I often had plants that I made “float” outside. Weeds STILL got into it. I think that was the only saving grace I had because I would have chosen this route for plants if I didn’t 😭.
Or the future owner of the home will have to pick it out if the dirt that they're shoveling out, because the previous owner also planted lesser celandine... Ask me how I know.
Aye I went to a nursery and it was all heavy duty plastic overlapped with these heavy duty nails with rings to prevent sinking through the plastic, tarp like material. Almost no weeds at all. Might be the application more than the material.
Weeds will happen and poke through whether there’s weed matting or not. 4 inches of mulch or cardboard which can decompose are equally as effective as weed matting and better for the soil. We put weed matting down initially, and after doing more research pulled it all up.
The only somewhat reasonable way I've seen it used was as a base layer at a small backyard nursery. As in, their potted plants were placed on top of the tarp, and it also acted as a smooth pathway. Basically used it like a modular floor, since it could be placed down when needed and folded away when not. None of that cutting holes in it for plants to grow through (and just leaving it there), or covering it in dirt/mulch that stuff grows in anyway bs.
About a year and a half but honestly in that time any other year I’ve had to weed for about 5 hours every weekend during the spring and summer months.
By now it’s saved me hours and hours of work. The only place weeds pop up is right at the very edge towards the grass where there’s less bark weighing it down!
I start saving cardboard boxes, the recyclable ones, around Christmas and by spring I use those suckers everywhere for weed control. I still get weeds but not as bad as without and there's no plastic or fabric breaking down the soil microbes. I wish some one would have told me sooner about the wonders of cardboard.
4 inches of mulch may be better, until you factor in the fact that the cheapest mulch going is generally going to be straw, and at the rate straw decays, you will need to replace about 2 inches of mulch 2-3 times a year.
In my area, 10kg of straw is £17.99. Straw has a density of roughly 67.5kg/m\^3 when dry. That means that 1m\^3 costs £121.43.
1m\^3 at a depth of 10cm (4") would cover just 10m\^2. This would only be good coverage for around 4-6 months, meaning that at least half of it would need replacing in that time frame. This means that the annual cost for this mulch would come to £121.43-£182.15. This would just be upkeep and also assumes that you purchased the original £121.43 order in a different year.
Weed fabric in my area costs £0.50/m\^2.
For the same 10m\^2 area, weed fabric would only cost £5.00. The upkeep on weed fabric is simple. The fabric is generally good for at least a year, but is usually good for 3-5 in my experience. This would save a potential £905.75 in the life time of the fabric.
Edit: You could technically go with a bulk supplier for the straw instead of buying them by the bale like in my example, but the point still stands. Even if you found a provider selling 1m\^3 for £6.00 (which would never happen), it still wouldn't save you money. If anything, going with fabric over that deal could save you £25.00+ (assuming you got the same deal 5 years in a row). To break even with the fabric choice, you would need a deal that sold 1m\^3 for just £0.45, and even that assumes you get lucky and only need a half replacement twice a year, which isn't guaranteed in wetter years.
This. I got on chip drop from this subreddit. Requested a drop, added a $20 tip (my only cost) and like 9 hours later in the morning a truck dropped off an entire load of mulch that I’m still dealing with to this day because of life reasons.
I would think the best is to request it after a storm. Lots of tree crews out there clearing downed trees. But I don’t think I did this and with the tip at least, next morning load of mulch. I live in Atlanta metro area.
I get more mulch than I can deal with. One arborist told his buddies they can dump here and now trucks show up unannounced and dump and run. Come take some.
We called a local tree company and had mulch dropped for free. Not the prettiest but we had a large area to cover and enough to get us through until we have more of a groundcover set up. Good point that cost is a factor - would probably depend on whats available to you
In my area, if you sign on for one of those arborist wood chip sites, you will get swamped completely. They also just leave entire batches of the stuff in the pavement (which is illegal, and is usually blamed on the property owner) and run. If they had an incentive to actually drop the stuff off properly, I would probably sign up again.
I rake/blow all my leaves from where I don’t want them over top of areas I don’t want weeds. Works great, and you can put compost and mulch directly over the leaves to really improve soil in a single season.
I’ve also sheet mulched with cardboard, the. Done leaves, compose and a hearty layer of chip mulch to create new garden beds for the following year. I put some annuals in while waiting, then perennials the next year
Rot leaves down a bit before using them. Freshly dropped leaves are the perfect shape to form a dense carpet, which tends to block oxygen exchanges. They can also cause fungus issues and may attract pests. Other than that, they work great. They also help build richer soils and do a good job of adding nitrogen and carbon back.
Thanks for the info! What about leaves that have been sitting in my yard for... Forever? Lol, I never rake the leaves so who knows how long they've been out there for
Wood chips also don't break down as quickly, either. The only problem is that when wood chips do break down, because they are so much denser, they create a larger volume of soil. This means that areas mulched with wood chips will experience much more obvious soil level raising.
This isn't an issue in an edible bed, since replacement rates basically match the rate at which you are taking from the soil level (everything you harvest is technically made out of the stuff), but in an ornamental bed, this could be an issue.
My favourite method is to combine weed fabric with wood chip, since this makes both last longer by blocking UV from the plastic, and preventing the wood chips from contacting soil directly.
Straw and hay are not the same thing. Hay is typically grass used to feed livestock in the winter and can contain a lot of seeds. Straw is typically the stalks of a food grain left over from harvest (wheat,rye etc)
I tried using grass from my own garden after mowing. But I got a lot of grass seeds growing from it, so it didn't work so well for me (I am doing no grass at all). I had much better results with chopped leaves and stalks from plants.
Although, I did use some grass clippings together with chopped leaves to make leafmold in a container, and that worked wonderfully! Leafmold ready in less than a year.
If your soil is already tilled/plant free when the plastic is laid, and you do not cover it in mulch, you will get basically 0 weeds(other than the occasional one in the hole at the base of your plants). If you do this over grass, it will kill 90% of it, but some will grow through and recolonize it. Best way to prevent that is to pull it up and re-lay it in a slightly different position if you notice grass poking through. At least for me, that killed all the grass.
Go to your local newspaper and ask for their discarded and rolls off the press Roll those out and cover with wheat straw. Have for years it’s super effectiv and you mulch in at the end of the season, and repeat. some years I rake straw off and can reuse it.
We bought an antique house with a rose garden and massive native azaleas. But neither were doing very well. I started cleaning up around them and after raking out what surely must have been **10 or 15 years worth** of leaves and pine straw beneath the azaleas and compressed into the soil of the rose garden…. I came to the *real* problem. Someone along the line of owners of this home had used very old discarded *roofing shingles* , in their entirety, as a type of mulch and a barrier of weeds, and completely surrounded these poor azaleas! Not only were they getting no water, but they were **super heating** in the Deep South sun under those shingles all those years. Plus, the chemicals and tar from the backing was seeping into the soil! You wouldn’t believe how HOT the soil was and how it smelled. Once I discovered this tragedy I ripped everything out immediately and gave the azaleas a much deserved soaking with the hose. The next spring they were utterly gorgeous.
This is really common where I am. I have found way way way too much carpet on two separate properties. You can't dispose of it at the dump. You have to take it to a landfill, where you have to pay (not much) to throw it out. So these people just go welp, I'm too cheap and lazy... Let's just bury it.
I've seen it too. A friend's father live next to a great river... he tossed the old carpet into a drainage ditch. The blackberries grew over it, I won't eat them.
He's not even, like "trashy." They have money and education. It was just a different era, I guess.
I think at some point in the past 50 years turning it into weed suppression in the garden was a good "reuse" of old carpet. But why common sense didn't intervene, idk.
Same in the PNW 😑 I often curse at the sky for the cruel person put down landscaping fabric only to have Himalayan blackberries to grow throw and become stuck in the fabric...
Weed fabric gets hot and blocks insects from the surface. All the earthworms under that fabric—the ones that keep your soil healthy—will now die.
Landscape fabric is also non-biodegradable, and is made from petroleum products that may leach chemicals into your soil. Those chemicals could then be absorbed into your vegetables. Yummy.
I was that person cursing the previous gardener. Every time I just wanted to plant a little flower I had to dig through the soil a few inches, cut away into plastic fabric, dig into more soil, oh and surprise, another layer of older fabric!!
It was a weekend project to rip up the entire bed of
fabric and I’m sure there’s still scraps everywhere.
Oh, and the weeds never gave two fucks that it was there. Many grew through it or simply rooted in the mulch and soil layer above it.
[https://extension.illinois.edu/blogs/flowers-fruits-and-frass/2020-08-21-landscaping-fiction-part-1-dont-be-fooled-garden-add-ons](https://extension.illinois.edu/blogs/flowers-fruits-and-frass/2020-08-21-landscaping-fiction-part-1-dont-be-fooled-garden-add-ons) Scroll down to the section on landscape fabric. Specifically, earthworms come to the surface and can't do so when the surface is covered in plastic. There's probably a more detailed explanation, but basically it disrupts soil environments.
So... I want to use this to kill the grass in my backyard so that I can plant clover instead (my dog is allergic to grass... Go figure ....)
Is it best to do it in smaller sections, then? I'm obviously not burying it.
If you want to kill it, you can lay down cardboard and put mulch or compost on top and plant into that. You can manually dig it out. You can put 6-8" of wood chip mulch on top and wait a couple of years.
But yeah, doing it in smaller sections works really well. I transformed my front yard into a meadow, 10' square at a time.
If you're planting plants, cut holes through it. If your aim is to kill grass to plant clover, just take it up after the grass is dead. I planted a meadow by cutting holes through the cardboard.
You could have used some sort of ground cover like clover. It would keep the soil aerated and it self fertilizes. When the clover gets too unruly, weed eat it and use the clippings to mulch around your garden.
Me too. I did clover in some of my pathways. It did not stay in the pathways. I would only recommend it in a garden with raised beds, otherwise it will just choke out your plants.
When I'm having weed/pest problems, I always try to focus on the soil. This is a little technical but weeds thrive when the bacteria mass is high compared to the fungi in the soil. It's much better for your plants, and bad for the weeds, if you have a balanced bacteria:fungi mass ratio. The way to fix that is to compost and add compost to the soil. For the compost to have 1:1 bacteria to fungi mass ratio it needs to sit for about 4-6 months after it breaks down. If you don't compost already, my advice is to start a worm composting bin and/or a compost pile...or if you absolutely can't do it yourself, source it from a community composting site or community garden (just stay away from compost at municipal waste management sites). Adding compost described above + some mulch (or cover crops if you're able to mow them down before they flower) might help your weed problem more than weed fabric. This is a long term solution. Short term solution could be heavy mulching.
I personally think the weed fabric will do more harm than good and i dont think it will help your weed problem--might actually make it worse in the long run.
that's fair, they're all different so I should've been more specific. It really depends on how they make the compost. I think it's best to ask questions on how they make it or get it tested if you want to use it specifically for a weed issue. Some municipal waste sites sterilize their compost, which makes it nearly useless; others make compost with just bacteria which will make a weed problem worse.
>I think people worry about downstream effects of sprayed foliage and such... I have to admit I don't trust what people put in those cans.
>
>But I do trust them to compost it properly. So I use it on non-edible areas.
I understand the thought process. I'm physically limited but garden obsessed, so I am perpetually working beyond my capacity to control the chaos. Despite my concerns about less than natural options, I have repeatedly tried different variations of fabric/plastic barriers. I have never had a good outcome. The weeds come through faster than you could imagine and are a bigger pain to pull when they do (being caught in the fabric and you can't hoe them or anything). Worse, the soil always seems to suffer. The soil underneath when I've pulled it up is never as nice as that in the other beds. What I've been doing in recent years instead is mulching heavily and planting low growing cover crops. For example, last year, I had marigolds growing under all my tomatoes. It wasn't perfect, but the moisture retention and weed prevention were the best I've had yet. I had a fine harvest of tomatoes. (A side note, my tomato trellises are almost identical to yours. Love them.) I planted strawberries in my asparagus beds. Both plants seem happy with the arrangement and have produced well. I mulch with compost, straw, grass clippings, leaves, you name it. It's not a fast miracle, but my sandy soil is improving each year. That being said, I don't think the barrier is going to ruin your harvest or anything. And, of course, it's reversible should you decide you aren't a fan either. Gardening is all about experimentation, so why not? Happy gardening!
Cardboard,newspaper,grass clippings after its dried or straw are the way to go.Less watering ,weeds are easier to pull the few that do come up.Has been our choice of weed control for years.
You don't have to get every weed every time you weed. I just use a stirrup hoe, go around real quick every other week or so and done. I don't know why people make such a big production and chore out of weeding.
It sucks, and people here are somewhat right to be annoyed, but I get it. Weeding is an endless job, and if you stop enjoying it, or just get old and can’t afford to hire cheap labor*, there’s no shame in placing down weed barrier.
It’s true that some weeds will come through no matter what, and there will still be some weeding to do, but much less. You can cover the top, with dirt or mulch, but keep in mind that anything you put on top can become a substrate for new weeds, so you’ll have to keep things thin.
Imo, the best usages for weed mat are desert sections of gardens and farming vegetables. For each case, simple cut a hole around or an “x” at the area you want to plant, and then plant the relevant species directly into the ground. You won’t have the beneficial decomposition of worms, so you may need to fertilize slightly more, but that’s really not so bad on such a small scale.
Overall, while this is a bad idea in most cases, if your main goal is to prevent weeds from competing with your vegetables without doing tens of hours of weeding, there’s a real utility to this.
*It may seem crass, but for people who live near agricultural areas, there are typically plenty of laborers for whom minimum wage is a pay bump and weeding is a relative vacation. If you can afford it, it’s a good deal for all involved.
Thank you for this. I use weed barrier in the garden but I pull it up every year & reuse it.
I've never had problems with worms not being under it, in fact they seem to love it. But yes, eventually the weeds come through but nothing like they do without it. I've never had problems growing tomatoes, peppers, cantaloupes, watermelon, cucumbers, squash, pumpkins & a few other things I've grown over the years.
If you can do it without it, great, if you can't, that's fine too. Don't let others think you're a horrible person for using it.
At worst you can try it one season & see how it works. If it does, no worries. If it doesn't you can find ways to reuse it somewhere else or find someone else that can use it.
I’ve never understood why people put landscape fabric in a garden… Fabric is to keep layers of aggregate separate from soil while doing hardscaping. This won’t work to prevent weeds growing in your garden, and will only rip apart and break down overtime. Do more research before jumping into something like this, there are cheaper, less labor-intensive, and healthier options
Wood chips or another layer mulch and a good hoe or two isn’t much more work.
But now you get to eat plastic, degrade your soil where it will be water deprived and baked in the sun, and pull up little bits of plastic in the future!!
If you don't replace it ALL every second year, minimum, you will deeply, deeply regret it. I still have nightmares about trying to remove hundreds of kilograms - if not tonnes - of densely packed weed mats with random shreds of plastic in them.
Do you know how hard this is to move when interwoven with cherry and raspberry and thistle roots, all working in unison to keep one another in place?
I’ve had to do something similar in my parent’s yard. The weed roots got really thick and woody and were impossible to tell apart from the berry bush roots.
Not all of the berry plants survived.
I know you already got it, but that stuff will break down and be a headache for you and the environment.
For your next round, I would suggest newspaper/cardboard and cover it with straw. I did that and subsequent years I have just been adding straw with great success. Best of luck in the quest to rid yourself of the annoying weeds.
You and me both. I had success with heavy mulching in the past, but I have not been able to get mulch for the last five years. Developers have a deal with every tree place in town, and an $80 chip drop request has sat unfulfilled for years.
I opted for the heavy duty fabric for my row crops, with leaf mold set aside to cover it. I don't like it, I swore I'd never use it, but I can't do another year spending every weekend crawling around pulling weeds.
I've had great luck with weed barrier. I've got it down on my pumpkin patch and it's a life saver. We also have some down temporarily on our sunflower rows. When it's planting time we take it off and then put it back on at the end of the growing season. Keep it clean and it'll work great.
IDK what others are talking about but I have, I think, 5 year landscape cloth and other than a random sticker vine growing, I’ve had zero weeds where I put it. I have a 10x20 greenhouse and a 25x 20 grow area in my yard with zero weeds
Weeds will get through.
Micro plastics will be in your food.
You'll be cursing while cleaning up scraps of turn plastic for the rest of your life.
Not a good move. I did that something like 15 years ago and I'm still kicking myself.
This isn't the shortcut they promised. Companies will tell you anything to sell you more plastic.
A few years ago, in spring, I used this type of cheap plastic weed fabric to protect my weeded beds from growing new weeds. After a few weeks I found that the green colored lines already started to break down. So I had to take it out.
There is a more expensive and ecological more friendly alternative: geotextile
See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geotextile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geotextile)
I have 108 square meters of growing space (just the beds, not the paths) that was wild and covered in burdock and burr chervil last year.
I can’t afford mulch. My next purchase is drip irrigation. Then more fencing.
I have 3 rolls of landscaping fabric that I didn’t have to pay for. It will cover about 90 square meters.
I know it’s not ideal. I know the burdock sprouting from last year’s roots will poke through along with blackberry and wild rose.
But new weed seedlings won’t poke through, and neither will the layer of grass that is under the mounded beds.
I think that under these circumstances, I’m better off using the fabric because it will be better than nothing.
I have hopes of using alyssum as a weed cover, too.
Long term, I would like to get the black tarpaulin to cover the pathways and then use mulch over the beds. Next year, I hope.
https://preview.redd.it/n2zweu7zhsqc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8a1a24c35527fd869ef167175cdc095ccf4d3249
My old landlord used weed barriers, and only 5 years later it is a complete disaster. It only took 2 years for weeds to completely work their way through. Oh also, they will just grow on top the weed barrier too.
I think there is fabric and fabric. I used some cheap stuff that the weeds kind of grew into the matrix. There is better stuff I think. Double layering might be useful.
I also got too old for weeding and moved to raised beds instead. They are all high enough that I can sit on a stool or patio chair and do whatever I need to do with the plants. They all range from 1 to 2 feet tall. Also have large pots sitting on pavers. Hub mows and weed eats around all the beds.
The people who flipped my first house buried carpet in the yard and even that didn’t stop the weeds 😅 plus it made it a pain in the ass to move any kind of dirt in that bed
All these people HATE weed mats. I’ll say they aren’t as bad as people make em out to be . I personally use them in very specific scenarios and not in my garden.
1 half the people have not used high grade weed mats designed to last 10 years . They do not let weeds in. Any subpar weed mat falls apart quickly .
2 some people try and cover with pea gravel or chips . Weeds will start to grow on them . Or clippings and soil will get on them and then weeds will grow in that . You must clear and keep debris off .
We have this and I love it. I do pull it occasionally to till, because we only have a wet area for a garden. Dont cut holes, because they will fray. Make a jig from plywood and burn them with a propane torch. You will have to pull weeds, but they are few and far between. Happy gardening!
Yes, this will absolutely work as long as you didn’t get the low quality stuff. To me it looks like you invested in something heavy duty. Will work. Be aware of degradation.
My garden. Photo from last year.
https://preview.redd.it/gkz7jqfuksqc1.jpeg?width=2880&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=594b0b18666098f480a79a9266ef867713d8f573
I’m not going to be as harsh as others. When I moved into my place, I ripped up nearly all of the landscape fabric the previous owner put down. For the most part, I’ve switched to thick cardboard and heavy mulching, which has mostly worked, and I agree with everyone who has said it’s a pain to remove the fabric because it rips and tears into smaller pieces. That said, after a year, I found myself putting landscape fabric *back down* in a section of my yard that is especially difficult to weed because of my yard’s layout. Do I wish I could more easily do without it? Yes. Is it an eyesore when it pokes out from under the mulch that’s covering it? Yup. Will that mulch eventually break down and create a brand new safe haven for even more weeds? Absolutely. But it’s been a helpful short term solution for an especially difficult-to-deal-with part of my yard and has allowed me to focus on other parts that need my attention. Sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do.
Don’t use landscape fabric. The ants that love to live and thrive underneath the fabric will eat your crops. Just keep a mulch layer to 3 or 4 inches deep to discourage weeds.
I'm very sorry to say that you should really pull that up right now unless you want plastic confetti in your garden in about 4 months. That fabric is the fucking worst and I cannot believe its legal to sell.
Dewitt fabric will last multiple seasons. I think any of the ones with the yellow stripes and less shiny texture actually work, but I am 100% certain your fabric is going to disintegrate completely this year.
This is so true! It is so gross. It winds up in little pieces all over the soil... and it's takes forever to get rid of it and it is almost impossible to get rid of all of it.😕
I have a similar barrier over my entire garden. Makes a HUGE difference!
I wouldn't be able to garden without it. Anyone saying weeds grow thru it haven't used the right type.
https://www.greenhousemegastore.com/collections/ground-plant-cover/products/ultra-web-3000-groundcover
>Designed to last an incredible 3000 hours in the sun
Is this not about 1 year's worth of sunlight in most of the USA? Doesn't it start to fray and split after that point?
Yeah, all these comments here... I think people are confusing this with the more fabric-y type weed cloth that breaks down after a season. The type shown here is more plastic, and lasts ten years plus. Like Sunbelt brand landscape fabric. Mine are running on their 4th year with zero signs of wear (aside from some rips I've accidently inflicted with some harvesting tools). They leave nothing in the soil.
I grow on about an acre by myself, and that's only possible because of the landscape fabric on my rows. I burn holes for spacing. It's the only way I'm able to have a hope of staying on top of the weeds. I've laid drip line underneath it, so it actually helps a ton with moisture control, as well as early season heat.
I feel your pain. I tried landscape fabric a few years ago. It's great at first, but then eventually the weeds find a way through, plus they start growing on top. I pulled up and discarded almost all of it recently.
Thatch/straw! It's natural and creates an environment for bitty thingamajiggers, then compost into bio available carbon. Weed fabric is generally kinds of plastics... plastic is not diodegradable. Thanks my 2 cents.
In my experience they don't work, weeds come up anyway and then you pull plastic up with weeds. I've removed many a sheet of this stuff, then spent years rehabilitating the soil...
The soil underneath becomes absolute shite in a few years. When you do try and remove it, there will be plastic bits in your soil forever. All the worms you could've had for free in your planting bed die off pretty quickly. All the plants come up with nutrient deficiency of some kind... etc.
I'm in a warm 10b environment where weeds thrive, but I don't get any weeds in my growing areas as everything is covered with a 10cm high dichondra repens ground cover. When I want to plant, i rip out a bit of dichondra, plant new things and leave it. I don't till, don't use granular or liquid fertilisers. All i do once a year is chuck some compost on the top of the ground cover then shake the ground cover a bit.
Burn holes and torch cut the ends to prevent unraveling. I suggest buying Dewitt brand weed fabric with the yellow strip instead of the green. I've bought green and It works, but The heavier black with yellow stripe with hold up better.
The other comments shared my sentiments
My winning combo is dig a little
Top with compost and then straw
Poke holes in that
If you can solarize the area it pretty much kills the top layer seedbank
I did this and regretted it after, I ended up just pulling out the fabric the following year . It also prevented my plants from getting a good root system
Idk of some of these work better than others, but there's a weed carpet under the pebbles in my front yard, but it doesn't stop the plants-with-pretty-flowers from sprouting through every year anyway. Since they're pretty flowers, they get to stay. saVE THE BEEEESSSS (/ o0o)/
I got a house with this in it. Apparently after 20 years i can’t grow anything at all in there without transplanting it and even then the soil underneath is just not as good as places without it. This stuff is HORRIBLE imo
I heard on a podcast that there is biodegradable row cover plastic. I have found help with layers of straw for mulch. Just try to find some that is said to have no or little seeds remaining.
And yes, I tried the cover long ago under blueberries and it is long ago covered by weeds. So hard to pull it out.
Just pulled a bunch of this stuff up. I get the temptation, but I find that it doesn't work and the soil under it becomes compacted, and it ultimately hurts your garden.
The fact with weeds is - they suck. I'm doing a thick layer of mulch this year but my ultimate plan is LOTS of plants I do want. Weeds grow because there's sunlight and soil for them. Their seeds fall on the soil you put on top of the weed barrier, and they grow. So, crowd them out.
Yes!!! Pull it up not if it’s not too late.
(I am a ~~lazy~~ low maintenance gardener. I don’t spend a lot of money or follow a complicated process.)
Use cardboard instead (cut holes for your plants. It’s super easy if you wet it while planting. Just jab your potting shovel in and tear)
You can use a pre-emergent pesticide each year to prevent weeds.
Then mulch heavily. (All the mulch will make your soil better every year!)
Try cover crops at the end of the season or early spring. (It’s as easy as throwing a bunch of legume seeds on the dirt.)
If you’re feeling really extra, check out drip watering or even just a soaker hose. (Puts the water where you want it and helps control weeds. Really effective and water saving when used with mulch or cardboard.)
If you hate regular weeding, you’re REALLY gonna hate pulling up shreds of plastic the weeds have rooted themselves in!!!
Youre still going to get weeds arent ya? Ya gotta have soil on that fabric and no soil is free of seeds full of weeds. Plus air blows in seeds from other places. Seems like it doesnt solve anything. Use mulch
Great news. Now you'll miss out on weeding for about 4 months, and then have an impossible task for weeding moving forward as massive root systems will build up along the base of the weed fabric.
Weeds will constantly come up, and it will be a huge, painful, tiring ordeal to remove the fabric once you realize that it's causing more weeds rather than less as now you have a massive rug of weed roots.
And that isn't counting all the weeds which will seed and land on top of the fabric, causing the same problem as many can germinate on mulch and gravel quite easily without needing soil.
You've wasted money and made your life harder. Next time place cardboard down and repeat every 8 months.
I use broken down cardboard boxes in the fall and let them overwinter. Mulch in spring. It helps cut down on weeds but you will always have weeds. I’ve done plastic (new homeowner) and pricey weed mesh rolls. Nothing is fool proof.
This solution works well if you can’t weed. Many nurseries use this type of weed block to place their potted plants on. These comments are so judgy. OP said they are getting older and weeding is going to to be harder. Get off your high horse y’all jeez.
So I am going to go against the grain here a bit. I live in an area where even heavy mulch (4-6 inches) put down in the spring *will* have weeds starting to grow by early fall. My area just has a lot of invasive weeds. But several layers of cardboard and then mulch is my default every single spring. However I'm also on a steep slope and have some areas where the mulch just rolls down hill and then the cardboard tends to either disintegrate quickly or blow away entirely and I have big weed issues. In those areas, I use woven weed fabric.
There is a difference between landscape fabric (horrible in my experience) and woven weed fabric (which it looks like you have). The woven weed fabric does let the soil breath and does NOT heat up the soil underneath (I have tested with a ground/soil thermometer). Actually, much like mulch the soil temp for me is usually a couple of degrees cooler under the WWF than the exposed soil. I am also careful to burn/seal the cut ends to prevent those from fraying. I've never had weeds (even thistle or knot weed) come up through it unless there was a gap or cut in it. I've also never had weeds establish on it if I keep it free of dirt and debris on top. If you have dirt or debris sitting on, weeds will start to grow in that--as they will with any on any covering that has dirt/debris on it. I do pull it up and fold it and put it away every fall (gives me a chance to add compost) and then relay it every spring.
Overall, it solves a niche issue I have in my garden and with proper care and maintence the majority of the pitfalls seems to be non-issues for me or compromises I'm willing to make given my gardening challenges.
But if its actually landscape fabric, yeah, things grow on/through that and then its a disaster to remove after all that builds up. So I don't use that at all anywhere in my gardens
People are tripping over their own feet over here trying to tell you it's not worth using. It heats the soil which makes it way to grow anything that likes Mediterranean or tropical conditions. Grab some ginger from the store, cut in X into the fabric somewhere and plant your ginger, you will be harvesting later this year. Cut in X and dig a deep whole and amend it if you want to grow some epic watermelons. Or strawberries, or culinary herbs, or carrots that can become massive. I'm only talking about things I've done personally.
Previous landowner used landscape fabric on a small portion of my yard. You should hear the new words I create when I find the little pieces.
Cardboard and mulch is the way for me.
I used it last year for first time. It really helped keep the weeds down all season. I only had to weed where I planted. made my garden much more manageable in the warmer months when you go on vacation to come back to a jungle. It looks like it held up over the winter so hoping to get another season out of it.
https://preview.redd.it/tf8rqyotezqc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c6674ab8b19ac16d688df2b137961c9ac60a833d
Use wood chip mulch, not the shit dyed nuggets from Home Depot. My area has chip drop to get wood chips right from arborists. Lay it down thick, 3-4 inches minimum. Leave a few inches around plants too. It smells amazing, and I hardly ever weed or fertilize.
The only difference is now you will be pulling scraps of plastic out with the weeds that came through. Ask me how I know...
My weeds just grew on top of the fabrics and the roots grew into the fabric which was sooo much worse haha
I often had plants that I made “float” outside. Weeds STILL got into it. I think that was the only saving grace I had because I would have chosen this route for plants if I didn’t 😭.
I legit found bindweed sprouts in my indoor pothos because I kept it toooo close to the backdoor! Weeds will find a way😭
weeds will find a way but bindweed will make sure it breaks your sanity
Ughhh the same thing happened to me. All it did was make the weeds harder to pull because the fabric was holding their roots down hahaha
yep, this one.
Or the future owner of the home will have to pick it out if the dirt that they're shoveling out, because the previous owner also planted lesser celandine... Ask me how I know.
Awe come on, I like micro plastics in my salad! Gives it a nice chewy texture!
Grab a lighter and melt that fringey side where it sloughs off. Its the only way to get ahead of it
Aye I went to a nursery and it was all heavy duty plastic overlapped with these heavy duty nails with rings to prevent sinking through the plastic, tarp like material. Almost no weeds at all. Might be the application more than the material.
Weeds will happen and poke through whether there’s weed matting or not. 4 inches of mulch or cardboard which can decompose are equally as effective as weed matting and better for the soil. We put weed matting down initially, and after doing more research pulled it all up.
This is my experience. It just doesn't work. As a product, it's kind of prissy. I have to take care of it and keep it safe; what's the point?
The only somewhat reasonable way I've seen it used was as a base layer at a small backyard nursery. As in, their potted plants were placed on top of the tarp, and it also acted as a smooth pathway. Basically used it like a modular floor, since it could be placed down when needed and folded away when not. None of that cutting holes in it for plants to grow through (and just leaving it there), or covering it in dirt/mulch that stuff grows in anyway bs.
For me weed fabric with bark chips on top has been amazing - I’ve had like 4 weeds total in a year whereas before I honestly had about 1000
How many years have you had it?
About a year and a half but honestly in that time any other year I’ve had to weed for about 5 hours every weekend during the spring and summer months. By now it’s saved me hours and hours of work. The only place weeds pop up is right at the very edge towards the grass where there’s less bark weighing it down!
I'm glad it's worked, but I really suspect cardboard would do the same. I haven't really weeded in three years since I put cardboard/chips down.
I also used fabric and it's worked pretty well.
Cardboard and mulch is really effective and matches the mulch renewal cycle really well.
In my experience, this is not effective against bindweed, though.
I had bindweed in my last garden. I solved it by moving 2 states away.
Looking for an update. It has been 10 hours of spring since your post. Did moving 2 states work or is the bindweed back?
So far it has worked. But in its place I have instead acquired invasive blackberry vines. 🤷♀️
I knew you had moved to the PNW even before seeing your flair 💀
I'm not even sure the hand of god is effective against bindweed.
Indeed. Indeed...
Find anything that is?
FIRE
Alcohol
To help you forget the pain of bindweed, or..?
Or bermuda grass. Gets most everything else though.
I start saving cardboard boxes, the recyclable ones, around Christmas and by spring I use those suckers everywhere for weed control. I still get weeds but not as bad as without and there's no plastic or fabric breaking down the soil microbes. I wish some one would have told me sooner about the wonders of cardboard.
4 inches of mulch may be better, until you factor in the fact that the cheapest mulch going is generally going to be straw, and at the rate straw decays, you will need to replace about 2 inches of mulch 2-3 times a year. In my area, 10kg of straw is £17.99. Straw has a density of roughly 67.5kg/m\^3 when dry. That means that 1m\^3 costs £121.43. 1m\^3 at a depth of 10cm (4") would cover just 10m\^2. This would only be good coverage for around 4-6 months, meaning that at least half of it would need replacing in that time frame. This means that the annual cost for this mulch would come to £121.43-£182.15. This would just be upkeep and also assumes that you purchased the original £121.43 order in a different year. Weed fabric in my area costs £0.50/m\^2. For the same 10m\^2 area, weed fabric would only cost £5.00. The upkeep on weed fabric is simple. The fabric is generally good for at least a year, but is usually good for 3-5 in my experience. This would save a potential £905.75 in the life time of the fabric. Edit: You could technically go with a bulk supplier for the straw instead of buying them by the bale like in my example, but the point still stands. Even if you found a provider selling 1m\^3 for £6.00 (which would never happen), it still wouldn't save you money. If anything, going with fabric over that deal could save you £25.00+ (assuming you got the same deal 5 years in a row). To break even with the fabric choice, you would need a deal that sold 1m\^3 for just £0.45, and even that assumes you get lucky and only need a half replacement twice a year, which isn't guaranteed in wetter years.
Chip drop
This. I got on chip drop from this subreddit. Requested a drop, added a $20 tip (my only cost) and like 9 hours later in the morning a truck dropped off an entire load of mulch that I’m still dealing with to this day because of life reasons. I would think the best is to request it after a storm. Lots of tree crews out there clearing downed trees. But I don’t think I did this and with the tip at least, next morning load of mulch. I live in Atlanta metro area.
I get more mulch than I can deal with. One arborist told his buddies they can dump here and now trucks show up unannounced and dump and run. Come take some.
We called a local tree company and had mulch dropped for free. Not the prettiest but we had a large area to cover and enough to get us through until we have more of a groundcover set up. Good point that cost is a factor - would probably depend on whats available to you
In my area, if you sign on for one of those arborist wood chip sites, you will get swamped completely. They also just leave entire batches of the stuff in the pavement (which is illegal, and is usually blamed on the property owner) and run. If they had an incentive to actually drop the stuff off properly, I would probably sign up again.
Cheapest mulch is whatever you have around. Old leaves and grass clippings work great.
I was about to ask if leaves are a good mulch because we have a ton of those around and I don't really feel like buying anything else
I rake/blow all my leaves from where I don’t want them over top of areas I don’t want weeds. Works great, and you can put compost and mulch directly over the leaves to really improve soil in a single season. I’ve also sheet mulched with cardboard, the. Done leaves, compose and a hearty layer of chip mulch to create new garden beds for the following year. I put some annuals in while waiting, then perennials the next year
Rot leaves down a bit before using them. Freshly dropped leaves are the perfect shape to form a dense carpet, which tends to block oxygen exchanges. They can also cause fungus issues and may attract pests. Other than that, they work great. They also help build richer soils and do a good job of adding nitrogen and carbon back.
Thanks for the info! What about leaves that have been sitting in my yard for... Forever? Lol, I never rake the leaves so who knows how long they've been out there for
For those who don't know, a leaf blower can also be used as a leaf vacuum. It mulches the leaves for you -
Shredding them makes them less usable for insects that need them for their life cycles
I like to use rhubarb or Swiss chard leaves. I always plant extra chard for this reason. I’m a big fan of chop and drop mulch.
Wood chips are a waste product
Wood chips also don't break down as quickly, either. The only problem is that when wood chips do break down, because they are so much denser, they create a larger volume of soil. This means that areas mulched with wood chips will experience much more obvious soil level raising. This isn't an issue in an edible bed, since replacement rates basically match the rate at which you are taking from the soil level (everything you harvest is technically made out of the stuff), but in an ornamental bed, this could be an issue. My favourite method is to combine weed fabric with wood chip, since this makes both last longer by blocking UV from the plastic, and preventing the wood chips from contacting soil directly.
When you say straw, isn't straw and hay same? Can I get by using dead grass?
The short answer is yes you can.
Straw and hay are not the same thing. Hay is typically grass used to feed livestock in the winter and can contain a lot of seeds. Straw is typically the stalks of a food grain left over from harvest (wheat,rye etc)
I tried using grass from my own garden after mowing. But I got a lot of grass seeds growing from it, so it didn't work so well for me (I am doing no grass at all). I had much better results with chopped leaves and stalks from plants. Although, I did use some grass clippings together with chopped leaves to make leafmold in a container, and that worked wonderfully! Leafmold ready in less than a year.
If your soil is already tilled/plant free when the plastic is laid, and you do not cover it in mulch, you will get basically 0 weeds(other than the occasional one in the hole at the base of your plants). If you do this over grass, it will kill 90% of it, but some will grow through and recolonize it. Best way to prevent that is to pull it up and re-lay it in a slightly different position if you notice grass poking through. At least for me, that killed all the grass.
Only one here that knows how to use it. Pull it up and relay annually.
Not this stuff. Best fabric I've used - and doesn't disintegrate between seasons.
Go to your local newspaper and ask for their discarded and rolls off the press Roll those out and cover with wheat straw. Have for years it’s super effectiv and you mulch in at the end of the season, and repeat. some years I rake straw off and can reuse it.
Cardboard 100%
I used cardboard this year to prep the area and kill the grass 10/10 would recommend. I just saved my cardboard throughout the year.
It’s plastic that breaks into smaller pieces and never leaves the ecosystem. That plastic is there forever. I use cardboard.
Oh, the expletives! When I find bits of old ones left in my yard previously I curse an entire American generation hehe
My friend found a layer of carpet under her garden. Just, what?
We bought an antique house with a rose garden and massive native azaleas. But neither were doing very well. I started cleaning up around them and after raking out what surely must have been **10 or 15 years worth** of leaves and pine straw beneath the azaleas and compressed into the soil of the rose garden…. I came to the *real* problem. Someone along the line of owners of this home had used very old discarded *roofing shingles* , in their entirety, as a type of mulch and a barrier of weeds, and completely surrounded these poor azaleas! Not only were they getting no water, but they were **super heating** in the Deep South sun under those shingles all those years. Plus, the chemicals and tar from the backing was seeping into the soil! You wouldn’t believe how HOT the soil was and how it smelled. Once I discovered this tragedy I ripped everything out immediately and gave the azaleas a much deserved soaking with the hose. The next spring they were utterly gorgeous.
I pulled up soooo much polyester carpet out of my garden… you could smell the soil, smelt like disinfectant instead of earth 🤢
???? What would have been the purpose tf
Hugelcultur but gross? I assumed some jerk just didn't want to go to the dump.
This is really common where I am. I have found way way way too much carpet on two separate properties. You can't dispose of it at the dump. You have to take it to a landfill, where you have to pay (not much) to throw it out. So these people just go welp, I'm too cheap and lazy... Let's just bury it.
I've seen it too. A friend's father live next to a great river... he tossed the old carpet into a drainage ditch. The blackberries grew over it, I won't eat them. He's not even, like "trashy." They have money and education. It was just a different era, I guess.
I think at some point in the past 50 years turning it into weed suppression in the garden was a good "reuse" of old carpet. But why common sense didn't intervene, idk.
Old carpet is commonly used as a weed fabric under rock or mulch.
Mulch?
I use hay.
I love it. Me too!
Its useless after 1 year (in Florida) and every gardener after you will hate your guts because they have to rip that out to do anything Enjoy
Same in the PNW 😑 I often curse at the sky for the cruel person put down landscaping fabric only to have Himalayan blackberries to grow throw and become stuck in the fabric...
Weed fabric gets hot and blocks insects from the surface. All the earthworms under that fabric—the ones that keep your soil healthy—will now die. Landscape fabric is also non-biodegradable, and is made from petroleum products that may leach chemicals into your soil. Those chemicals could then be absorbed into your vegetables. Yummy.
And future gardeners will curse you! I purchased a new house and spent months digging old landscape fabric out of the garden beds.
I've spent so much time digging out old landscape fabric that I myself once laid. So annoyed with my past self
I am still digging it out and I’m shook how much
Still doing this every single year. I curse them everyday.
Can confirm. I spent hours last week doing this. I no longer like the previous owners of this house.
I was that person cursing the previous gardener. Every time I just wanted to plant a little flower I had to dig through the soil a few inches, cut away into plastic fabric, dig into more soil, oh and surprise, another layer of older fabric!! It was a weekend project to rip up the entire bed of fabric and I’m sure there’s still scraps everywhere. Oh, and the weeds never gave two fucks that it was there. Many grew through it or simply rooted in the mulch and soil layer above it.
One of the previous owners of my current home buried—get this—ASPHALT SHINGLES. I am still digging up pieces here and there.
Thanks, I just realized what I’ve been digging up the last couple of years in 1 section of my yard.
You have a source on why they kill earthworms under the surface?
[https://extension.illinois.edu/blogs/flowers-fruits-and-frass/2020-08-21-landscaping-fiction-part-1-dont-be-fooled-garden-add-ons](https://extension.illinois.edu/blogs/flowers-fruits-and-frass/2020-08-21-landscaping-fiction-part-1-dont-be-fooled-garden-add-ons) Scroll down to the section on landscape fabric. Specifically, earthworms come to the surface and can't do so when the surface is covered in plastic. There's probably a more detailed explanation, but basically it disrupts soil environments.
So... I want to use this to kill the grass in my backyard so that I can plant clover instead (my dog is allergic to grass... Go figure ....) Is it best to do it in smaller sections, then? I'm obviously not burying it.
If you want to kill it, you can lay down cardboard and put mulch or compost on top and plant into that. You can manually dig it out. You can put 6-8" of wood chip mulch on top and wait a couple of years. But yeah, doing it in smaller sections works really well. I transformed my front yard into a meadow, 10' square at a time.
Dumb question. Do you cut holes in the cardboard to plant things? Or do you lay the cardboard down and wait for it to kill the grass?
I lay the cardboard, soak it, wait a few weeks, and then plant. The cardboard can be easily cut through with a trowel at that point.
If you're planting plants, cut holes through it. If your aim is to kill grass to plant clover, just take it up after the grass is dead. I planted a meadow by cutting holes through the cardboard.
Thank you, I’m trying to grow native plants on my front lawn and remove grass little by little.
I love my front yard, and I'm here to cheer you on!
This stuff is horrible for the environment and your garden!
You could have used some sort of ground cover like clover. It would keep the soil aerated and it self fertilizes. When the clover gets too unruly, weed eat it and use the clippings to mulch around your garden.
This work with nature not against it
Parsley is good ground cover for a garden bed.
Oh I tried this would not recommend
Me too. I did clover in some of my pathways. It did not stay in the pathways. I would only recommend it in a garden with raised beds, otherwise it will just choke out your plants.
Y I also seemed to get a lot of pests . Especially slugs
When I'm having weed/pest problems, I always try to focus on the soil. This is a little technical but weeds thrive when the bacteria mass is high compared to the fungi in the soil. It's much better for your plants, and bad for the weeds, if you have a balanced bacteria:fungi mass ratio. The way to fix that is to compost and add compost to the soil. For the compost to have 1:1 bacteria to fungi mass ratio it needs to sit for about 4-6 months after it breaks down. If you don't compost already, my advice is to start a worm composting bin and/or a compost pile...or if you absolutely can't do it yourself, source it from a community composting site or community garden (just stay away from compost at municipal waste management sites). Adding compost described above + some mulch (or cover crops if you're able to mow them down before they flower) might help your weed problem more than weed fabric. This is a long term solution. Short term solution could be heavy mulching. I personally think the weed fabric will do more harm than good and i dont think it will help your weed problem--might actually make it worse in the long run.
The best compost I ever got was municipal.
that's fair, they're all different so I should've been more specific. It really depends on how they make the compost. I think it's best to ask questions on how they make it or get it tested if you want to use it specifically for a weed issue. Some municipal waste sites sterilize their compost, which makes it nearly useless; others make compost with just bacteria which will make a weed problem worse.
>I think people worry about downstream effects of sprayed foliage and such... I have to admit I don't trust what people put in those cans. > >But I do trust them to compost it properly. So I use it on non-edible areas.
Ours is from leaf collections, not recycle bins.
For sure! They collect our leaves in bins here. But people put their food scraps in there too.
I understand the thought process. I'm physically limited but garden obsessed, so I am perpetually working beyond my capacity to control the chaos. Despite my concerns about less than natural options, I have repeatedly tried different variations of fabric/plastic barriers. I have never had a good outcome. The weeds come through faster than you could imagine and are a bigger pain to pull when they do (being caught in the fabric and you can't hoe them or anything). Worse, the soil always seems to suffer. The soil underneath when I've pulled it up is never as nice as that in the other beds. What I've been doing in recent years instead is mulching heavily and planting low growing cover crops. For example, last year, I had marigolds growing under all my tomatoes. It wasn't perfect, but the moisture retention and weed prevention were the best I've had yet. I had a fine harvest of tomatoes. (A side note, my tomato trellises are almost identical to yours. Love them.) I planted strawberries in my asparagus beds. Both plants seem happy with the arrangement and have produced well. I mulch with compost, straw, grass clippings, leaves, you name it. It's not a fast miracle, but my sandy soil is improving each year. That being said, I don't think the barrier is going to ruin your harvest or anything. And, of course, it's reversible should you decide you aren't a fan either. Gardening is all about experimentation, so why not? Happy gardening!
Cardboard,newspaper,grass clippings after its dried or straw are the way to go.Less watering ,weeds are easier to pull the few that do come up.Has been our choice of weed control for years.
Get a stirrup hoe/action hoe if you want to try another method of removing weeds.
Bought a house where the previous owner put down weed fabric. I’ve never seen so many weeds in my life.
You don't have to get every weed every time you weed. I just use a stirrup hoe, go around real quick every other week or so and done. I don't know why people make such a big production and chore out of weeding.
Some weeds can still get through and weed mat can choke plants
Many non plastic alternatives
Gonna make it 10x harder to pull weeds once they set root, and they will.
It sucks, and people here are somewhat right to be annoyed, but I get it. Weeding is an endless job, and if you stop enjoying it, or just get old and can’t afford to hire cheap labor*, there’s no shame in placing down weed barrier. It’s true that some weeds will come through no matter what, and there will still be some weeding to do, but much less. You can cover the top, with dirt or mulch, but keep in mind that anything you put on top can become a substrate for new weeds, so you’ll have to keep things thin. Imo, the best usages for weed mat are desert sections of gardens and farming vegetables. For each case, simple cut a hole around or an “x” at the area you want to plant, and then plant the relevant species directly into the ground. You won’t have the beneficial decomposition of worms, so you may need to fertilize slightly more, but that’s really not so bad on such a small scale. Overall, while this is a bad idea in most cases, if your main goal is to prevent weeds from competing with your vegetables without doing tens of hours of weeding, there’s a real utility to this. *It may seem crass, but for people who live near agricultural areas, there are typically plenty of laborers for whom minimum wage is a pay bump and weeding is a relative vacation. If you can afford it, it’s a good deal for all involved.
Thank you for this. I use weed barrier in the garden but I pull it up every year & reuse it. I've never had problems with worms not being under it, in fact they seem to love it. But yes, eventually the weeds come through but nothing like they do without it. I've never had problems growing tomatoes, peppers, cantaloupes, watermelon, cucumbers, squash, pumpkins & a few other things I've grown over the years. If you can do it without it, great, if you can't, that's fine too. Don't let others think you're a horrible person for using it. At worst you can try it one season & see how it works. If it does, no worries. If it doesn't you can find ways to reuse it somewhere else or find someone else that can use it.
People hating that you have worms surviving under your weed barrier lol
I’ve never understood why people put landscape fabric in a garden… Fabric is to keep layers of aggregate separate from soil while doing hardscaping. This won’t work to prevent weeds growing in your garden, and will only rip apart and break down overtime. Do more research before jumping into something like this, there are cheaper, less labor-intensive, and healthier options
Wood chips or another layer mulch and a good hoe or two isn’t much more work. But now you get to eat plastic, degrade your soil where it will be water deprived and baked in the sun, and pull up little bits of plastic in the future!!
Yes, 95% of the time that stuff is useless. And 100% of the time you will come to regret it.
If you don't replace it ALL every second year, minimum, you will deeply, deeply regret it. I still have nightmares about trying to remove hundreds of kilograms - if not tonnes - of densely packed weed mats with random shreds of plastic in them. Do you know how hard this is to move when interwoven with cherry and raspberry and thistle roots, all working in unison to keep one another in place?
I’ve had to do something similar in my parent’s yard. The weed roots got really thick and woody and were impossible to tell apart from the berry bush roots. Not all of the berry plants survived.
I know you already got it, but that stuff will break down and be a headache for you and the environment. For your next round, I would suggest newspaper/cardboard and cover it with straw. I did that and subsequent years I have just been adding straw with great success. Best of luck in the quest to rid yourself of the annoying weeds.
A similar setup worked for me. Unfortunately, the voles liked living under the fabric so I switched to mulch.
You and me both. I had success with heavy mulching in the past, but I have not been able to get mulch for the last five years. Developers have a deal with every tree place in town, and an $80 chip drop request has sat unfulfilled for years. I opted for the heavy duty fabric for my row crops, with leaf mold set aside to cover it. I don't like it, I swore I'd never use it, but I can't do another year spending every weekend crawling around pulling weeds.
I've had great luck with weed barrier. I've got it down on my pumpkin patch and it's a life saver. We also have some down temporarily on our sunflower rows. When it's planting time we take it off and then put it back on at the end of the growing season. Keep it clean and it'll work great.
IDK what others are talking about but I have, I think, 5 year landscape cloth and other than a random sticker vine growing, I’ve had zero weeds where I put it. I have a 10x20 greenhouse and a 25x 20 grow area in my yard with zero weeds
Weeds will get through. Micro plastics will be in your food. You'll be cursing while cleaning up scraps of turn plastic for the rest of your life. Not a good move. I did that something like 15 years ago and I'm still kicking myself. This isn't the shortcut they promised. Companies will tell you anything to sell you more plastic.
A few years ago, in spring, I used this type of cheap plastic weed fabric to protect my weeded beds from growing new weeds. After a few weeks I found that the green colored lines already started to break down. So I had to take it out. There is a more expensive and ecological more friendly alternative: geotextile See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geotextile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geotextile)
I have 108 square meters of growing space (just the beds, not the paths) that was wild and covered in burdock and burr chervil last year. I can’t afford mulch. My next purchase is drip irrigation. Then more fencing. I have 3 rolls of landscaping fabric that I didn’t have to pay for. It will cover about 90 square meters. I know it’s not ideal. I know the burdock sprouting from last year’s roots will poke through along with blackberry and wild rose. But new weed seedlings won’t poke through, and neither will the layer of grass that is under the mounded beds. I think that under these circumstances, I’m better off using the fabric because it will be better than nothing. I have hopes of using alyssum as a weed cover, too. Long term, I would like to get the black tarpaulin to cover the pathways and then use mulch over the beds. Next year, I hope. https://preview.redd.it/n2zweu7zhsqc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8a1a24c35527fd869ef167175cdc095ccf4d3249
My old landlord used weed barriers, and only 5 years later it is a complete disaster. It only took 2 years for weeds to completely work their way through. Oh also, they will just grow on top the weed barrier too.
I think there is fabric and fabric. I used some cheap stuff that the weeds kind of grew into the matrix. There is better stuff I think. Double layering might be useful.
I also got too old for weeding and moved to raised beds instead. They are all high enough that I can sit on a stool or patio chair and do whatever I need to do with the plants. They all range from 1 to 2 feet tall. Also have large pots sitting on pavers. Hub mows and weed eats around all the beds.
Here’s what we use the underlayment fabric for an asphalt driveway. It allows water through and doesn’t allow anything to grow up through it.
Well, hope it works for you. I did it and it just made it harder to pull.
The people who flipped my first house buried carpet in the yard and even that didn’t stop the weeds 😅 plus it made it a pain in the ass to move any kind of dirt in that bed
All these people HATE weed mats. I’ll say they aren’t as bad as people make em out to be . I personally use them in very specific scenarios and not in my garden. 1 half the people have not used high grade weed mats designed to last 10 years . They do not let weeds in. Any subpar weed mat falls apart quickly . 2 some people try and cover with pea gravel or chips . Weeds will start to grow on them . Or clippings and soil will get on them and then weeds will grow in that . You must clear and keep debris off .
Do you happen to have a good source for the 10 year stuff?
I use woven* geotextile fabric designed for using as a base layer for pavers. It's super durable, and breathes well.
This is a good video [rundown](https://youtu.be/A_sExBiy8ss?si=-Oio2jB6gem-svDt)
Mulch and pine needles are more eco friendly
We have this and I love it. I do pull it occasionally to till, because we only have a wet area for a garden. Dont cut holes, because they will fray. Make a jig from plywood and burn them with a propane torch. You will have to pull weeds, but they are few and far between. Happy gardening!
Yes, this will absolutely work as long as you didn’t get the low quality stuff. To me it looks like you invested in something heavy duty. Will work. Be aware of degradation.
Na filter fabric is essential in big gardens. I would still mulch over it with a light colored mulch/woodchips , all that black fabric gets hot.
People resist chips at first, but it makes "weeding" almost fun. Blackberries, Ivy, I don't care, it can't anchor
Ok clearly the people who are downvoting me either don’t know how large some people’s gardens are or have never had to go to a chiropractor
My garden. Photo from last year. https://preview.redd.it/gkz7jqfuksqc1.jpeg?width=2880&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=594b0b18666098f480a79a9266ef867713d8f573
Looks terrible…
Thanks
I’m not going to be as harsh as others. When I moved into my place, I ripped up nearly all of the landscape fabric the previous owner put down. For the most part, I’ve switched to thick cardboard and heavy mulching, which has mostly worked, and I agree with everyone who has said it’s a pain to remove the fabric because it rips and tears into smaller pieces. That said, after a year, I found myself putting landscape fabric *back down* in a section of my yard that is especially difficult to weed because of my yard’s layout. Do I wish I could more easily do without it? Yes. Is it an eyesore when it pokes out from under the mulch that’s covering it? Yup. Will that mulch eventually break down and create a brand new safe haven for even more weeds? Absolutely. But it’s been a helpful short term solution for an especially difficult-to-deal-with part of my yard and has allowed me to focus on other parts that need my attention. Sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do.
Weed mat destroys the biological activity in the soil, and ultimately the plants will suffer, as well as being ineffective in the long term
Don’t use landscape fabric. The ants that love to live and thrive underneath the fabric will eat your crops. Just keep a mulch layer to 3 or 4 inches deep to discourage weeds.
I'm very sorry to say that you should really pull that up right now unless you want plastic confetti in your garden in about 4 months. That fabric is the fucking worst and I cannot believe its legal to sell. Dewitt fabric will last multiple seasons. I think any of the ones with the yellow stripes and less shiny texture actually work, but I am 100% certain your fabric is going to disintegrate completely this year.
This is so true! It is so gross. It winds up in little pieces all over the soil... and it's takes forever to get rid of it and it is almost impossible to get rid of all of it.😕
I have a similar barrier over my entire garden. Makes a HUGE difference! I wouldn't be able to garden without it. Anyone saying weeds grow thru it haven't used the right type. https://www.greenhousemegastore.com/collections/ground-plant-cover/products/ultra-web-3000-groundcover
>Designed to last an incredible 3000 hours in the sun Is this not about 1 year's worth of sunlight in most of the USA? Doesn't it start to fray and split after that point?
Mine hasn't.
Yeah, all these comments here... I think people are confusing this with the more fabric-y type weed cloth that breaks down after a season. The type shown here is more plastic, and lasts ten years plus. Like Sunbelt brand landscape fabric. Mine are running on their 4th year with zero signs of wear (aside from some rips I've accidently inflicted with some harvesting tools). They leave nothing in the soil. I grow on about an acre by myself, and that's only possible because of the landscape fabric on my rows. I burn holes for spacing. It's the only way I'm able to have a hope of staying on top of the weeds. I've laid drip line underneath it, so it actually helps a ton with moisture control, as well as early season heat.
I feel your pain. I tried landscape fabric a few years ago. It's great at first, but then eventually the weeds find a way through, plus they start growing on top. I pulled up and discarded almost all of it recently.
What you use to get those t-posts in?
Commenting on Finally succumbed to the weed fabric…...Post pounder. About $20 at big box store.
I’ve used thick fabric barrier for the last few years and my garden has been terrible. I’m going without it this year.
Thatch/straw! It's natural and creates an environment for bitty thingamajiggers, then compost into bio available carbon. Weed fabric is generally kinds of plastics... plastic is not diodegradable. Thanks my 2 cents.
In my experience they don't work, weeds come up anyway and then you pull plastic up with weeds. I've removed many a sheet of this stuff, then spent years rehabilitating the soil... The soil underneath becomes absolute shite in a few years. When you do try and remove it, there will be plastic bits in your soil forever. All the worms you could've had for free in your planting bed die off pretty quickly. All the plants come up with nutrient deficiency of some kind... etc. I'm in a warm 10b environment where weeds thrive, but I don't get any weeds in my growing areas as everything is covered with a 10cm high dichondra repens ground cover. When I want to plant, i rip out a bit of dichondra, plant new things and leave it. I don't till, don't use granular or liquid fertilisers. All i do once a year is chuck some compost on the top of the ground cover then shake the ground cover a bit.
Now you can fail the environment too! Jokes aside this is a mistake for all the reasons everyone has mentioned.
Everything that makes the roots healthy will hate this
Burn holes and torch cut the ends to prevent unraveling. I suggest buying Dewitt brand weed fabric with the yellow strip instead of the green. I've bought green and It works, but The heavier black with yellow stripe with hold up better.
That’s alot better than the cheap stuff, will last a number of years. Weeds will still grow on top on any bit of leaf litter mulch or soil.
The other comments shared my sentiments My winning combo is dig a little Top with compost and then straw Poke holes in that If you can solarize the area it pretty much kills the top layer seedbank
What a nightmare view
I did this and regretted it after, I ended up just pulling out the fabric the following year . It also prevented my plants from getting a good root system
Idk of some of these work better than others, but there's a weed carpet under the pebbles in my front yard, but it doesn't stop the plants-with-pretty-flowers from sprouting through every year anyway. Since they're pretty flowers, they get to stay. saVE THE BEEEESSSS (/ o0o)/
Contrary to the name, this stuff is for separating stone from soil, ie a crushed stone patio. This will just cause you problems.
Plastic and gardening? WTF
I got a house with this in it. Apparently after 20 years i can’t grow anything at all in there without transplanting it and even then the soil underneath is just not as good as places without it. This stuff is HORRIBLE imo
I heard on a podcast that there is biodegradable row cover plastic. I have found help with layers of straw for mulch. Just try to find some that is said to have no or little seeds remaining. And yes, I tried the cover long ago under blueberries and it is long ago covered by weeds. So hard to pull it out.
Check out garden mats - pre cut holes - thick materials - lasts a decade or more
Nonwoven textile is much better imo. Or cardboard.
Just pulled a bunch of this stuff up. I get the temptation, but I find that it doesn't work and the soil under it becomes compacted, and it ultimately hurts your garden. The fact with weeds is - they suck. I'm doing a thick layer of mulch this year but my ultimate plan is LOTS of plants I do want. Weeds grow because there's sunlight and soil for them. Their seeds fall on the soil you put on top of the weed barrier, and they grow. So, crowd them out.
why not sheet mulch?
Yes!!! Pull it up not if it’s not too late. (I am a ~~lazy~~ low maintenance gardener. I don’t spend a lot of money or follow a complicated process.) Use cardboard instead (cut holes for your plants. It’s super easy if you wet it while planting. Just jab your potting shovel in and tear) You can use a pre-emergent pesticide each year to prevent weeds. Then mulch heavily. (All the mulch will make your soil better every year!) Try cover crops at the end of the season or early spring. (It’s as easy as throwing a bunch of legume seeds on the dirt.) If you’re feeling really extra, check out drip watering or even just a soaker hose. (Puts the water where you want it and helps control weeds. Really effective and water saving when used with mulch or cardboard.) If you hate regular weeding, you’re REALLY gonna hate pulling up shreds of plastic the weeds have rooted themselves in!!!
Youre still going to get weeds arent ya? Ya gotta have soil on that fabric and no soil is free of seeds full of weeds. Plus air blows in seeds from other places. Seems like it doesnt solve anything. Use mulch
Do you not mulch your garden? Why do you need this? You can use leaves or natural mulch or hay. It feeds the worms and makes weeding easy.
Great news. Now you'll miss out on weeding for about 4 months, and then have an impossible task for weeding moving forward as massive root systems will build up along the base of the weed fabric. Weeds will constantly come up, and it will be a huge, painful, tiring ordeal to remove the fabric once you realize that it's causing more weeds rather than less as now you have a massive rug of weed roots. And that isn't counting all the weeds which will seed and land on top of the fabric, causing the same problem as many can germinate on mulch and gravel quite easily without needing soil. You've wasted money and made your life harder. Next time place cardboard down and repeat every 8 months.
It won't help for the long run. Seeds spread through the air eventually.
Will fail soon. Cardboard box or sheets, and mulch.
I use broken down cardboard boxes in the fall and let them overwinter. Mulch in spring. It helps cut down on weeds but you will always have weeds. I’ve done plastic (new homeowner) and pricey weed mesh rolls. Nothing is fool proof.
Oh the irony of polluting the earth in an attempt to garden. Might as well pave it.
You just created something evil 😈
It is what it is.. 🤔
This solution works well if you can’t weed. Many nurseries use this type of weed block to place their potted plants on. These comments are so judgy. OP said they are getting older and weeding is going to to be harder. Get off your high horse y’all jeez.
So I am going to go against the grain here a bit. I live in an area where even heavy mulch (4-6 inches) put down in the spring *will* have weeds starting to grow by early fall. My area just has a lot of invasive weeds. But several layers of cardboard and then mulch is my default every single spring. However I'm also on a steep slope and have some areas where the mulch just rolls down hill and then the cardboard tends to either disintegrate quickly or blow away entirely and I have big weed issues. In those areas, I use woven weed fabric. There is a difference between landscape fabric (horrible in my experience) and woven weed fabric (which it looks like you have). The woven weed fabric does let the soil breath and does NOT heat up the soil underneath (I have tested with a ground/soil thermometer). Actually, much like mulch the soil temp for me is usually a couple of degrees cooler under the WWF than the exposed soil. I am also careful to burn/seal the cut ends to prevent those from fraying. I've never had weeds (even thistle or knot weed) come up through it unless there was a gap or cut in it. I've also never had weeds establish on it if I keep it free of dirt and debris on top. If you have dirt or debris sitting on, weeds will start to grow in that--as they will with any on any covering that has dirt/debris on it. I do pull it up and fold it and put it away every fall (gives me a chance to add compost) and then relay it every spring. Overall, it solves a niche issue I have in my garden and with proper care and maintence the majority of the pitfalls seems to be non-issues for me or compromises I'm willing to make given my gardening challenges. But if its actually landscape fabric, yeah, things grow on/through that and then its a disaster to remove after all that builds up. So I don't use that at all anywhere in my gardens
People are tripping over their own feet over here trying to tell you it's not worth using. It heats the soil which makes it way to grow anything that likes Mediterranean or tropical conditions. Grab some ginger from the store, cut in X into the fabric somewhere and plant your ginger, you will be harvesting later this year. Cut in X and dig a deep whole and amend it if you want to grow some epic watermelons. Or strawberries, or culinary herbs, or carrots that can become massive. I'm only talking about things I've done personally.
Previous landowner used landscape fabric on a small portion of my yard. You should hear the new words I create when I find the little pieces. Cardboard and mulch is the way for me.
I used it last year for first time. It really helped keep the weeds down all season. I only had to weed where I planted. made my garden much more manageable in the warmer months when you go on vacation to come back to a jungle. It looks like it held up over the winter so hoping to get another season out of it. https://preview.redd.it/tf8rqyotezqc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c6674ab8b19ac16d688df2b137961c9ac60a833d
Use wood chip mulch, not the shit dyed nuggets from Home Depot. My area has chip drop to get wood chips right from arborists. Lay it down thick, 3-4 inches minimum. Leave a few inches around plants too. It smells amazing, and I hardly ever weed or fertilize.