With my arm healing, I have had far more time to wander online. This has led me to look at many “tools you need!” for your garden articles. This isn’t bad because finding the crevice weeding brush was a winner for an ugly problem with no easy solution I could think of. The kit was less than $27, shipped one day for me, and came with the pole and two brushes. There are no instructions, but putting together and getting outside is straightforward. My thought was…$27 was a low enough price if it didn’t work.
When we bought the property 6.5 years ago, it came with two patio areas that are paver stones. Being by the house, it was easy to ignore it while we worked for years on conquering the outlying areas, building gardens, and such. One of the biggest issues is that it faces the West and is baked by the sun from noon to 8 pm in summer. Sitting outside is too hot and bright, so the patios have been wasted on us. And I let it go. Weeds love to pop up in the cracks around the pavers, and they fill up with moss. It has progressed gradually and has become worse each year. I tried to power wash it last summer, but it didn’t do much. Mostly, I’d bend over and hand-pick weeds as I saw them, but they’d come back quickly enough. And let’s face it, planting a garden is more fun than hand-picking dry weeds and trying to curl back dead moss strips.
Since I was injured this summer and unable to work in the garden area of our land (I rely on the boys to keep it alive until fall), I have had a lot more time to sit and look outside at the awful state of the patios.
It had gotten so bad that we had lost rows of pavers to the weeds growing over them. The youngest helped find the corner on the lower patio, which the lowest level of the house opens out onto. With summer in full swing, the weeds are dying back, making this the best time of the year to do the work.
The weeds have grown up to the stairs and the pathway that heads downhill. The pathway might be the worst, as it is half as wide as it should be. This is my fault for ignoring it. We could barely see the walkway.
The moss is dormant right now, and crispy, which power washing doesn’t remove, but….
The crevice brush is fantastic. It works. I can’t do it with one hand, but it’s quick work for the boys, taking turns—just a few strokes and the dirt, moss, and dead grass pop right out.
The first nine rows are mostly done. Some of the bigger weed masses will have to be removed by hand, by pulling, but the brush will remove the very shallow roots that is most common.
The brush in action.
We used a leaf blower to blow the debris off. After doing a row, we would give it a good blow.
It only took about 3 hours to do it all (and that was a slow 3 hours, with a lot of putzing). If I had been doing it, I probably would have taken 1 to 1.5 hours.
Kirk battled the walkway with the weed eater to get the overgrowth under control. Then they got to it with the brush. It’s not 100% done, but it looked amazing compared to before.
The lower patio and walkway are nearly done. Such a huge difference. The steps are being demossed, so they won’t be slippery this coming winter. We still need to remove the mass at the base of the stairs, a flat shovel works wonders in getting it up, then we will use the brush.
The upper patio has been started. Thankfully it was not as bad as the top, and only truly bad in a few spots.
Money is well spent on this tool! I feel like I got our patio back and it just looks so much nicer now.
Soon we will power wash it for the season, but I don’t feel any rush now.
~Sarah