Bramleys are triploid - in other words, they don't pollinate other apples and need two apples to pollinate them.  So given that you only have two trees including the Bramley, in order to get any fruit at all you need neighbours with apple trees which are close enough - which you must have or you wouldn't have got any fruit so far.  But for a bigger/more consistent crop you may find you need another apple (or crab apple) in an overlapping pollination group.

More info. here - https://www.orangepippintrees.co.uk/articles/how-to-pollinate-bramley-apple-trees
And there's a list of apples in different pollination groups here - https://walcotnursery.co.uk/pollination/ (Bramley's a C, so you'd need another B, C, or D)

But I suspect - given that you obviously have neighbours with apple trees in order to have got any fruit at all - that it's also partly the weather, which has been pretty appalling for fruit trees this year.


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## Andy HB (Aug 11, 2019)

Thanks for that. Very interesting. I might invest in a crab apple, but not sure where to put it yet.


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## KARNAK (Aug 11, 2019)

Andy HB said:


> On the gardening theme, I have a question for the green fingered amongst you too. I have two apple trees. One's a bramley and the other a russet. They were planted as small trees three years ago. The first crop, which came pretty quickly after they were planted were ok for the bramley (1kg of apples) but the russet suffered because of initial drought conditions followed by lots of rain (the apples then split horribly and the crop was ruined). The second crop for both trees was then pretty mediocre as well, but the russet had some decent apples. The third crop was excellent for both trees. We had apple crumble pies for weeks as well as nice eating.
> 
> Anyway, this year, whilst the trees flowered nicely, we didn't get many apples on either tree. The russet has around 8, but the bramley has only 4. It is looking like the trees are doing the one year on, one year off routine (that seems familiar to me). Both trees have plenty of pretty good foliage this year and good branch growth.
> 
> ...



Afraid the weather is a major factor Andy, my brambly from one of my previous houses/land was very fruitful also my pear conference was very abundant. As the weather changed they produced less fruit although the brambly was still quite hardy for 18 months , not anymore. I contacted one of my customers who has a large gardening contract in Torbay and he advised, we are all hoping the weather will become less extreme, other than that buy dwarf fruit trees and grow them indoors. Best of luck.


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## belugalad (Aug 27, 2019)

I noticed the long handled tool with the wire teeth for removing weeds etc from between slabs in Aldi today £3.99


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