I Tried Everything to Stop Driveway Weeds — This Finally Worked!

Go stand at the end of your driveway and look down at the cracks. The grass standing up out of the middle one like a mohawk, the green line where the driveway meets the sidewalk, that one weed by the garage that comes back so reliably you could set a calendar by it. And you have done things, mi amigo. You pulled them on your knees. You bought the jug with the sprayer. Maybe boiling water, or vinegar, or salt. And every time it looked good for a few weeks, and every time, there they were again, in the exact same cracks. You do not have a weed problem. You have a CRACK problem. Every method you tried kills the weed that is there today. None of them changes the reason a weed can grow there tomorrow. A crack in concrete is a flowerpot: it holds dirt, it holds water, it catches every seed the wind brings, and the sun shines down into it. Today we get rid of the flowerpot. One Saturday, under forty dollars, and the cracks stay clean for years. This is exactly what the concrete crews do to a joint so nothing grows in it again. In this video: • WHEN: a dry stretch of days, concrete warm but not hot, in the temperature range on the sealant tube (usually about 50 to 90 degrees). No rain for a day or two. Fall is perfect. • DO NOT tear out the driveway. Cracks are not a broken driveway; concrete is supposed to move, that is what joints are for. We fix them in place. • STEP 1, PULL WITH THE ROOT: slow, straight up. Crabgrass, spurge and clover regrow from a piece of root left under the slab, so do not worry about the last piece yet. • STEP 2, CLEAN THE CRACK (the step nobody does): the dirt, dead leaves, old roots and black rotten material are the SOIL of your flowerpot. Screwdriver, wire brush, crack tool or string trimmer sideways, then blow or shop-vac it clean to bare concrete. Look at what comes out. • STEP 3, WHAT YOU CANNOT SEE: a SYSTEMIC weed killer, the kind the plant carries down into its own roots, put down INTO the crack, not misted over the top, exactly per the label, then wait the days the label says. The one bottle in this video worth buying. • STEP 4, CLOSE THE FLOWERPOT: BACKER ROD, a gray foam rope, bought a little WIDER than the crack, pushed in to about a half inch below the surface so it makes a floor. Then POLYURETHANE CONCRETE SEALANT: SELF-LEVELING for a flat driveway, SEMI-self-leveling for a sloped one (self-leveling runs downhill and puddles). It stays flexible for years and moves with the concrete instead of splitting. • STEP 5, THE CREW FINISH: dry sand sprinkled over the bead while it is still tacky, pressed in, swept off after cure. The repair goes gray and rough and disappears instead of a shiny black line. • Why it works: a seed lands and has nowhere to fall into. No dirt collects, no water sits, no sunlight gets down inside. Nothing grows on the flat middle of your slab, and now nothing grows in the crack either. WHO PROFITS: the jug with the sprayer does kill weeds, for about three weeks, and then you buy another one, every year, for as long as you own the house. That is not a product, it is a subscription, and the cracks are the reason you keep paying it. And one honest word on the folk remedies: SALT kills the soil forever, eats the concrete, tracks into your grass and onto the dog's paws. Do not. The propane torch works on a weed in the open and is a wonderful way to set your mulch or your siding on fire. HONEST LIMITS: asphalt driveways use asphalt crack filler, not concrete sealant. A crack you can put your hand in, or a slab sitting higher on one side, is the slab moving, and that is a concrete man's job. Call it one Saturday for pull, clean and spray, and one morning the next weekend for seal and sand. Two half-days, once, against ten years of Saturdays on your knees. Tell me in the comments how many cracks you had, what was growing in them, your county and how old the driveway is, because concrete moves different in Phoenix than in Minnesota. I read every one. My wife's channels: Clean The Mexican Way · Cook The Mexican Way