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Daily Mirror
4 days ago
- Lifestyle
- Daily Mirror
I spent years trying to keep weeds off my drive — then I tried a new method
I have tried all kinds of methods for keeping the weeds off my drive over the years - and now I've found one that actually works Lifestyle opinion Steffan Rhys Deputy Content Hub Director Steffan is Reach PLC's Deputy Content Hub Director. He is also Reach's Head of Spare Time. He writes, edits and oversees content across Reach's large portfolio of websites, including some of the UK's largest national news websites like the Mirror and Express to its biggest regional websites like WalesOnline, the Manchester Evening News and Liverpool Echo. He covers everything from food, cooking and recipes to gardening, cleaning and DIY hacks to travel and places to go both inside the UK and abroad. He is particularly interested in healthy eating and ultra-processed food, as well as amazing places to go within the UK (he knows a lot about Wales). He also loves discovering and writing about pubs, restaurants, beaches and historic places to visit. He has won several awards, including Story of the Year at the Wales Media Awards for his work on a 50th anniversary tribute to the Aberfan disaster, as well as Website of the Year and Digital Initiative of the Year at the Regional Press Awards and News Website of the Year several times at the Wales Media Awards. He has been shortlisted for several more awards, including Online Editor of the Year at the Online Media Awards. He has also spoken at events, including most recently at the Welsh Crucible where he advised researchers on engaging with the media. If you think you have a story, get in touch by emailing He is a Welsh speaker who grew up in Carmarthenshire, joined Reach in 2006 and has worked in our Pontypridd, Bridgend, Carmarthen, London and Cardiff offices. He grew up supporting the Scarlets in rugby and Liverpool in football, and now cycles and runs to keep fit. The pesky weeds on my driveway have been a constant thorn in my side for years. My block paving driveway, composed of thousands of individual bricks, is often besieged by an unsightly mix of weeds, grass and moss. When it's weed-free (a rare occurrence), it's a sight to behold - I absolutely adore it. But when the weeds stage their takeover, it's a sorry sight that leaves me too embarrassed to even step outside. One kind-hearted neighbour even offered to tackle the problem, spending days weeding, only for the green invaders to return swiftly. It was a crushing blow for both of us, reports the Express. I've tried everything from laboriously scrubbing around several thousand bricks with a wire brush (which left my back crying out in agony) to filling the gaps between the blocks with setting sand and kiln-dried sand. I even gave vinegar a go after neighbours mentioned that the previous homeowner swore by it (though they did caution that it left the street reeking of a chippy for weeks). At one point, I was just a mouse click away from purchasing a fancy gadget designed to incinerate weeds. It resembled a litter-picker but with a flame or very hot element at the end. Despite the clear time commitment involved in singeing thousands of weeds individually, I was rather keen to give it a whirl. However, I decided to try one last method before resorting to this. I'm chuffed to bits that I did. This method was not only quicker than any other, but weeks later, only a smattering of weeds have dared to reappear, a stark contrast to their previous rampant regrowth. Here's a rundown of the methods I tried before stumbling upon the one that actually did the trick. Scrubbing with wire brush I gave the wire weeding brush method a go more than once. After the second or third attempt, it dawned on me that I needed to do something to stop the weeds from sprouting in the gaps between the bricks. Someone suggested trying setting sand. This is sand that you sweep into the cracks and then lightly water so it hardens like cement, preventing any weed growth. Kiln-dried and setting sand I also tried kiln-dried sand, a fine, dry sand that fills the joints and supposedly creates a strong, interlocking structure that keeps the weeds at bay. It looked much better than the setting sand I'd used, but it didn't halt the weed invasion. Weed killer It was obvious very quickly that this method would be incredibly inefficient, time-consuming and ultimately pointless. After buying a bottle of weed killer and starting to spray each individual weed by hand, I realised that I would need several bottles and hours of time to get it done. And I also knew that given it would only kill the weeds currently there, it would do nothing at all to prevent new weeds growing. The spray did kill the weeds it touched, but it was not the right solution for my problem. Bleach The thought of dousing the garden in bleach was off-putting, not to mention the sheer volume needed to tackle the weeds. Concerns also arose about rinsing away the bleach after its weed-killing spree. Plus, online gardening gurus suggest that while bleach may zap surface weeds, it doesn't get to the root of the problem, rendering the effort somewhat futile. Vinegar, lemon juice and boiling water Phoebe Cornish applied vinegar to weeds and said"the weeds looked colourless and shrivelled within a few hours of soaking them in the vinegar solution". She said: "And when I checked back the following morning, I was truly impressed with the effectiveness of this gardening hack. It's a great way to flatten and weaken weeds before pulling them out of the ground, but it doesn't replace the need to dig out the roots to prevent them from growing back." Another person tried using lemon juice only to find it ineffective, noting: "If anything, the weeds seemed to have grown 24 hours later." The logistics of securing enough lemon juice for a large area would be baffling – you'd practically need a lemon orchard. Boiling water was another tactic tested; it caused an immediate wilting of dandelion leaves and flowers, yet the pesky weed persisted a day later due to the intact root. The winning method: salt She wasn't alone in championing salt's effectiveness: "Salt really does make a great weed killer as it will kill just about anything that grows." National Garden Bureau member and Laidback Gardener, Larry Hodgson, told Homes and Gardens, though he cautioned: "But [it's] so toxic it simply can't be recommended in most garden settings." However, salt doesn't just destroy the foliage when sprayed on - it would also eliminate the roots if watered into the soil. Across various websites, gardeners claimed salt "essentially sterilises" the ground "preventing vegetative re-growth". On another platform, someone declared: "If you salt the soil, no plant will ever grow there again." How to use salt to kill weeds This sounded amazing to me so I went for it. I bought 20kg of rock salt from Amazon (which turned out to be an awful lot of salt — you can buy it here). I already had a pressure sprayer with a large capacity of at least 10 litres ( you can see an example here). The initial approach I tried involved adding a substantial quantity of rock salt to my sprayer, followed by several litres of warm water. I mixed it with a large wooden plank to dissolve the salt as thoroughly as possible before starting to spray the weeds. Like several of the techniques mentioned earlier, I quickly realised this would be quite time-consuming (although considerably faster than targeting individual weeds with a handheld weedkiller bottle). So, I opted to remove the lid from the pressure sprayer and pour out the salt water mixture over as wide an area as possible. With just a few refills of my large pressure sprayer, I managed to cover the entire driveway in no time. I added extra clumps of rock salt to particularly weed-infested areas around the edge of the drive, where years of accumulated dirt and sand had created a haven for weeds. Within a matter of hours, the weeds were withered and appeared decidedly dead. Granted, large sections of my drive were now strewn with piles of rock salt or the white residue left by the salt water. However, I simply rinsed this off a few days later using a power washer (a garden hose would do the trick too). Most crucially, the weeds were undeniably dead. It's been several weeks since I tried this method and, while some new weeds have started to sprout, their growth rate is nowhere near as fast as before. So, it seems there's some truth to the notion that salt renders soil inhospitable to plant life. Obviously, you wouldn't want to use this method in a garden where you're aiming to kill weeds but preserve other plants and flowers, as the salt would obliterate everything. But for a patio or driveway, it could be just the solution you're after. My colleague, Angela, also found success with the same method. After using salt to tackle weeds, she reported: "Nine hours later, the weeds were completely dead, so I was easily able to dig them out. I didn't use a fancy tool for this; a regular screwdriver sufficed. Curious as to whether the weeds would reappear, I checked back in on the area over the next two weeks, and no weeds seemed to have grown back."
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
BirminghamLive audience grows after winning major national awards
BirminghamLive has rounded off a month to remember by reporting rising audience numbers. No fewer than 8.4 million people visited our website in a month, according to latest Ipsos Iris data - which means more than one in six adults in the UK enjoyed our stories. Industry-respected data showed BirminghamLive was again one of the three biggest regional news brands in the UK. This comes amid celebrations over a raft of award wins. READ MORE: Massive Birmingham bin strike update as council tells binmen 'you're fired' READ MORE: Man shot in street in shocking school run time gun attack News like strking binmen holding the city to ransom fed into the month-on-month rise BirminghamLive saw in February. Of course, that remained news well into March. It also came as our journalism was recognised as industry-leading in a national awards ceremony. BirminghamLive won two of the eight team honours at the 2025 Regional Press Awards. Editor Graeme Brown said: "It is always pleasing when the data shows we are serving our audience well. "Our aim is to grow and to inform and delight the people of the people of the West Midlands and this latest Ipsos Iris data shows we are succeeding." BirminghamLive, and print sister title the Birmingham Mail, won in the communities category for the third time in five years at the Regional Press Awards. Judges praised the focus and care given to local communities, including through our Brummie Muslims and UKSikhs brands. BirminghamLive was also awarded for the top digital initiative for its Child Poverty Emergency campaign, calling for seismic change to address soaring levels which have left nearly half of the city's children in poverty. The initiative included coding a special "letter to your MP" tool enabling people to raise the issue and a chatbot supported by AI. BirminghamLive was also highly commended in the biggest category of the night - large title of the year.
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
BirminghamLive wins raft of honours at Regional Press Awards
BirminghamLive was one of the biggest winners at the 2025 Regional Press Awards. The awards ceremony, held in London on March 12, is the Oscars of the regional media industry and pits hundreds of local and regional news titles against each other. BirminghamLive came away with two of the eight team awards, and was lavished with praise for its reporting for and about local communities. READ MORE: New bin rules in England scrapped in major u-turn for thousands of households READ MORE: Birmingham Labour under fire over garden waste 'fiasco' as update issued on £61.80 service BirminghamLive, and print sister title the Birmingham Mail, won in the communities category for the third time in five years. Judges praised the focus and care given to local communities, including through our Brummie Muslims and UKSikhs brands. BirminghamLive was also awarded for the top digital initiative for its Child Poverty Emergency campaign, calling for seismic change to address soaring levels which have left nearly half of the city's children in poverty. The initiative included coding a special "letter to your MP" tool enabling people to raise the issue and a chatbot supported by AI. BirminghamLive was also highly commended in the biggest category of the night - large title of the year. Editor Graeme Brown said it was another proud day for the title, which is consistently one of the largest in the UK for audience. He said: "We take local communities very seriously at BirminghamLive and the Birmingham Mail and I was thrilled to see this once again recognised at the Regional Press Awards. "Projects like Brummie Muslims and UKSikhs are a labour of love for people in our newsroom. "They are about more than just audience but experiencing, commiserating and celebrating with our readership. "In recent years, we have also been recognised for our focus on the LGBT+ community as well." BirminghamLive was second only to the Liverpool Echo in the large title category.
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Newsquest Oxfordshire nominated for national newspaper awards
Newsquest Oxfordshire has been nominated for three national newspaper awards. The Oxford Mail, Oxford Times and Oxford Print Centre are up for top prizes at the Newspaper Awards and Regional Press Awards. The Oxford Mail has been nominated for Regional Daily Newspaper of the Year and The Oxford Times is up for Local Weekly Newspaper of the Year at the Newspaper Awards. The Oxford Print Centre is up for Regional Newspaper Printer of the Year at the Regional Press Awards. The Newspaper Awards is on April 2 and Regional Press Awards on March 12. The Oxford Mail is up against Belfast Telegraph, Liverpool Echo, The Courier, The Irish News, The Press & Journal and The Yorkshire Post. READ MORE: Gordon Ramsay dines at Oxfordshire Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir (Image: NQ) The Oxford Times is up against Cambridge Independent, Isle of Wight County Press, New Milton Advertiser and Lymington Times, Salisbury Journal and The Impartial Reporter. Regional Editor Andrew Colley said: 'This series of nominations for our Oxford-based teams in editorial, advertising, sales and the print centre is a testament to the huge amount of hard work which goes in to serving our community. '2024 was a huge news year for the city and county and day-in, day-out our reporters on the ground delivered essential trusted local news to our tens of thousands of readers. 'We've broken major exclusives, launched agenda-setting investigations and put our name to campaigns to champion Oxfordshire. 'There has never been a more important time to do what we do. We are fortunate to have a strong, loyal readership which is growing across our platforms as we continue to see record digital performances. Thank you for your support. 'Finally, a huge thank you to my formidable team of editors and reporters who continue to show they are the best in the business.' The Oxford Print Centre will be competing against Discovery Print, Interpress NI, Mortons Print and Newsquest Scotland. Newsquest Oxfordshire print manager Jerry Secker said: 'We're thrilled to be nominated for the award again after we won it in 2021.' The 2025 Newspaper Awards will be focused entirely on recognising excellence in the printed newspaper. Gary Cullum, director of Newspaper Awards, said 'Newspaper print is in decline, that is an undeniable fact. However, the printed newspaper remains integral to the success and profitability of the news media industry. Printed newspapers will evolve for many years to come and will continue to be published alongside their digital counterparts. 'The 2025 Newspaper Awards will focus on production and innovation in national, international, regional, weekly and hyperlocal newspapers. It will recognise the skill and expertise of all the employees involved in producing the printed publication.' For more details about the award categories and nominations, visit
