Gravelly moss or mossy gravel

Palustris · January 2023

Can anyone suggest a practical method of separating the moss which grows on our drive (despite frequent and copious applications of fungicide and moss killer)from the gravel of the drive. If one scrapes or brushes up the moss we end up with a mound of moss mixed with gravel. This has to be taken to the recycling place as it cannot be binned. Also we are scraping the surface of the drive away, slowly. If the gravel was clean I could re spread it.

Obelixx · January 2023

Same problem here @Palustris. A previous owner hlaid fine gritty gravel all over the drive and it grows weeds all over and moss in the shady bits. We've tried weedkillers and hoeing to no avail.

This year I'm thinking of whatever weedkiller is still allowed followed by a flame thrower when it's all gone crispy. Then the wind can blow away the ashes.

Fairygirl · January 2023

I just pull clumps of moss off gravel if it's not in an ideal place. Would that not be an option?

Dovefromabove · January 2023

A neighbour spent most of last summer with a large garden riddle, sieving shovelful after shovelful of her late father’s missy driveway through said riddle over a large wheelbarrow.

The weather was so dry that the moss just turned to dust … eventually a wheelbarrowful of dust was shoveled into plastic sacks and driven away … I know not where.

The driveway looked superb when she’d finished … I don’t know what it looks like halfway through this winter … I’ve not walked round that corner lately.

Obelixx · January 2023

Here we're talking 250sq metres minimum so sieving isn't an option. It takes days just to hoe it when it's damp enough to make it easier. We need a system that kills the weed seeds, hence the flame thrower idea.

Palustris · January 2023

Our drive is huge too and my arthritis would definitely not allow me to sift anything heavier than bread flour.

I pulled some clumps of moss up today and filled 6 compost bags with moss and gravel, so say 100 kilos of gravel and moss. You can hardly see where I worked.

Tried the flame gun on it, the moss just stays green!

Obelixx · January 2023

I think it needs to be dried out, at least on the surface, hence my plan to burn after weedkiller and get seeds too. It certainly doesn't work on green material.

Liriodendron · January 2023

Our gravel drive - also a large area - is very mossy and weedy. I've tried all sorts, including leaving it and seeing what it looks like ("curating", as the modern term would have it, the sort of weeds growing in it). It would have looked ok in association with a country cottage, but not in front of a 1970s bungalow - so I've started weeding it again. So far I'm doing it by hand because I really don't want to use weedkiller if I can help it... and at the moment I'm leaving most of the moss.

I've tried a flame gun but it only kills the top growth of anything which isn't a small seedling. The gravel seems to prevent the heat from penetrating between the stones. However, if you'd already used weedkiller, the flame gun would get rid of the dead stuff. The gas canisters which go with mine are annoyingly small capacity, and lose pressure very quickly, so you're left standing over the weeds with what amounts to a candle flame.

At the moment when it's cold I'm sprinkling sunflower hearts on the gravel, in the (probably vain) hope that the finches will move on to the weed seeds after they've finished them.

Skandi · January 2023

If you find something that works tell me, we have 500m2 of drive and courtyard and since we only have 1 car and it is kept on the other side of the house most of the time.. What we really have is a large fairly flat weed patch, we've even ended up mowing it.

Weedkiller followed by flame weeding did kind of work, but what we really need is a large rake on the back of a garden tractor, which is another thing we don't have. the neighbour keeps his looking nice by raking it once a week when he mows the lawn.

Dovefromabove · January 2023

Resolver Moss Killer says it works on gravel drives … I know you said you wanted to do it manually, but if your arthritis won’t let you …

I would point out that reviews say that the hand sprayer it comes in isn’t really very good, and it’s best decanted into a proper sprayer and used that way.

Palustris · January 2023

We have been spraying with various moss killers since we moved here with little effect in terms of length of moss free time.

The reason for moss removal here is that it does make the drive slippery when wet.

Gravelly moss or mossy gravel

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