Do home remedies actually kill weeds?

Not properly, no. Boiling water, vinegar, salt and bleach can all scorch or brown the top of a weed so it looks dead for a week or two, but almost none of them reliably kill the root sitting down in the joints and sub-base of a drive or patio. The top grows straight back, and salt and bleach can wreck the ground and stain your paving on the way.

Boiling water is the gentlest of the lot and the one I would least worry about on paving, but it is a contact treatment: it only kills the part of the plant it actually touches. The water cools fast as it soaks in, so it never reaches the deeper roots of an established weed. Horticultural advice is clear that boiling water will not kill roots or other plant parts in the soil, and that anything with a proper root system simply resprouts after a few days and has to be done again and again.

Vinegar gets talked up a lot, but it works the same way. Acetic acid is a contact herbicide that burns off the foliage it lands on and does not travel down into the root. The vinegar in your kitchen is only about 5 percent acetic acid, which is too weak to do much beyond browning young growth, so an established drive weed wilts and then regrows a week or so later from a root that was never touched. The stronger horticultural vinegars people reach for next are a different problem: at 11 percent and above they are corrosive enough to burn skin and cause serious eye injury, so they are not something to be casually splashing around a front garden.

Salt and bleach do more lasting harm than good on a hard surface. Salt dries a weed out and kills the top, but it also builds up and sterilises the ground for months or even years, and once it dissolves in rain it washes the jointing sand out of block paving so the blocks start to rock and settle, and it pits and stains the surface. Bleach is worse again: it scorches the top growth but pushes the soil pH up, leaves salts behind, can permanently stain or etch stone and block paving, and runs off into borders and drains where it harms plants and aquatic life. It is not even sold as a weedkiller, so using it as one is off-label.

The reason all of these keep failing is the same. On a drive or patio the weed root sits in the sand between your blocks and down in the sub-base, and that is the part that has to die for the weed to actually stop. Home remedies deal with the leaves you can see and leave the root alone, so you get a fortnight of clear paving and then the same weeds back. A professional weedkiller is systemic, meaning the plant draws it in through the leaves and carries it down into the root, so the whole thing dies rather than just the top. That is what I do. I spray driveways, paths, patios and gravel across Leicestershire, prices start from £15, and if the weeds on the area I treat are not dead within four weeks I come back and re-spray that area free. I am qualified to spray professional weedkiller, so it gets done once, properly, instead of a summer of kettles and vinegar.

Ready for a price? Send a photo of your weeds and I’ll text you a fixed price within 24 hours.