driveway weeds

The photo above is about six weeks old but nothing significant has changed for the purpose of today's post.To the right of the new garden patch, you can see a thin concrete verge and then lots of weeds growing up through the gravel driveway. Before we lived here, these weeds were controlled by 'Round Up', or glyco-phosphate. We don't do weed spraying and as the weeds haven't grown horribly high, we've not been much bothered.

But today we stopped from our trip to the letterbox (highlight of the chickenpoxed day for Fionn - at least it seems I don't have chickenpox and my flu has receded to a cold) and had another good look. The weeds and weed seeds from the gravel are going to jump into my new garden patch at ridiculous rates if I don't control them. So I started to rip them out - quite easy when they are growing in gravel. I have plenty more weeding to do but have an idea about longer term management.

Competition. The weeds need something else using up their space. My idea for cheap, easy, fragrant and usable is creeping herbs. Thyme would grow amongst the stones no problem, and I think oregano would as well. And I have seeds for both already. So if I can keep weeding over winter and then raise herbs in seedling pots, then in Summer we'll see how experiment 185 goes.