weeds in an alpine garden

by Margaret
(ST. LAWRENCE SEAWAY.Canada)

Hello Doug,

Maybe this question has been answered already with your experiementation of vinegar , salt and dish soap.
I have tried everything to rid my beach stone garden of weeds. Intiially , we put 20 year black cloth down and then beach stones. Unfortunately , in one of our stone loads , there was some small gravel and bits of soil mixed in , certainly not a benefit to keeping things weed free. I have tried burning the weed s, a strong vinegar solution , and of course the back breaking job of pulling them out .
Is there any solution for me other than pulling them out .?

Doug says no - sorry. You get to weed this kind of area. Gravel is a perfect place for many kinds of seed to germinate (as you're discovering).

You can stop many weed seeds from germinating by applying corn gluten in the spring. This stops most small seeds.

But established weeds will have to be pulled or sprayed with an organic herbicide. If there are good plants in this alpine garden, then you're only option is to hand-pull.

One of the joys of alpine-gardening. :-)