How to stop weeds!

[BadgerBadgerMushroom]

We live in a rented house and when we moved in thought we had a low maintenance garden. The back and front garden are gravelled with slate round the edge. Well now it looks like a jungle has appeared overnight! A lot of bindweed, huge dandelions and just deep-rooted horrible weeds. There is a liner under the gravel in the back garden and bin liners in the front (not even joking) which are obviously not doing their job. We don't want to spend loads on removing the gravel but weedkiller etc don't seem to be doing anything. Any suggestions because it feels like every time we pull up a weed the next day there are 10 in its place! 😭

If the gravel/slate has been down a long time any organic matter that has gone on it (leaves in autumn for example) will have rotted down and formed a growth medium. Along with that a lot of weeds don't really need soil and will happily root in gravel or stone. Fine roots will also find their way through liner. They won't get directly through plastic but if the plastic is thin it does disintegrate quite quickly.

So

You can weed, weed and weed again. I try and challenge myself to pick a minimum of 10 weeds a day out of mine. Once I've started I often do more - but it does really need doing daily to keep on top of them. If you do get to them quickly they are not deep rooted at all

or

Remove the stone to one end, replace the liner and sieve all the pebbles to get rid of any soil before putting back down (will still need to pick weeds regularly but they will be small

or

Weedkill every couple of weeks until all gone.

After any of these though it will still be a regular daily job. At least during spring and summer.

Unfortunately low maintenance is not no maintenance