Landscape maintenance

Reclaiming Your Gravel Driveway: Trials and Errors of a Laidback Gardener

My driveway is about 200 feet long without asphalt. It’s gravel. And since I don’t mow my lawn much, it’s not treated and there’s a lot of life around my house, my driveway is slowly but surely becoming greener.

I don’t mind weeding my garden, but 200 feet of gravel? HAHAHA! No way.

Except I have to do something! So here’s my trial and error to find my way back in.

Test 1: Herbicide

Spray everything with poison and it dies!

Out of the question. Firstly, because it stinks, secondly because it’s expensive for such a large surface area, but above all because I don’t want to poison my land.

Even though my garden is far away, I sometimes pick mushrooms from my lawn and wild plants that I eat.

Secondly, my dogs and all the animals, large and small, that frequent my property (and its subsoil) would suffer. I’m delighted to find toads, frogs and salamanders around my house: they’re bio-indicators and their presence means that my environment is healthy. With chemicals, all these beautiful amphibians are a thing of the past.

Eventually, with the rain, this poison would undoubtedly trickle down to the nearby streams where beavers and cattails live, kingfishers fish, and deer and fishers drink (I’ll spare you the full list of species I’ve observed in this wetland!).

In short, poisoning my haven is a no-no.

Test 2: Cardboard

I spread pieces of cardboard on the ground. It works great when you want to start a garden or flowerbed, so why not in my driveway? Well, for several reasons…

The pieces of cardboard fly off, no matter how much weight I put on them. And since I don’t have an infinite supply of cardboard, the surface area I’ve covered is laughable.

After a week, I removed the boxes with the intention of moving them to another area, but the plants underneath weren’t dead. They were stunted, but still alive. Two days later, they were as good as new! It’s true that a week is a short time, but hey, who wants to spend the summer with a cardboard driveway that flies off in the wind?

No, cardboard is not the solution…

Test 3: Boiling Water

A great classic for cleaning the spaces between tiles. A dandelion growing between two paving stones with a root too big to pull out? A splash of boiling water, and you’re done!

It’s a technique I love. You have to put in enough water to scald the root to the bottom, but it’s radical and fast. Especially for areas where weeding is difficult.

But once again, the sheer size of the project quickly made me give up. If I’d had a huge container to put on a campfire, which I’d only had to empty a few times, it would have been doable, but with my little three-liter kettle, I only scalded about a square foot. My patience has its limits, and after about twenty ducks, I realized that it would take about 5,000… and I didn’t have that kind of patience!

Test 4: Burner

Now we’re not laughing anymore. The laidback girl is fed up! Big words, big means! I got myself a torch. Then I torched the whole place MOUHAHAHAHA!

It’s a surprisingly effective tool. You have to let it burn for several seconds in the same spot to burn the roots, but the result is good. There are several points to consider, however:

It’s hot. It’s dangerous. So be careful. If you wear rubber boots, the soles may melt a little when you walk on the hot stuff. And drink lots of water: it’s really hot. You don’t do it during a heat wave!

It runs on gas. I take the propane tank from my BBQ and drag it with me. Ideally, you should put it on a dolly or something with wheels. And above all, don’t heat your tank with the torch!

It kills everything. Insects and bugs in the soil included. In the case of my driveway, I don’t think it’s such a huge sacrifice, but don’t think you can torch near your flower beds: your plants will suffer. You risk burning their roots, even their leaves, and upsetting the balance of the soil.

I have to admit that I haven’t done my full driveway yet. In fact, I did a bit last year and… I haven’t touched it again this year. It’s much too hot for that! And in the spring, it hadn’t grown yet. Nonetheless, it enabled me to see the long-term effectiveness: even though some plants have grown back since last year, there are far fewer of them where I’ve passed. In fact, you can clearly see the demarcation, judge for yourself:

Verdict

If, like me, you have an infinite driveway, with ground so hard and compressed that it’s impossible to weed, the burner is probably your best option, if you’re careful. Near flowerbeds, garden furniture, etc., prefer boiling water or hand-pulling. The burner is so hot that it makes the terrace paint boil: you’ve been warned!

Oh, and another tip… Leave your burner outside. It’s not dangerous, but when a neighbor calls the fire department, they’ll see it and leave before they even ring the bell… At least, that’s what happened to me!

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Audrey Martel is a biologist who graduated from the University of Montreal. After more than ten years in the field of scientific animation, notably for Parks Canada and the Granby Zoo, she joined Nature Conservancy of Canada to take up new challenges in scientific writing. She then moved into marketing and joined Leo Studio. Full of life and always up for a giggle, or the discovery of a new edible plant, she never abandoned her love for nature and writes articles for both Nature sauvage and the Laidback Gardener.

16 comments on “Reclaiming Your Gravel Driveway: Trials and Errors of a Laidback Gardener

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  5. Inger Knudsen

    I live in South Western Ontario with 80 meters of 2 gravel driveways
    The one to the house I spray twice a year with Roundup it takes 2 liters of that insanely expensive
    watered down roundup from Canadian tire Around$20 I think that is a responsible way of using Roundup I am very careful about timing it just right
    The other driveway to the back I just mow and tell the occasional truck driver that huge big trucks have been safe on that driveway

  6. We have a similar gravel driveway on an old farm property. Rain brings muddy run-off, wind brings leaves and other organic material to rot down, as well as dirt from surrounding farm fields, and seeds. Slowly over time our old gravel driveway is becoming lawn-like. As for where the gravel goes, we were told that gravel slowly sinks into the soil below, so a barrier fabric which is installed in a layer below new gravel will help keep fresh gravel from magically disappearing. I’ve tried it all: flaming with a 4″ diameter but high BTU weed torch turned out to take many hours and resulted in repetitive motion hand and wrist pain. Also tried the 30% vinegar. I considered salt application, and ruled that out because the entire property is sloped and I’m sure that the salt would drain toward my orchard and eventually reach a concentration sufficient to endanger plant and soil health. Recently I’ve used the mower with caution to avoid sending flying rocks into our siding or windows or vehicles. But then we noticed that when our local highway department was kind enough to dump some extra gravel off their truck into the end of our driveway, and run a huge highway department compactor over it – that has held up exceptionally well – many years enough ago, that we can’t remember when they did it but there are no weeds in that area (it’s also within the range of slowplow throwing road salt, but our grass in our lawn grows just fine in that area). The smaller 3/4″ – 1″ stone with sharp edged (not rounded) type of gravel which includes fines, is the type to put on top of your driveway surface, because it will compact and lock in to form a tight, lasting surface. If you can get access to a heavy duty compactor, it may give the best outcome. My current plan is to scrape off the top 3-4″ of a badly polluted muddy driveway surface, then lay down 12′ wide landscape fabric (ask for driveway grade material) and then cover it with 4″ depth of the 1″ gravel with fines. Sometimes a truck driver who delivers it will “tailgate” the load by letting a little off at a time to spread it smoothly across your project. I plan to spread it evenly, maintaining that depth consistently, then compact it. I’ve run the walk-behind compactor before and know it can have a mind of it’s own, so I know it may now work as well as I hope. I have also been warned that it’s very difficult to get the fabric to lay down and stay where it is put. I’ve already tried to drive landscape staples into the existing driveway and that’s impossible, so pinning the fabric before covering it with gravel will not work. I’m hoping if I have a distinct ditch along the edge of my installation and the fabric edge is definitely buried and compacted in that bottom of that ditch, that it will not be dragged up by a plow or washed out by run-off gullies. As for why I want to go to all this trouble, I confess that I prefer the look of clear boundaries between areas: gravel should mostly be gravel, grass lines should be easy to follow and maintain, where patio boundary meets gravel should not be a weed bed. Pavement is not an option because of the expense of initial installation as well as the annual use of smelly blacktop tar and chemicals. It’s been on my list to resurface my gravel driveway for a couple years and even bought about 1/3 of the total I need: 100′ of the 12′ wide fabric, and I scraped off the top of the driveway closest to the house more than a year ago. (Side note: if you find that your driveway is puddling, and not draining water away, then at minimum, it’s time to either scrape off the muddy surface and replace with fresh gravel, or spread a new load of gravel on top.) I plan to use my JD tractor loader for scraping off the old surface, and dump that where I am trying to create a new retaining slope, and will likely also use the tractor to do some of the gravel spreading before I end up fine tuning with a rake. Hopefully it will be the last time I need to invest in the gravel, which is not a small expense.

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  8. I am surprised you still have gravel on your gravel driveway. All the gravel from our driveway wound up on the lawn as a result of snow removal. We rake it back into the driveway each spring (a pain) but of course never get it all, and over the course of ten years . . . not much gravel is left on the driveway.

  9. Dorita Reyen

    Vinegar and salt. One cup of salt to a gallon of vinegar, spray heavily on the vegetation and ground where you want to get rid of weeds. You may have to reapply every so often, but it’s the best thing I have found other than the torch – which does give some satisfaction as you mutter “die, you infidel, die!” as you watch the undesirables go up in flames.

  10. Dan Bolton

    I, like you, have a very long driveway of nearly an acre in length. If I didn’t take action my driveway would disappear under a carpet of green.

    As with you, herbicides are out! I’ve tried 30% vinegar in a sprayer which only kills weeds for a few weeks, gives spotty results, and is kind of dangerous to handle, as well as being expensive.

    Heating boiling water is slow and impractical for the area to cover, and also spotty.

    Burning weeds only gives a few days of relief, seems to supercharge weed growth, has the added displeasure of melting rubber soled shoes, and I’ve had gravel explode nearly taking out an eye.

    The solution I’ve used for the last few years is livestock salt. In the fall I purchase 2500 pounds to spread, using the majority before getting rain, and have 6-8 months of weed suppression. In the spring I’ll use the remainder to handle new sprouts.

    There isn’t anything close to my driveway that suffers ill-effects, so even at nearly $500 salt has the most time and cost effective benefits in my opinion. It also has the added benefit of giving birds and mammals an additional dietary kick (I think).

    The one downside as I age is the weight of the bags. I’ll empty 1-2 bags at a time into a wheelbarrow rolling to the area I’m working on. I don’t drive often enough to crush weeds, and may one day abandon caring about my gravel driveway, but for now I get deliveries at the house. Delivery drivers are already skitterish about driving on anything green, so livestock salt is my goto.

    • Dan, does the salt affect any vegetation *near* the driveway, from runoff etc? Your idea sounds like the best and easiest, to me, but I’d hate to kill the flower beds that are about 20 feet away from my gravel driveway.

      • Dorita Reyen

        I have 7 cats that like to lounge in the driveway. I’m afraid the salt would irritate their skin. What do you think?

      • Dan Bolton

        I have a currant bush 10 feet from my drive way one direction, and daffodil’s, gladiolas, and comfrey on the other side that suffer no ill effects. Even the grass on either side of the road doesn’t die unless I cover it. I found this method after dumping the seawater from my boat.

  11. In the article you say “Except I have to do something!” Why? Perhaps the best option is to do nothing. Who cares if your driveway is getting greener … !! What’s the downside?

    • Audrey Martel

      The grass start to be too long, but my mower can’t pass in the rock!

    • Dorita Reyen

      You sound like my husband! Mainly because the roots will push the gravel apart, leaving the soil beneath exposed. We live in southwest VA and we get some real gully washers! If too much gravel is displaced and too much soil is exposed, the driveway will get washed out. It’s less about how it looks and more about functionality.

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