A few weeks ago, I posted pictures of the first steps of reclaiming my classic Old Florida style crushed shell driveway. I love the look of this type of driving/parking area but there are two problems, only one of which can be solved. The un-solvable problem is that this type of surface is a BEAR to walk on in BARE feet. It hurts, plain and simple.
The solvable problem is that weeds and grass tend to creep in over time. The longer you go between spruce-ups like this one, the worse it gets. That’s why I was happy to get the chance to try out some Weed and Grass Killer from Spectracide. As you can see in the picture here… the stuff works!
Once the grass was good and dead, and I had gone back and hit any spots I missed the first time around, we were ready to spread the new layer of shell. The thicker the shell, the more difficult it will be for more grass and weeds to come back. But thicker shell is also more expensive, of course.
One cubic yard of crushed seashells cost me about $50.00 at a local bulk supplier. I get the feeling that I could have shopped around and found a slightly better price, but probably not by much and since I rented a truck to haul the material myself, the closest location made the most sense. (I rented the truck because I had a couple of rusted grills to haul to the dump as part of the grill area restoration, which is the other half of my weed killing rampage… I paid the same for the truck rental as I would have for the shell delivery and was able to knock out two birds with one $30.00 stone)
I’m currently basking in the too temporary glow of having a teenage son at home who is as big and (almost) as strong as me and can do the heavy lifting for the Old Man. Until I get impatient and take over anyway, which happens. I’m a total control freak. It’s a sickness.
In the end, the driveway came out great and, as with almost every other home improvement project I ever do, I ended up wondering why I waited so long to take care of it.
This time I’ll keep the rest of the spray bottle of Spectracide close at-hand so I can immediately annihilate any little spots of green that have the audacity to make themselves known. When I do, I’ll just have to wear some shoes… nothing in the world can make this stuff nice to walk on barefoot. (although it provides a great opportunity to try to learn the whole “pain is a state of mind” mind-over-pain trick, which amazingly does work to some extent)
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This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Spectracide. The opinions and text are all mine.
Thanks – how did you get the drive so level with the grass? I’ve been considering a similar project in my backyard with decomposed granite. I’m guessing since I’d be killing sod that I would have to dig/till after killing the grass to get the DG level with the rest of the lawn? Also, how does the Spectracide compare to Roundup?
Hi June – I’ll answer your second question first… based on my experience with both products Spectracide totally blows Round-Up out of the water. These companies all have various product lines so it’s possible I’m comparing apples to oranges, but the Round-Up I used was super hard to actually get to spray and didn’t kill much, it more just made the weeds sick. The Spectracide was super easy to spray with the built-in sprayer and totally killed the grass and weeds dead fast. You can read more about the actual experience with the product in the first post, which is linked to in the first paragraph.
As for the level question, I’m blessed with a natural rise in elevation right where I want that line to be, so it’s very easy on the one side to keep the shell where I want it. If I didn’t have that, then I would probably have needed to dig out a little bit of what in construction terms might be called a “thickened edge”. Just some amount of trenching along the sod line to give the shell a hard place to stop.
That said, shell, crushed concrete, decomposed granite, and similar materials are very heavy and not prone to moving about the way something like cypress mulch or wood chips would do. So you can get decent results just killing a section of grass and pouring the material on top.. as long as you keep the grass dead underneath (by maintaining the weed control) it will eventually decompose and create a natural recess in the area. But you might have to do a little raking to maintain your edge in the meantime. Landscape border plastic also works well.
I hope that helps! Thanks for visiting.
How many cubic yards did it take to do your driveway?
Do you put down shell driveways and were are you located