I am living in an older home. The front yard is very large and gravel. By the mailbox at the corner are little bricks separating the two areas. Almost the entire mailbox area is overrun with grass and weeds as well as the area right on the other side of the separation bricks. I have not been able to get rid of them no matter what I try.
I've spent hours and hours digging as deep as possible to get the entire roots out. I've moved all the gravel away and dug them out. There are stray animals in the neighborhood and I'd prefer not to endanger them with chemicals so I tried more natural resolutions. Salt - I bought two big containers of regular salt and covered the area in it so much you could see all the white. It did nothing the grass and weeds still growing strong. Boiling water - I boiled gallons and gallons of water daily for three days and soaked the area repeatedly. Nothing. A few weeds wilted and turned yellow. White vinegar - I brought home 4 gallons of regular white vinegar and soaked the area with it so much that you could smell the vinegar when you walked by it. I'm pretty sure the weeds and grass just laughed at me and kept on growing. I've used the gardening fabric as well with no results. Thick mulch, too. I'm going crazy here. I want to really landscape the big yard, but it would all look ridiculous if the first eye catcher is this horrid little area. I need help please!
**In the picture is the mailbox and surrounding area. It looks like just grass, but actually there are rocks on the ground. The other pics are after I've attempted to get rid of the weeds and landscape the area. It doesn't matter what I've done though as the weeds have come back aggressively within days.
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Vinegar will kill weeds and grass in unwanted areas.
So I accidentally killed a huge patch of my grass a few years ago by raking a large pile of leaves and then getting busy and not bagging them up for trash.
A few weeks later I had a big bald spot in my yard when I finally bagged up the leaves. It took reseeding to get my grass back.
If you have a bunch of leaves, pile them up and leave them for a few weeks where you want to kill the growth.
I am thinking if you don't have leaves, maybe wet cardboard would have the same effect. Not esthetically pleasing, but it seems to suffocate the grass and weeds. No harm to the strays either.
I can't think of a weed treatment that you haven't tried but what about planting something other than the grass and weeds there? Perhaps a groundcover or even something that could twine up the mailbox. I would remove the sod and plant it with new soil, to ensure that you got all the grass roots up. If you plant a perennial, it will come back year after year.
Good luck and do let us know how it turns out.
Even if you used a commercial weed killer, the weeds would come back. So, no matter what household remedy you use, you can expect the weeds and grass to return. This is due to new weed and grass seed being constantly introduced to the area.
A couple layers of heavy gauge black plastic under whatever you're using, crushed bricks, pea gravel, whatever; will kill all roots underneath it. New weed and grass seed will not get a start. They cannot germinate without the proper environment.
I have a bank that is too steep to mow. Until I find a better solution, I keep black plastic on it. Nothing will grow under or through the plastic. Nothing!. It's unsightly but at least yours would be covered with something nice. And with the plastic being covered with something else, it should last a few years.
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