This is absolutely true! I am in the process of removing mine from my landscape, not only b/c weeds grow on top anyway, but because where I have it down, my plant roots are being smothered as my plants mature. The areas I did not put it down, the plants are thriving and doing very well.
Interesting. I've used it for three years and it reduced weeds almost completely. Yes, of course, weeds will try to grow around it, but that is so much easier than dealing with weeds coming in everywhere. And yes, if you cut holes in it, you will need to weed in these spots well, but again so much easier that weeding everything. And no, it isn't solid plastic, the water will run through. Heck I just watered my plants an hour ago and the water soaked right in. And no, mulch doesn't get rid of weeds, I used that for years before the fabric and while it may help, it is still a chore to take care of weeds. The fabric has saved me many hours of weed pulling.
We had no other choice. Our weeds were massive. I wacked and macheted down to the ground and covered the ground with fabric and wood chip/bark. After 18 yrs it's worked pretty good at keeping the jungle at bay. There's 6 inches of pine needles/mulch covering it now.
19 years and no weeds in most of my flower beds. The last 3 years 2 flower beds have gotten so much leaf debri over the years that a couple of weeds have grown. Probably pulled 25 weeds in 19 years.
Good to know. If I'm planting trees like rowan trees, apple trees, etc and I want to have about a metre ring of soil around each of them...can I use cardboard and weed free fabric in these metre circle areas before I add top soil 🤔 or will this stop air or whatever else is important from helping the tree roots to grow?
@@orlamdc Don't have mulch more than 4" deep. Tree roots need air. My trees have dropped so many needles over the past 18yrs, it's 6" deep and I believe suffocating them. Presently removing some of this broken down needles and leaf debris, finding wonderful mulch.
I agree however.landscape fabric has worked well for me in the bed around my house.i covered it in river rock. That being said after 20 years ( and kids running on it) weeds started to grow. Being 68 it was a huge deal to remove, replace it and clean and replace the rocks. Also replaced a couple plants.. Took me a whole summer!! Looks great again. I figure in another 20 years I'll be 88 lol wont be doing it again lol. But the rest of me yard around trees and flower beds i put down cardboard/ newspaper under bark mulch. Works better as I love to change out plants often.😅
That’s pretty much the only scenario in which we left the landscape fabric- under river rock. We had to clean ours out more often as they were under pine trees, but the needles would mat and we could rake them off very easily, in layers. It did look very nice.
I am dealing with the fabric and tons of river rock right now as you can see in an earlier post. And I am 77. I hate that stuff. And my back hates it too.
I don’t know about you guys, but the weed barrier is a life saver for me. Yes the weeds are gonna grow on top of my mulch and rocks but 10 is better than 100!! That’s all I have to say.
You might actually keep up with it, and it's not so terrible if you do. But try weeding it after it's been neglected for a very long time. Roots grow right through the fabric and certain types of weeds become impossible to eradicate
Landscape fabrics worked well for me in Southern California. We watered the plants via a drip system and weeds from seeds landing on the shredded bark material were easy to remove. It is still working 20 years after install.
Yes, we bought our house about 18 yrs ago, our side yard was a jungle complete w creeping Virginia vine that was huge and woody 2 inches thick growing up into mature pine trees 40' tall. Plus well established poke weed intertwined. We tried pulling and digging the stuff. It wasn't going anywhere. Poison doesn't touch these weeds, and I didn't want to kill the pine trees. The landscape fabric I put down was a fabric, not plastic. Poke weed that comes up here and there i can pull up because it can't grow it's roots deep. Same with dandy lions. They pull right out. I had no options other than burning it. The fabric worked for me.
That was EXACTLY my experience a few years ago when I had to pull out landscape fabric the previous owners put down. It had inches of soil and gravel on in and weeds embedded in it. It was hours of hard, sweaty work.
and the earthworms cant move and clay consolidates, and the natural protection against pooling muck is gone, and mold develops, and if you get into planting on your knees, you can get sick
I just spent the last 3 months pulling out 2 layers of landscape fabric out of a large garden. Stuff is a nightmare!!! Everything this gentleman is saying is 1000% true.
@@swamibeyond6382 It's an absolute bloody nightmare once the mulch on top becomes home for more weeds. Lay it down for 12 months, then remove & if you're still worried about weeds, replace with a couple of layers of cardboard, with the recovered mulch on top.
I tried this fabric last year in my garden. It worked awesome. I only had to weed the around the plant and in the gaps in the fabric where they grew out. I took in consideration water not getting to the ground because of the fabric so I poked a lot of small holes in it. Yes I did get some weeds growing out of a few holes, but it wasn't common. The problem I foresee though is when I tear it up so I can till the soil how much of a headache it will to remove and put back down. I work 10-12 hours a day 5-6 days a week and drive an hour to and from work so without this fabric my garden would have been a nightmare with weeding. Now if I actually had time to do it I wouldn't use the fabric, I just don't have time so I do.
I use the woven weed fabric for paths in my garden and also in my hoop house. I find it very useful and it prevents a LOT Of weeds growing inside the hoop house and also on the path. I do not put anything on top of it and when it gets dirt on top I blow off with the blower. In other parts of my garden I have wood chips along the path and if I find weeds coming up there I put down some salt to kill them. Nothing we use is maintenance free…
Cardboard and brown paper bags work really well as a landscape cloth that can be worked back into the soil, or otherwise composted naturally adding carbon back to the soil. I bought a new mattress a few years back, and the cardboard that it was packaged in was worth its weight in gold to me. It was thick enough to last two full seasons before being replaced and it covered the majority of my garden. It was easy enough to poke holes in where I wanted to plant my veggies. Win, win, & win! .
He is absolutely right. I was a landscape contractor for 30 years and early in my career advised against using this stuff - for all the reasons he lists.
THANK YOU. 3 years ago my husband and I bought our first house. I was so excited to finally have my own front flower bed to landscape and play with my plants in (it's quite large). I am STILL removing torn, decayed plastic lining and crumbled, seed infested lava rocks. I have many well established weeds growing on top, through, and under this weed barrier. I'm not sure how old it is, but at some point it's developed many small holes weeds love to grow through. I can't get control of it. It's impossible to remove it since falls apart in my hands. Looks terrible. It's literal trash in my garden. I will never, ever use weed barrier after this experience.
100% agree with everything you said! When I moved into my home, this was already in the garden, and it took forever to remove… What a mess! Just when I thought I had it all removed, I would find pieces of it in another area. 🤦♀️
Great video - when we bought our home the previous owner had used landscaping fabric, it had obviously been there for more than a few years and wasn't doing anything but making a mess. It was a pain in the ass pulling it all up(and there were weeds all over it) but the silver lining is that I learned to never use it!
We're in the same boat - original owner put this stuff everywhere and covered it with river rocks and various gravel - now it's just a mess, frayed and falling apart with weeds everywhere and a total pain to remove - can't wait until it's all completely gone.
Thank you. This is the best educational garden video that I seen. I just finished taking this kind of cloth out and it was exactly as you said. I just used it to get a garden bed ready. The cloth was only down for a season ,I had crab grass and other weeds having a party. I have subscribed and made you my teacher.
I'm coming into Year 2 of my garden. The previous owners had this stuff all over, and it's been a giant pain to remove. You described the situation perfectly. Everytime I think I've gotten the last of it, I find more! It instinctively felt limiting to me, and I'm glad my intuition was correct!
I didn’t really prep the soil well before I put the fabric on because of the cost issue {My bad} and now the soil under the fabric is hard as a rock and nothing will grow in it. All of the bark I have put in over the years has turned to black Awesome soil and is sitting on top of the fabric. My ground covers have spread on top of the fabric and now I have a huge problem because if I pull the fabric up I lose all my groundcover and a lot of the tree roots have spread on top of the fabric as well which will damage them if I pull it up! 🤔I guess it might be beneficial in a desert scape, possibly.
@@floydlarken3148 Could you possibly work in sections for the groundcover? If the groundcover is mostly rooted in the awesome soil on top, it may come off with minimal damage. So pick a section, lift the plants, cut/remove the fabric, fork and amend the soil underneath a bit and replace the ground cover. You'd have to water it in well to lessen stress. The trees will probably be OK if you can pull the fabric out horizontally and add some compost and keep it watered until they re-establish. Sorry, that's the best I've got.
@@dianeladico1769 I appreciate your response and your thoughts on this, they are great. I am older and it’s hard for me to get down on the ground to do those things but I could do it in baby steps. Great thoughts thanks for the info. My garden’s are large so my work is cut out for me. 🤔 maybe I could hire some neighborhood kids that need some extra money👊🏻👍
I completely agree with you. I've had my house for 11 years now and I was all for the geotextile initially. As you mention, it was great the first few years but eventually weeds started growing on top and the roots would get stuck into the fabric. An impossible task to remove. Now I am gradually pulling all of it out of my garden.
I think it works great under landscape rock and under rock walkways. If any weeds pop up, they are easily pulled out because the roots are shallow and just run along the top of the fabric. I do not use it around plants.
I only put it in the areas where I don't want ANYTHING to grow - Like garden paths, walkways between beds, under flagstones, pavers, plant free gravel areas, and always under a layer of sand/fine gravel/rock (preferably compacted to make the surface hard). I never use it over plant beds/planted areas with mulch on top. Yes, after a few years you will of course get some weeds - but it will still be SO MUCH easier to pull those (fewer) weeds from the areas you want to control. Tremendous labor saver. If you buy my house from me in 10 years, and want to plant in the areas I've covered, that's not my problem (gardening is hard work, after all). You do need to invest in the more expensive "fabric" though - the cheaper perforated plastic style barrier doesn't work.
It's also way easier to pull up weeds that have grown through WOODCHIPS, and as wood chips break down you are making much better soil and making worms and insects and birds happier, and the poor future gardener won't be super screwed. So you benefit personally. Plus if you add more wood chips as they break down it will continue as a barrier. Plus I can personally attest, having dug up lots of old weed barrier, that the long rooted weeds like dandelion actually ANCHOR their roots into the weed fabric so that you'll never get the entire root and it will keep growing back.
I watched your video because I was curious about your perspective. We use this type of fabric and have been happy with it. One use is in the rock beds in the front of our home. There were two huge raised (weed) beds in front of our home. The dirt in the bed was level with the floors inside instead of lower. We also had some water issues because of this. We took out all that soil (which was moved to other parts of the yard), put in this fabric and put rock there. The only plantings now are in pots. I don’t want anything growing up against this house. The other use for this fabric is on our raised garden beds. We built the beds with cedar. So we staple the fabric to the wood. Since we placed our raised beds on top of Bermuda grass we got a lot of grass growing up through the beds. The best way to create openings is to burn it with a small torch. This prevents raveling. We use small irrigation sprinklers and weeper hoses to water our plants, many times I run these under the fabric. Each year we take up the fabric, remove the small number of weeds, add more dirt and compost, and then staple it back on. This year we did discover that some of the wood posts are beginning to rot. But for the most part, this fabric has been tremendously helpful.
Im in that 3rd group that absolutely hates this cloth. Just got done removing this from my garden and there were so many weeds i didn’t know it was there to begin with. This man is absolutely correct. The mulch decomposed forming a soil layer on top of the cloth and weeds grew crazy for about 2 years. Great informative video 👍🏻
I am a landscaper In Ontario Canada. Everything this man says is 100% correct. Geotextiles as they are more technically called are not supposed to be used for this application at all. They are in fact meant to be a barrier between two or more different materials. They are most commonly used for separating gravels from subsoil or behind retaining walls to stop silts and soils from seeping through. The only surface application we use it for is ground covering and then applying river rock or decorative gravels on top in thick enough coverings, so you never see the fabric, and so even if soil gets in on top of the fabric weeds don't grow or if they do they are easy to remove. The notion that it should or can be used for mulch is a marketing campaign by suppliers of the fabric trying to break into retail markets. One last note, don't use the plastic tarp like fabric for any applications. The end strings come out and pollute your yard. Use the actual fabric type material, it's far more permeable to water.
I agree that pulling it out is a big job. The only place where I use it now is under the 2 foot wide pea stone border around my foundation (in areas where there are no flower beds)
This is the truth. I bought a farm in Japan from an elderly couple who couldn’t keep up with the huge amount of work needed to keep weeds and vines in check. As I started cutting back deeply matted vines along stone walls that had not seen daylight for many years, I began uncovering old carpets, decomposing plastic weed barrier, and thick vinyl sheets that had been put down to stop weed and vine growth. Each was heavily penetrated with large vines and removing these items has been a very time consuming task.
Everything you said is the absolute truth. I have used it in the past when I didn't know any better. Now I use cardboard with mulch on top. Works so much better. Good video though to help people understand.
You mentioned using it uncovered for pathways -- There is a section in my yard next to a shop (building) that has this stuff underneath and rocks on top and that seems to work fairly well -- having said that, some shallow-rooted weeds or grass will occasionally pop up between the rocks. I think the trick is not to cut holes in them or use them around things you actually want growing. If you don't need anything to grow (pathways or surrounding a building), I think this has its place...
It's very useful for landscape beds that are covered in for example river rocks. It will keep the rocks from migrating down into the soil. This is the true use case for installing landscaping fabric.
Yes, and every so often, depending on your environment, you can remove the river rock, clean out the accumulated organic matter, and then replace the rock. I do similar with some mulched areas. The decayed mulch is removed every couple years and added to my compost pile then fresh mulch is laid back on top of the fabric. The fabric may last decades but it is never maintenance free. That is the real mistake people make with the stuff.
Agree, I would never use this under a garden area with plantings for all the reasons outlined in this video. However, we have it under some crushed shell pathways, border around our pool cage, seating areas, etc. For that is seems pretty good however some weeds push straight through it yet it is now difficult to remove said weed- if you pull them the roots stay underneath and Roundup doesn't seem to be killing everything underneath. Also sometimes the edges of the fabric can make their way into view. All that being said, it is in fact nice not having a muddy mess in a bed of crushed shells and the fabric underneath does help prevent this.
I’ve use heavyweight fabric under rocks. I live in an area with Sandy soil so rocks need an underlay to keep them from getting lost in soil. Just once did I need to remove all my rocks then wash them and then I chose to relay with a much better fabric before putting the rocks back down. After a while I started to just set pots on top of the rocks. In the winter I just rounded up the pots into a group to protect them from the coldest temperatures. After awhile we start changing how we garden for the best of all situations.
I moved into a place with weed barrier under river rock and pea gravel - weeds still came up right away because of leaves and dirt blowing on top, and perennials breaking through. So even for rock, you need not to the area to be protected, and also not have trees dropping litter?
Glad I came across this. Moved into my home a year ago and the previous owners did unfortunately put this down. And while we did put off anything gardening or landscaping for the first year, I definitely experienced weed roots becoming intertwined in the weed barrier. Many times I've pulled weeds and I come up with roots and a chunk of weed barrier. Luckily the garden beds are small and it won't be anything too major to remove, however, still a pain. I was honestly dreading having to put this material down on our beds once we clean them out in the next few weeks... glad I won't have to... or waste the money on the fabric.
7 years in and flower beds are still basically weed free. Landscape fabric is a life saver and works great, especially for those of us who use stone instead of mulch.
Thank you. I have 2 gardens in front of my house. 1 with 3 small bushes that will grow larger and on 1 with 2. My goal is to weed everything but these bushes out, put down the fabric and cover it with stone. Ultimately I want the bushes in each of the beds to grow together into 1 solid hedge on either side of my front door that can just take the trimmer to every now and again. I Hate gardening with a capital H so I want my yard to require as little maintenance as possible. Will that plan work?
Depends on the types of weeds you have. I moved into a place that had purple nut sedge and Bermuda grass that was poking through the fabric with no problem. The only practical way to weed the rock beds was with herbicide. Never using rock beds again.
My mom had lava rock on landscape fabric. It worked for a couple years. But now, it's all full of weeds. Dirt from the wind settles on top, and leaves and other organic debris decomposes on top. Creates a perfect soil for seeds to sprout. It's also absolutely terrible for the environment. Landscape fabric does not work.
@@jshkrueger you have to keep it clear. Lava rock also leaves a lot of space and breaks down itself. Fabric works fine when used correctly and in the right circumstance. Nothing is one size fits all and nothing is completely maintenance proof unless you use concrete and fake plants.
I am so happy I used commercial grade landscape fabric. I originally did my whole flower bed with corrugated cardboard and mulch. Unfortunately I have a weed called mare's tail that happily continued to grow right through this cardboard mulch combination. All that work and it was totally useless. I was finally able to get commercial grade landscape fabric and it has worked like a charm. Instead of regular mulch, I am using pine bark mulch. It is more expensive but it takes a long time to break down so it is not as likely to form a soil for the weed seeds to grow. I am on my 4th year and it's still doing great! You had a point when you mentioned weeds going along the surface and finding cracks. Commercial landscape fabric is 12 feet wide so there is no overlapping. Thus I have eliminated that possibility. Also, instead of just cutting a hole in the landscape fabric and putting in my plants, I have burnt a circular hole in the fabric. I then removed the dirt and set it aside. I prepared a plastic hanging basket by cutting the bottom off. I inserted the plastic hanging basket tightly into the hole with the rim overlapping the fabric. There is no way for weeds to find their way to the surface. I then refilled the whole with the dirt I took out. I amended the soil and planted my annuals and perennials. I have had no problems with that pesky weed. Nor do I have problems with weeds growing with the plant. Because I don't have the rest of the garden to weed, it's a simple task to remove the few weeds that do pop up.
Thank you! Finally validation that this stuff is worse than useless. So maybe it blocks weeds trying to grow up through the fabric but after a season or two weed seeds in the bark or gravel grown down through the cloth. The damn cloth actually reinforces the weeds and makes it impossible to pull them.
Agree with everything you say... only way weed fabric has somewhat worked for me is putting it down in areas I have no plants in the ground and put decorative rocks on top of the fabric instead of mulch.... I still get some weeds so when the weather gets warm I spray the rocks with weed killer or vinegar salt combo
My uncle was an amazing gardener he didn’t use plastic yet he used egg shells nutrient rich soil and hay, literally his plants grew higher than his home, it was absolutely beautiful, but gardening was his life, if I have time to plant anything for the spring I’m lucky but I don’t have the time nor the passion to have plants grow talker than my house so I do use plastic, RIP Uncle and sorry I didn’t get your green thumb I hope your still proud of me in other aspects ❤ You are missed❤
Installed weed fabric 13 years ago, and still LOVE that I DO NOT have to weed 14K of space, which would take days by hand, and do not want to spread chemicals. Sure, I get few straggler weeds, but a quick swipe of my foot takes care of any offenders. I've done 5 of my properties, which was a chore up front, but saves me EVERY FRIGGEN WEEK FOR 13 YEARS of NO WEEDS! And no chemicals.
Amen to that. We bought a property 5000m, in three tiers. The house on the top tier had grass which was a nightmare to trim. Mostly I had to dig it up by hand, a pick being the favoured tool. Probably used about 200m of membrane, and covered that with a volcanic gravel. Still hardly any weeds coming through or growing after 15years. The 2nd tier ihave almost completed, digging out weeds, (by pick), this time I covered with crushed stone. A light grey colour, looks beautiful. However almost as soon as it was laid, the weeds started. I think it was seeds germinating in the dust which came with the crushed stone. The next load I buy, I will sieve before applying, and use thedustina concretemix as sand. Live and learn. But as for using membrane, YES, every time. Incidentally, any weeds growing above the membrane, can easily be pulled, but before they get chance to root through it. You know it makes sense.
I am also going to have to agree. We installed weed fabric around 2008 or so in our front yard garden island. We're talking a garden that is about 10+ feed wide & also the length of the house. It lasted for a decade, with barely any weeds. But in hindsight, it could have lasted longer. What happened was we put down 1 layer of fabric & then we put down river rock from a landscape supplier. We used river rock because it was the cheaper of other size rocks. What happened over that time of a decade was that the rocks probably sliced their way through the fabric over time because of some of their sharp edges, along with gravity, plus the factor of the environment & the elements that also partly eroded the fabric. The other problem was we had stray cats around our neighborhood which would sometimes scratch the surface where the fabric was exposed. Since I knew & fed those cats, I was partly ok with that as they did not scratch everywhere. Today, it would be difficult & tedious to remove all that river rock & restart with new fabric. Now I have weeds popping up everywhere coming out of the rocks, so that now I have to just spray with herbicide & then use my weed-eater to cut the weeds shorter & then the remaining weeds will just break down eventually from the spray ... ashes to ashes. If I had to do it over again, I should have put down 2 layers of fabric, which could have made it last potentially 2 decades & then maybe perhaps just use mulch or barkdust (which was the material we used before 2008). Or just smaller rock on top, like pea gravel, which would be easier to rake off if we need to remove fabric again. Raking river rock is hard on the hands, arms & shoulders! The point of the weed barrier fabric is that it indeed keeps weeds away. You just have to figure out what's best for its application. I still want to renew it again, so maybe I will just rake off the river rock a little at a time. There are other complications in the way to having to start that work, but I will have to wait & see.
I think it probably has a lot to do with climate, and how many trees are around the area. I live in a very soggy climate, with an abundance of tree that are constantly dropping leaves, needles, cones, branches, etc.. In my case, this stuff is a complete waste of time, money & effort to put down and inevitably rip out. Just my 2 cents.
It seems like such a good idea, but in my decades of experience as a gardener, it never is. Perhaps it might help keep weeds down in an environment where nothing really wants to grow anyway, but for a GARDENER, this stuff is worse than useless.
Great video. I am vegetable gardening with 3 raised beds one lined with this stuff as a test. My goal, being in FL with very sandy soil and lots of rain, we lose good soil in the beds to runoff and draining. My thought is to prevent so much loss and lessen the need for amendments. I know all the beds need additive biomass but hoping the fabric prevents the good soil from leaving so fast.
I believe you are thinking along the right lines. Every problem which you've described is avoidable using mesh strainers, such as weed fabric. Why, I think if you really got serious about it, you'd have almost zero soil loss after many rains for many years. Be meticulous when you work. Any place a worm or a lizard can crawl through may lead to voles and moles and then gaping holes. Aluminum or steel screen can do wonders for your beds as well. Cheers
That's my experience also, but it does help slow weed growth for awhile. When the top layer over the barrier composts to a layer of soil, then you get weeds on top, but because the layer is shallow, it's easier to pull the top layer weeds since the roots are shallow. But as the fabric degrades, weed roots eventually penetrate the fabric, which then eliminates the original advantage. Then you just have weeds plus a raggedy layer of fabric beneath them.
Agreed! In garden beds it's terrible! I did an 18 inch strip around the foundation of our house were we didn't have gutters. I doubled the 36 in wide fabric for use under river rocks. A few weeds get thru, but not many. I needed to remove the rock in one area for a project and the fabic sure made it easy! I used a regular stapler to stable the fabic and keep it folded in the proper shape as I added the rocks. When I give away plants that I no longer want, I put the bare root ball onto a square section of fabric. Then I tie two corners together with a square knot. The knots make nice handles on either side of the plant to lift it by, and the root ball stays intact.
I have used paper-based landscaping cloth for years and like it, but I avoid a few of the issues that the narrator mentions. I don't use any mulch that will degrade into dirt over time but instead use lava rock / small gravel/stones on top of the landscaping cloth. The paper-based landscaping cloth under the rock mulch is much better about absorbing the rain / water than plastic landscaping cloth. Seeds that get in the rock mulch do sprout, but they cannot put roots into the dirt because of the paper landscaping cloth and thus are easy to pull out. The results are that I have a fairly weed free bed that looks good and doesn't have the issues mentioned in this video.
lol good for you. It's a terrible option for the home gardener for all the reasons mentioned in this video. It's a sure way to degrade the health of your soil, it doesn't let water or air through, it doesn't let mulch interact with your soil, and it's ugly.
We have 4 different kinds of fabrics over the years. Worst to best: the gray one, thin black, thicker black, then indestructible last forever black industrial one. First three will last 7 to 15 years from the scorching sun. It does control weeds, a lot. It will last much longer if covered with bark or mulch. For the first three, some weeds will grow above and from below but easy to maintain and bull out. Without fabric you need to maintain new weeds after a good rain, major work for us requiring weed wracking /spray/digging.
Exactly. The only negative comments about weed fabric are by people who had to redo a hack's job. The stuff is amazing once you understand it's benefits and drawbacks.
You make a lot of great points. We use pro landscape fabric under our rock scaping and seriously, most people do not put enough rocks on top to prevent growth from underneath. We put on a good 6 inches of aggregate before we put any additional decorative rocks on top. The perennials and trees we plant to grow through are mulched yearly; yes, we weed around them regularly. Gardening is never, easy but landscape fabric is awesome when applied correctly and covered properly.
Good discussion.. The main takeaway is that weed barriers require a degree of maintenance. Nothing is fix and forget. Weed control is a constant ongoing task which requires numerous approaches.
Although, if you have some, it can make a great wall covering for a winter greenhouse to trap extra heat from the sun and can make a decent summer shade for outdoor gardens as long as it doesn't get wet. I had some as sunshade in my greenhouse to keep cooler crops from blistering and it disintegrated where the windows were after 3 months due to getting rained on.
Good points. I like the stuff for many uses myself, including solar absorption in addition to iy making a fantastic weed barrier and soil moisture control to boot. I only hate it when hacks use it and I have to pull it up and redo it the correct way😆
It disintegrated b/c it's not UV-resistant---it's not meant to be exposed to sunlight. But using as a temporary sunshade or heat trap is a good idea, as it's pretty cheap.
My husband thought he was helping me and bought me a huge roll to use to make paths in my vegetable garden. Everything you said is completely true! Thanks for the great video and information 💙
I use the paper sack lawn bags and I also have a small yard so it works for me. It works as long as I need it to before I make changes. I also used it under a small planting bed between the paved driveway and walkway and then covered with rocks. It works fantastic. Plus it's cheap. It's a bit fussy to cut or fold to size but it's basically a 2 layer sturdy paper bag. I made the mistake of using the fabric once and it was a huge PITA. That was just after a season or 2. I just decided to never use the fabric stuff again.
I learned to hate that stuff years ago! Just like you explained, it doesn't work long-term. And then it is a real pain to get out. Another terrible product for gardens is rubber mulch! Use organic products that will add to the soil over time!
Have to agree. I spent considerable time, effort and money to install weed barrier fabric about 3 years ago. Either cedar mulch or white garden pebbles were used over it. In all areas now, weeds are prominent. Most disappointing.
I have used it some. It has some decent use cases, though I should be clear where the video isn't--I use the woven type, not the unwoven. The woven is more durable. I have used it as a floor in a temporary greenhouse. I have used it for a mulch underlay when growing some food crops. Lots of weeds here can get through several inches of mulch, especially established perennial grasses. In both these cases, the fabric gets taken up at the end of the season. It's not staying there for years getting weeds on top and perennial roots tangled up in it. Getting water to the soil hasn't been a problem. Another case where I have used it is as a liner in a net wire ring being used to contain a compost pile for woody material, with plants grown on top, essentially making a raised bed system. For what it's worth, I'm not too concerned about looks--I'm growing food, not beauty.
Same here. The fabric is seasonal, not a put it down and forget about it kind of deal. Till the soil, plastic, plant transplants, mulch. Keeps all those pesky weeds away. Warms the soil and keeps it evenly moist. In Fall, remove veggies, pull up plastic, till the soil.
*EXACT-A-MUNDO* i'm not a professional gardener but have worked on many gardens and when i saw this i knew that wood chips / mulch would decompose, dust, bird dropping would make a perfect bed for weeds 👍
The application you talk about for a garden, is extremely different than what I've heard. A homesteader on UA-cam has demonstrated using it several times. He lays it out using spikes to hold it down. Then uses a mini torch to put holes just big enough to put in the started plant or seed. He then uses drip irrigation which soaks right through. No weeds at all. End of season, the just roll up the fabric & store it. They never put wood chips or other counterproductive components on top. They ammend the soil as neaded, organicly, before putting down the cloth. They been using it for years.
@@firebird77clonefirebird89 The homesteader on UA-cam I referenced is Living Traditions. The last video about the weed cloth, is almost a year ago. The title mentions controlling weeds. And the thumbnail shows it in the background. Also, they mention the brand & where they get it.
100% agree with everything you've said - wish i knew this before i used this in our front garden, 2/3 years later it keeps getting exposed, and it ugly also like you said after a few years weeds just start to grow on top of the fabric, but the main point ...what ive learnt is that the soil doesn't get enough water and air which means plants just don't grow as healthy as they should - next job is to remove it all :(
One you didn’t install it properly two you don’t do maintenance. If it’s two , then it would have went to crap way sooner without . So weeds can’t grow in plain mulch and rock but can find the way out of fabric 😂😂. If you can’t stop weeds from growing up on the edge’s you have not installed it right . Do you go on vacation for months on end ? You know it’s fabric not a magic carpet that makes it so you never have to try
The water has to do with your slope and drainage, it will actually slow water down and prevent losing top soil . Honestly don’t listen to this guy. I can’t wait until you see how many weeds you have without it hahahhaha
It has proven it's usefulness in my garden. I use it underneath a boardwalk and decking and it effectively prevents weedgrow and thus them popping up between boards. I did avoid to use it elsewhere however.
You are right, I hate landscape fabric as I have been removing it for years. One can use all sorts of mulch to reduce weeds. The soil and degrading material builds up on the fabric. It becomes a desert for plant roots. I usually want more and more plants so eventually, I don’t have much exposed areas. I am delighted to be part of the third group of gardeners.
I have used landscape fabric for over thirty years and believe that where applied it works as expected. I live in an area of the country where it is very feasible and the right choice to use in your landscape design. Where I live a garden is where one grows food like vegetables and I wouldn't try to use landscape fabric in a garden. Also where I live most people don't cover their flower beds with fabric or mulch. I live where it rarely freezes thing don't decompose like in the colder areas. The fabric I have used is interwoven strands of nylon fabric which allow the ground under it to breath and water does penetrate through it. Weeds will grow above the fabric but the roots of the weed don't penetrate the fabric and into the soil therefore you can with your bare feet uproot them. If I lived in an area that had weather that decomposed as some have said here I might try using a colored pee gravel instead of mulch or rubber mulch that probably doesn't breakdown like natural mulch. I don't believe that this fabric is a bad thing at all. I just believe that people have tried to us it as a cure all and when applied in the right areas it works VERY WELL.
100% correct, i have pulled up so much of this over the years, if you want a nice border or bed with healthy plants you have to look after the soil and weed it. It has many uses, but covering borders is not one of them.
I am a newly retired landscape contractor who specialized in garden maintenance. Your explanations about the pitfalls of weed barrier fabric is spot on! Yes…you might suffocate the underlying weeds that haven’t germinated yet but no matter what…you have to put something on top of the weed barrier to hide the ugly, black plastic look. You might use rock, mulch, bark….and THAT material is what the new generation of weed seeds will grow in. Pulling weeds out of the weed barrier is far more difficult than pulling a weed out of soil. There IS a horticulture reason that you touched on where the weed barrier is harmful to your garden. People cut Xs in the barrier to plant. As plants get rooted and expand over the years the ‘X’ that you cut is not big enough and chokes off the plants. In garden after garden that we maintained I found plants girdled and their growth inhibited by the weed barrier fabric. If it harms your plants what possible use does it have. I use it ONLY if I am building a dry creek bed because it prevents the rocks from sinking. Nicely done video. Gardeners…quit using this nasty stuff. Use compost, mulch, tree chips. These materials are the organic materials that will make a healthy garden.
It also prevents proper air movement between soil and atmosphere. It can also wick moisture out of soil and displace moisture from irrigation and rain fall. I have a degree in horticulture culture and have fought with so many people wanting to put this down. I wouldn't guarantee plants that I planted, if they insist on putting this stuff down.
Most people simply don't know how to use landscape fabric. And fwiw, it definitely does not "wick moisture out of the soil". In fact it does the opposite. I've landscaped and gardened for more than 3 decades and I can say with 100% certainty that when properly used, the soil beneath will remain moist consistently for longer periods without rain or watering, while the ground which has no barrier will quickly dry out. The key to keeping weeds at bay is "preventative" and regular weed pulling/killing maintenance which is always necessary and usually more so when landscape fabric isn't used. Everyone in this comment thread is cussing some hack who had no clue what they were doing when they put the stuff down- same as I've done myself countless times 😆
@@Rick-the-Swift Rick…I agree with you. I don’t think it wicks moisture either. I just see it as a giant pain in the…ummm…caboose with no real benefit. I personally prefer using mulches, tree chips, composts. I lived in a garden for 40 years that was glacial till that was so bad that you couldn’t get a jackhammer through it in the summer and you sank up to your ankles in the winter. I don’t think that all soils are equal so I respect the hard work that anyone puts into their garden. It is soul food to me. I have always found that gardeners are really awesome people, smart and introspective. If it works for you do it!
To everyone in this thread. I have an area that does not receive sun. It is considered front of house & first area you see when you drive up. Because it is a very damp area I was going to lay down lava rock. But, what if anything do I lay down first?
@@tigq1430 Definitely lay down a heavy duty weed fabric and make sure it has at least 4 inch overlaps, otherwise your lava rock may slowly sink down into the mud and disappear over time.
So I have a ground cover grevillea going down an embankment. (It's called 'Bronze Rambler). It is riddled with weeds and grasses which, due to the slope, is extremely difficult to manage. If you're not using weed matting what are you supposed to do? I definitely regret not putting down matting first.
You're right, it works great for me in the pathways of my garden plot. I prefer walking on it to bending over to pull weeds. I also use it to cover the area where watermelons will grow. Just leave a small open area where the plants are. To irrigate the watermelons place a cheap bucket with small holes drilled around the bottom near the plants and fill it with water, the small stream will allow the water to penetrate the fabric and not runoff. Fertilize this same water with MiracleGro as directed. It's also great for covering raised beds in the winter to prevent winter weeds (in Georgia).
Everything you said here is spot on, I would never use this stuff in my own yard. Right now I'm doing a job for an 83 year old lady, I'm laying a bunch of this stuff then mulch on top. her daughter asked, "How long do you think it will last?", 'a few years, but that is a long time when your 83' I replied, it'll work well for its intended purpose at that place
It really depends what is meant to be achieved with the fabric. It makes perfect sense to use it under a wooden deck, dry creeks / small areas with pebble stones where gardening is definitively not the aim, but rather getting a piece of landscape visually tidy with little to no maintenance. Yes, organic matters will build up over the years and some weeds may still come out on top of the fabric, but that's then a very contained issue to deal with and, in my opinion, the fabric achieves exactly what it is meant for. Other abusive applications in the garden are far more questionable indeed and I don't think you need a degree in horticulture to understand things will likely go wrong further down the line. In my opinion, there isn't such a thing as a nice looking, prolific, sustainable but yet very low maintenance garden. No pain, no gain.
If you want an effective weed barrier where there's no gardening, heavy black plastic is a better choice. Should not be used in large areas, don't expose to sun.
@@vintagelady1 Then you just have to consider where water runs off it, the weed barrier (maybe a better one than showed in this video) will let water and air through. I would agree with the OP that the purpose is for something like an area of gravel where small weed growing among the stones are easy to remove, where as without the barrier you would have to kill the weed and grass to remove it and the gravel would quickly get mixed with the soil. It’s not meant to make things weed free, just to avoid deep roots and make things easier.
@@thomas_from_denmark My experience is that stuff grows up from underneath the fabric & then it's almost impossible to get out b/c the barrier is holding it in the soil & you have to rip up a chunk of the fabric to get at the weed. Whereas in my gravel beds, I just give the weed a pull & it pops out with just a small disturbance.
@@vintagelady1 I suppose if you have a decent layer of gravel and remove the weed frequently it should work without it, but it’s kinda the point that it’s for lazy people like me ;) Maybe also in term of removing enough soil to make the gravel layer thicker, but so far with the fabric I’ve only had small weed with thin roots running though the stones that are easy to remove. It doesn’t last forever of course, but to me it’s more convenient to potentially have to rake it all off after several decades than to always keep things clean. I haven’t really used them where I want something to grow, but I can see the purpose in some situations, though in that case I think it would make sense to just get a bio degradable one.
I started hating landscape fabric after a few years when I noticed weeds growing on top and they were very difficult to remove because they grew into the fabric. I do not use it anymore. Primarily I mulch using groundcover along with some cedar mulch. Some weeds come up but there aren't many so not much weeding is needed. They also aren't that noticeable so I can ignore them for awhile. On new plantings that haven't filled out I use cardboard covered by mulch.
New hobby gardener and this was very informative! I didn't like the old stuff left behind from the original beds and it was horrible to clean up to redo the beds. I will be leaving that out on my builds
Just subscribed. I have applied landscape fabric under garden beds and have found it to be useful. Do notice extra weeds growing around the raised beds so it seems to have served it's purpose in the meantime
Thank you!! I have been telling friends and family for years that this stuff is terrible. I used it about 30 years ago and planted holly bushes in front of my deck. When they grew too large, I decided to cut them down and dig them up. What a disaster. I threw out my back and had to wait a couple of years for them to die so it would be easier to dig them out. Never used that stuff again.
Dang, sorry about your back bro. Try putting some lavender oil on it. Never tried it but heard it can work. In regards to the landscape fabric, the stuff is fantastic, but like concrete it can definitely leave the body sore and the mouth cussing for it's stubbornness, which is it's best and worst characteristic once established.
I use a HD fabric in my vegetable garden. I pick it up every year. Works great for me. I just do the pathway between the plants. The weeds in my area are horrendous. When I used to weed by hand, they were back in two weeks even thicker. Cheap fabric let the water through but the weeds actually grew under it and lifted the fabric off the ground. The hd fabric I roll up for the winter then roll it back after cultivating and planting. Saved me hundreds of hours with the fabric. Nice video though.
Great informative video. It’s in people’s nature to do things the easy way. If you have a pot belly, don’t stop stuffing your face or go to a fitness center, get liposuction. If you have weeds in your garden, don’t pull them out, cover them with plastic. Thanks for this great video and reasons to back it up!
Totally agree about not using it with mulch on top of it … it’s a nightmare to deal with removing it from mulched garden/landscaping beds …however, I suppose I am the exception to the rule lol but I do use it in my vegetable garden … I have a rather large garden area approx 50x75 feet that my method of watering is flood irrigation … I have been gardening for years, 30+ .. fighting the weeds …. mulches don’t work since they float away when watering .. I use Dewitt heavy duty woven weed barrier …. I Used a small torch to burn planting holes through it … it’s more work in the spring but for me it’s well worth it .. virtually no weeding the whole growing season …I clear it off in the spring … roll it up and amend the soil for the season … then roll it back into place and replant through the existing holes .. going on my 5th year of using it so time will tell if it’s a long term solution or not … yes it looks like a garden center floor but I’m ok with that 😊…. Thanks for all your insightful content I really enjoy your videos your videos !
That is an excellent use for it. I’ve seen many market gardeners using this technique and it does seem to be a massive timesaver as well as also has the advantage of raising soil temperatures earlier in the season for crops like tomatoes.
@@TheEmbrio Who cares microplastics in the food you grow or the food you buy from the grocery store. Lots of commercial growers both organic and nonorganic use landscape fabric on their soil.
I was coming to post nearly the exact same thing. Here in the deep south, weeds grow faster than the veggies. It's the only way to hold back weeds in a large garden. That being said, removing it and amending the soil every year is the key. Been using it for years now.
We've been using the fabric for close to 10 years in our garden, they always worked and are super easy to rip-out and replace, the fact that little bits get exposed is literally not a problem as even 5yo can fix this by adding a little bit more mulch.
I’ve used it for years! I leave it exposed and roll it back up every fall. Super easy and effective. I will agree it doesn’t look the best but I don’t put it down for looks.
Well everyones yard is different. For me, we have an incline and the previous owner didnt have a way to keep the dirt and mulch in and the rainwater made a mess, mixing dirt with mulch with eventually oak leaves.
I used the same plastic that you put for house foundations. The thickness is superb. Also I double layerd it. And if you have plants in the area we're you put the barrier you want to leave about at least 8 inches from were the barrier ends that way your plant gets the sun it needs. I don't agree with alot what he's saying but, when he said the sun will be neglected due to the barrier that's because people literally put the weed barrier like 2 inches from the plant
I use it between by raised beds and put nothing on top of it and cardboard under it. it works great for that application, yeah I get weeds at the edges but its way better then the whole path being covered with weeds. I just replace it every two to three years before it gets too bad.
I have grown a garden for 30 years. I made a couple of raised beds 4' X 50' X 1.5'. I filled them with a mixture of cow manure from a local meat packing plant composted with cricket manure from a local cricket farm that was tilled into the garden soil. I covered the beds with weed blocker fabric with my soaker hoses underneath. After planting I topped the fabric with a couple of inches of cedar chips sold as animal bedding. I grew vegetables in the beds. Tomatoes, okra, squash, bell peppers, etc. It works really well if when you clean out the beds after the growing season is over, I never left it over 2 seasons, you remove the fabric and cedar chips and dispose of them and replaced it the next spring. It absolutely will not stop nut grass, but it did reduce me having to weed the garden a great deal. As a side note. After tilling in the compost when it rained the first time both beds were jam packed with those mushrooms that the hippies used to make tea out of. I guess from the cow manure.
Professional landscaper here. I never apply the barrier fabric when installing bark or wood chips because weeds do grow on top and are a pain to weed out. I do apply it on gravel but even then after a few years weeds do come out but is easier to weed out. Tearing it out with roots is even worse so as a landscaper I don't really like it
I have a rock bed with landscape fabric underneath. I have weeds here and there, but the fabric is exposed and is degrading. I was thinking of replacing it with new fabric. Would that be a good idea?
i think before you replace it try to find out why the fabric is exposed first. Maybe you have a runoff issue where the rainwater collects a lot or erosion? @@muna866
I had renters who were really clueless. They put down the fabric, but instead of covering it with mulch, they put down a thick layer of planting soil! Can you imagine how weeds loved that? Yup! Best crop of weeds ever! 😂😂😂
But guess who had the pleasure of weed pulling? Not them. PLUS, in clearing the bed to put the cloth down, they had pulled out all the flowers I had planted, my perennials, bulbs, self seeders, etc. At least they meant well.🌹🌸🌻💐🌺🌷🌼🥀🪷
Well, I shall find out! I already put this down for my pumpkins. I can't hoe a pumpkin patch and I don't have enough mulch to apply. In a perfect world I'd have tons of mulch to cover my whole big garden, but I don't. Thanks for calling my attention to a potential problem!
I have been using high quality landscape fabric for two years. I think that landscape fabric works great as long as the mulch does not decompose quickly. I live in the desert where there isn't much rainfall and I only use the fabric in paths where there is no irrigation. A thin layer of wood chips takes a long time to decompose in that scenario. I also have a serious bindweed infestation. Its the only way I have found to eliminate bindweed from a large area.
My issue is a bit different. Our fire pit is surrounded by a huge circle of pea gravel. I put the black plastic type barrier down. Bermuda pokes holes in it and grows like crazy. Will the fabric or the woven type barrier you showed with 20 yr guard against degradation work better against intrusive Bermuda?? I need poke free protection under the pea gravel..
We love our fabric, it has helped eliminate so many weeds for me. Yes, a couple weeds sneak through but that’s fine with me considering what I use to deal with
I've been using weed cloth for 6 years and think it's awesome. I literally never have to weed my flowerbeds. Sometimes new shoots from the flowers get lost underneath so I need to fish them out or make the hole slightly bigger. Almost everything in this video is counter to my experience. Except I haven't had to remove any of it so I don't know how difficult it is to remove.
We had installed over 20 years ago in our Southwest xeriscaped yard and it functions very well to this day. Make sure you use a felt-like material where water can seep through. The re is nothing that will stop weeds completely and you will definitely have to pull some weeds, but I would never do any other xeriscaping without it.
Thanks for boosting my ego by saying not to use weed barriers or landscape fabric. Pulling it out is a million times worse than pulling up some weeds now and then. If there is enough space and the mulch will be thick enough, I've used cut up cardboard and newspaper. They are biodegradable and you don't have to pull them up. (Plus red worms and night crawlers love it and provide bait for fishing while aerating the soil) Glad I found your channel. Subscribed and looking forward to the old and the new videos. Thanks!
Thank you for this. I was just getting ready to do this. Do you have any tips for how I can tackle a large stone bed that is being choked up by weeds? Thank you!
sorry but I do not agree with all you on all points . I use the more moister permeable version of this this in my annual veg garden on raised beds and it it awesome, it saves me days of weeding every season. the soil gets feed compost before covering every season...... i punch hole through to plant or reuse old material. the soil heats up much faster because of the black cloth. this is a great product for raised bed tomatoes.
Sounds like a neat system to me. I use it for my paths. Experimented this past winter with red clover as a living mulch, erosion control and then dry mulch. It is working fine. I think the key to backyard gardening is narrow beds or raised beds and a nice weed barrier around either, unless your raised bed is a nice, grass only, lawn. I also left my white clover in one narrow bed with maters and onions. We will see if it impedes fruit production but one thing for sure...I only pull a "weed here, a weed there" because the clover keeps the non desired plants at bay. Not saying it works. We will see at the end of the season how the maters do.
Hi, I thinking of putting a rock bed along the front of our house, no plants. Would using fabric work in using it that way and keep the weeds from growing? Thanks.
I need some advice. I moved into a house about 3 years ago and now notice the landscape fabric is exposed along with weeds growing through the fabric and rock bed. What should I put underneath my rock bed so the rocks don't sink and is ok for my plants?
As a gardener and a home landscaper, I recommend this fabric WHOLEHEARTEDLY! I use it on my veggie garden and the time I save each summer NOT weeding is tremendous. The few weeds that MIGHT grow in the veggie slits is SOO minimal I actually ENJOY pulling them. The weed seeds that germinate on top of the fabric struggle, and if they take root are SOO easy to pull off, compared to the near constant deep weeding most gardens require. It lasts several years uncovered by mulch, and MANY more years covered. Any mulch will break down and make for weed fodder, so I rake it around when it does and get a few more years of weedfreedom, then I replace the mulch altogether, to the compost pile. I use pea-gravel ontop of the fabric in places, and use a leaf blower to rid it of debris. That minimal effort is $OO affordable compared to no fabric, that its cost is completely absorb-able. I also use it under the decorative mulch around my ornamentals and trees and it makes me smile everytime I DONT hafta weed, I smile ALOT. I also use it under AND around my raised beds and the weeds that take root are minimal compared to not. The annual plants in the beds dont go deep enough to bee stopped by the fabric. The Grapes and perennial deep rooters have slits I cut into the fabric, and their roots seem to find them and go deeper as needed. Watering/rain is not stopped by the fabric, whose design totally allows seepage and air transfer. If not, I run soaker hoses underneath the fabric on timers, OR hosed drip emitters right at their slits. I laugh at my neighbors who lose the weedbattle around mid-July. It MUST bee installed thoughtfully and correctly to bee useful. I overlap in places and use a TON of fabric pins both plastic and metal, to hold it in place. I also fold under the edges when pinning, or some unraveling will occur, especially when I mow up to and over the edges. When I eventually dig up the soil beneath for tilling or fabric replacement or adding compost, theres always tons o worms. I add and remove plants regularly through the holes or slits I cut, and I have no problem with that. Some of my fabric is near 20 years old. Tho they seem to have made it better then, just like everything else, amirite? It takes effort to use and maintain fabric. BUT NO WHERE NEAR AS MUCH as not, imho!!! Cheapest place to find it is on eBay. Yerwelcome.
I use Scotts which is a cloth mesh type weed barrier in my Tomato plant garden. I also don't cover it with any mulch. I replace it every spring with new. I love it. Water will flow through this type and I only have a few weeds pop up around the holes I cut in it where the plants come up. I agree with the video to not use the plastic type. The Scotts mesh type is great. Weeds growing your garden will take away nutrients in the soil that could be going to the plants you are trying to grow.
@@bruceonlygoodvibes3639 I employ several different brands actually, whichever is available cheapest, and they all seem to work as well. I'd direct you to the thickest option you can find/afford as it will last longer. They measure the thickness in millimeters.
@@fasst5511 Newer Scotts fabric is weird. If you dont cover it, it will deteriorate to powder in a season from UV. I find that BS! I have older Scotts that was made to last, and I use it over and over. Save your money and invest in a better quality, and just roll it up for winter storage every year.
Reading through many comments. Can I get a confirmation whether I should use this product if #1 there are drip lines installed, and #2 we will be placing River Rock on top of it, not mulch? We live in an area with high winds. Past 7 years we have spent hundreds of dollars [thousands] replacing mulch every year, and then watching it blow all over the place and eventually blow away by the end of the year, exposing the soil and then weeds taking over again... I am to my wits end. I would like to stop with mulch and start replacing it with river rock [will have to do sections at a time, because $$$$]. So, in this scenario, should I place a weed barrier underneath the river rocks?
We use the weed barrier, cutting appropriately sized holes for the plants. No mulch is put on the fabric. Coupled with drip irrigation, it makes for easy gardening. At the end of the season, both the irrigation line and fabric are rolled up and stored. Compost is then worked into the soil to break down until the next growing season. Only takes a couple of hours each year to set up and saves me hundreds of hours of weeding and watering; plus saves $ in water usage. We’ll NEVER stop doing gardening this way!
Understand what you are saying and agree, except…I have put down cardboard and 8-10” of wood chips over areas of lawn that effectively smothers it, but in one area there was bindweed lurking and broke through the cardboard and is now all over in the chips in one area. As you probably know digging it up is usually futile, possibly can wear it out eventually by digging down chasing root some, but I find it loves wood chips and creates a lot of paths so root chasing is impossible. I was going to use the landscape fabric to try and cover the wood chips to kill the bindweed. This apparently takes a little longer (4weeks) than solarizing with clear plastic (3 weeks). I have extra wood chips and thought I would cover for this period just because I hate black plastic, and it would create a lot of heat. Remove after it hopefully kills some bindweed, little hope it is complete. Do you have a better idea? .
You don't know what you're talking about. Woven weed fabric is it's own mulch you do NOT add mulch on top of it. If you measure the soil temperature underneath the weed fabric versus with soil with no fabric in hot direct sun the weed fabric soil is at a minimum 5 degrees and up to 10 degrees cooler soil temp in hot sun. You also do NOT CUT woven fabric, you burn holes the size of your plant with a torch so the fabric doesn't fray. I've used this product for 3 years straight and LOVE IT as IT WORKS GREAT! Using straw as a mulch you're almost guarantied to be adding weed seeds with that straw as all straw has seeds that sprout
I noticed that point too per cutting. The top manufacturer plainly tells you to burn not cut so that end seals like the end of a burnt rope would do. Obviously any weave cut is going to fray.
Agree with most everything said here. Was looking for comment on alternative of this stuff under rock beds. I think the key is just plenty of rocks, keep blowing grass clippings, leaves and other organic matter out, and apply lots of pre emergent
This is absolutely true! I am in the process of removing mine from my landscape, not only b/c weeds grow on top anyway, but because where I have it down, my plant roots are being smothered as my plants mature. The areas I did not put it down, the plants are thriving and doing very well.
Interesting. I've used it for three years and it reduced weeds almost completely. Yes, of course, weeds will try to grow around it, but that is so much easier than dealing with weeds coming in everywhere. And yes, if you cut holes in it, you will need to weed in these spots well, but again so much easier that weeding everything. And no, it isn't solid plastic, the water will run through. Heck I just watered my plants an hour ago and the water soaked right in. And no, mulch doesn't get rid of weeds, I used that for years before the fabric and while it may help, it is still a chore to take care of weeds. The fabric has saved me many hours of weed pulling.
We had no other choice. Our weeds were massive. I wacked and macheted down to the ground and covered the ground with fabric and wood chip/bark. After 18 yrs it's worked pretty good at keeping the jungle at bay. There's 6 inches of pine needles/mulch covering it now.
19 years and no weeds in most of my flower beds. The last 3 years 2 flower beds have gotten so much leaf debri over the years that a couple of weeds have grown. Probably pulled 25 weeds in 19 years.
Good to know.
If I'm planting trees like rowan trees, apple trees, etc and I want to have about a metre ring of soil around each of them...can I use cardboard and weed free fabric in these metre circle areas before I add top soil 🤔 or will this stop air or whatever else is important from helping the tree roots to grow?
@@orlamdc Don't have mulch more than 4" deep. Tree roots need air. My trees have dropped so many needles over the past 18yrs, it's 6" deep and I believe suffocating them. Presently removing some of this broken down needles and leaf debris, finding wonderful mulch.
Exactly, the good stuff like from growers solution, can be put down and taken up.
I agree however.landscape fabric has worked well for me in the bed around my house.i covered it in river rock. That being said after 20 years ( and kids running on it) weeds started to grow. Being 68 it was a huge deal to remove, replace it and clean and replace the rocks. Also replaced a couple plants.. Took me a whole summer!! Looks great again. I figure in another 20 years I'll be 88 lol wont be doing it again lol. But the rest of me yard around trees and flower beds i put down cardboard/ newspaper under bark mulch. Works better as I love to change out plants often.😅
That’s pretty much the only scenario in which we left the landscape fabric- under river rock. We had to clean ours out more often as they were under pine trees, but the needles would mat and we could rake them off very easily, in layers. It did look very nice.
Best of luck to you good sir
I am dealing with the fabric and tons of river rock right now as you can see in an earlier post. And I am 77. I hate that stuff. And my back hates it too.
I don’t know about you guys, but the weed barrier is a life saver for me. Yes the weeds are gonna grow on top of my mulch and rocks but 10 is better than 100!! That’s all I have to say.
You might actually keep up with it, and it's not so terrible if you do. But try weeding it after it's been neglected for a very long time. Roots grow right through the fabric and certain types of weeds become impossible to eradicate
Weeds lives matter…😊
Use Preen on your mulch and nothing will grow on the mulch as well
Landscape fabrics worked well for me in Southern California. We watered the plants via a drip system and weeds from seeds landing on the shredded bark material were easy to remove. It is still working 20 years after install.
Yes, we bought our house about 18 yrs ago, our side yard was a jungle complete w creeping Virginia vine that was huge and woody 2 inches thick growing up into mature pine trees 40' tall. Plus well established poke weed intertwined. We tried pulling and digging the stuff. It wasn't going anywhere. Poison doesn't touch these weeds, and I didn't want to kill the pine trees. The landscape fabric I put down was a fabric, not plastic. Poke weed that comes up here and there i can pull up because it can't grow it's roots deep. Same with dandy lions. They pull right out. I had no options other than burning it. The fabric worked for me.
Did you put your drip system under the fabric?
That was EXACTLY my experience a few years ago when I had to pull out landscape fabric the previous owners put down. It had inches of soil and gravel on in and weeds embedded in it. It was hours of hard, sweaty work.
yes yes yes! Such a pain! So time consuming!
and the earthworms cant move and clay consolidates, and the natural protection against pooling muck is gone, and mold develops, and if you get into planting on your knees, you can get sick
Like everything else in the garden it has to be used properly and maintained
A few hours of work to remove it/replace it, is worth years of the landscape fabric doing its job.
Dirty nasty sweaty work.
I just spent the last 3 months pulling out 2 layers of landscape fabric out of a large garden. Stuff is a nightmare!!! Everything this gentleman is saying is 1000% true.
Meh, it isn't so bad.
It's such and work completely agree
@@swamibeyond6382 It's an absolute bloody nightmare once the mulch on top becomes home for more weeds.
Lay it down for 12 months, then remove & if you're still worried about weeds, replace with a couple of layers of cardboard, with the recovered mulch on top.
I agree. I have been taking mine out. It’s awful.
Same here. Real nightmare to remove. I had to hire someone to remove as I did not have the strength 😢
I tried this fabric last year in my garden. It worked awesome. I only had to weed the around the plant and in the gaps in the fabric where they grew out. I took in consideration water not getting to the ground because of the fabric so I poked a lot of small holes in it. Yes I did get some weeds growing out of a few holes, but it wasn't common. The problem I foresee though is when I tear it up so I can till the soil how much of a headache it will to remove and put back down. I work 10-12 hours a day 5-6 days a week and drive an hour to and from work so without this fabric my garden would have been a nightmare with weeding. Now if I actually had time to do it I wouldn't use the fabric, I just don't have time so I do.
I use the woven weed fabric for paths in my garden and also in my hoop house. I find it very useful and it prevents a LOT Of weeds growing inside the hoop house and also on the path. I do not put anything on top of it and when it gets dirt on top I blow off with the blower. In other parts of my garden I have wood chips along the path and if I find weeds coming up there I put down some salt to kill them. Nothing we use is maintenance free…
Cardboard and brown paper bags work really well as a landscape cloth that can be worked back into the soil, or otherwise composted naturally adding carbon back to the soil. I bought a new mattress a few years back, and the cardboard that it was packaged in was worth its weight in gold to me. It was thick enough to last two full seasons before being replaced and it covered the majority of my garden. It was easy enough to poke holes in where I wanted to plant my veggies. Win, win, & win! .
NO, while it does work, you DO NOT want to attract termites.
AND you kept it from adding to the landfill. Yet another win! Good for you! 👏👏👏👏👏
Yeah double cardboard with thin weed barrier work for 6 months then 👎.
He is absolutely right. I was a landscape contractor for 30 years and early in my career advised against using this stuff - for all the reasons he lists.
@@philanderphillips2309 Cardboard is paper and paper is wood. Wet wood equals termites
THANK YOU. 3 years ago my husband and I bought our first house. I was so excited to finally have my own front flower bed to landscape and play with my plants in (it's quite large). I am STILL removing torn, decayed plastic lining and crumbled, seed infested lava rocks. I have many well established weeds growing on top, through, and under this weed barrier. I'm not sure how old it is, but at some point it's developed many small holes weeds love to grow through. I can't get control of it. It's impossible to remove it since falls apart in my hands. Looks terrible. It's literal trash in my garden. I will never, ever use weed barrier after this experience.
100% agree with everything you said! When I moved into my home, this was already in the garden, and it took forever to remove… What a mess! Just when I thought I had it all removed, I would find pieces of it in another area. 🤦♀️
Great video - when we bought our home the previous owner had used landscaping fabric, it had obviously been there for more than a few years and wasn't doing anything but making a mess. It was a pain in the ass pulling it all up(and there were weeds all over it) but the silver lining is that I learned to never use it!
We're in the same boat - original owner put this stuff everywhere and covered it with river rocks and various gravel - now it's just a mess, frayed and falling apart with weeds everywhere and a total pain to remove - can't wait until it's all completely gone.
How do you do flower gardens without this stuff? I’m new to this so I’m trying to learn.
@@toriglasscock123 Much mulch, keep replacing it, weed diligently (while admiring your flowers!!).
Thank you. This is the best educational garden video that I seen. I just finished taking this kind of cloth out and it was exactly as you said. I just used it to get a garden bed ready. The cloth was only down for a season ,I had crab grass and other weeds having a party. I have subscribed and made you my teacher.
I'm coming into Year 2 of my garden. The previous owners had this stuff all over, and it's been a giant pain to remove. You described the situation perfectly.
Everytime I think I've gotten the last of it, I find more!
It instinctively felt limiting to me, and I'm glad my intuition was correct!
Yes. These shitty plastic is like a weed
I didn’t really prep the soil well before I put the fabric on because of the cost issue {My bad} and now the soil under the fabric is hard as a rock and nothing will grow in it. All of the bark I have put in over the years has turned to black Awesome soil and is sitting on top of the fabric. My ground covers have spread on top of the fabric and now I have a huge problem because if I pull the fabric up I lose all my groundcover and a lot of the tree roots have spread on top of the fabric as well which will damage them if I pull it up! 🤔I guess it might be beneficial in a desert scape, possibly.
@@floydlarken3148 Could you possibly work in sections for the groundcover? If the groundcover is mostly rooted in the awesome soil on top, it may come off with minimal damage. So pick a section, lift the plants, cut/remove the fabric, fork and amend the soil underneath a bit and replace the ground cover. You'd have to water it in well to lessen stress. The trees will probably be OK if you can pull the fabric out horizontally and add some compost and keep it watered until they re-establish.
Sorry, that's the best I've got.
i like when you suck it up with a lawn mower
@@dianeladico1769 I appreciate your response and your thoughts on this, they are great. I am older and it’s hard for me to get down on the ground to do those things but I could do it in baby steps. Great thoughts thanks for the info. My garden’s are large so my work is cut out for me. 🤔 maybe I could hire some neighborhood kids that need some extra money👊🏻👍
I completely agree with you. I've had my house for 11 years now and I was all for the geotextile initially. As you mention, it was great the first few years but eventually weeds started growing on top and the roots would get stuck into the fabric. An impossible task to remove. Now I am gradually pulling all of it out of my garden.
I think it works great under landscape rock and under rock walkways. If any weeds pop up, they are easily pulled out because the roots are shallow and just run along the top of the fabric. I do not use it around plants.
Oh no, those roots can get through the fabric eventually & then you have to pull everything out.
Do you not have plants in the landscape rock?
I only put it in the areas where I don't want ANYTHING to grow - Like garden paths, walkways between beds, under flagstones, pavers, plant free gravel areas, and always under a layer of sand/fine gravel/rock (preferably compacted to make the surface hard). I never use it over plant beds/planted areas with mulch on top. Yes, after a few years you will of course get some weeds - but it will still be SO MUCH easier to pull those (fewer) weeds from the areas you want to control. Tremendous labor saver. If you buy my house from me in 10 years, and want to plant in the areas I've covered, that's not my problem (gardening is hard work, after all). You do need to invest in the more expensive "fabric" though - the cheaper perforated plastic style barrier doesn't work.
It's also way easier to pull up weeds that have grown through WOODCHIPS, and as wood chips break down you are making much better soil and making worms and insects and birds happier, and the poor future gardener won't be super screwed. So you benefit personally. Plus if you add more wood chips as they break down it will continue as a barrier. Plus I can personally attest, having dug up lots of old weed barrier, that the long rooted weeds like dandelion actually ANCHOR their roots into the weed fabric so that you'll never get the entire root and it will keep growing back.
I watched your video because I was curious about your perspective. We use this type of fabric and have been happy with it. One use is in the rock beds in the front of our home. There were two huge raised (weed) beds in front of our home. The dirt in the bed was level with the floors inside instead of lower. We also had some water issues because of this. We took out all that soil (which was moved to other parts of the yard), put in this fabric and put rock there. The only plantings now are in pots. I don’t want anything growing up against this house. The other use for this fabric is on our raised garden beds. We built the beds with cedar. So we staple the fabric to the wood. Since we placed our raised beds on top of Bermuda grass we got a lot of grass growing up through the beds. The best way to create openings is to burn it with a small torch. This prevents raveling. We use small irrigation sprinklers and weeper hoses to water our plants, many times I run these under the fabric. Each year we take up the fabric, remove the small number of weeds, add more dirt and compost, and then staple it back on. This year we did discover that some of the wood posts are beginning to rot. But for the most part, this fabric has been tremendously helpful.
Yes. It's terrific stuff when used correctly, for many applications.
Im in that 3rd group that absolutely hates this cloth. Just got done removing this from my garden and there were so many weeds i didn’t know it was there to begin with. This man is absolutely correct. The mulch decomposed forming a soil layer on top of the cloth and weeds grew crazy for about 2 years. Great informative video 👍🏻
I am a landscaper In Ontario Canada. Everything this man says is 100% correct. Geotextiles as they are more technically called are not supposed to be used for this application at all. They are in fact meant to be a barrier between two or more different materials. They are most commonly used for separating gravels from subsoil or behind retaining walls to stop silts and soils from seeping through. The only surface application we use it for is ground covering and then applying river rock or decorative gravels on top in thick enough coverings, so you never see the fabric, and so even if soil gets in on top of the fabric weeds don't grow or if they do they are easy to remove. The notion that it should or can be used for mulch is a marketing campaign by suppliers of the fabric trying to break into retail markets. One last note, don't use the plastic tarp like fabric for any applications. The end strings come out and pollute your yard. Use the actual fabric type material, it's far more permeable to water.
Do you have a certain fabric you recommend? I have a bed with royal palms and date palms. I will be covering with river rock.
It works great whether it is intended for this or not.
It's basically the same kind of barrier that's glued to the roof underneath the roofing tiles, just without the slits.
I'm using the fabric under stone near my house. I believe for that application it will work well
@@markleach2177i believe you want non woven, and the thicker the fabric the better
Weeding, watering and tending to your garden is the whole love of it for me. All naturel and organic.
I agree that pulling it out is a big job. The only place where I use it now is under the 2 foot wide pea stone border around my foundation (in areas where there are no flower beds)
This is the truth. I bought a farm in Japan from an elderly couple who couldn’t keep up with the huge amount of work needed to keep weeds and vines in check. As I started cutting back deeply matted vines along stone walls that had not seen daylight for many years, I began uncovering old carpets, decomposing plastic weed barrier, and thick vinyl sheets that had been put down to stop weed and vine growth. Each was heavily penetrated with large vines and removing these items has been a very time consuming task.
Ugh I truly feel for you.
OK I see you all buying farms in Japan and shit 😂😂
@@TruthTeller20242 you think he might be capping 🧢
How 'bout those cute Japanese farm girls? 😍
What do you suggest instead? Is there a trusted weed killer brand, or specific style of landscaping that’s the lowest maintenance?
Everything you said is the absolute truth. I have used it in the past when I didn't know any better. Now I use cardboard with mulch on top. Works so much better. Good video though to help people understand.
ABSOLUTELY 💯
You mentioned using it uncovered for pathways -- There is a section in my yard next to a shop (building) that has this stuff underneath and rocks on top and that seems to work fairly well -- having said that, some shallow-rooted weeds or grass will occasionally pop up between the rocks. I think the trick is not to cut holes in them or use them around things you actually want growing. If you don't need anything to grow (pathways or surrounding a building), I think this has its place...
It works great for pathways
It literally says “landscaping” not gardening on the package
Better than using sprays, and keeps the work down on maintaining expansion joints.
It's very useful for landscape beds that are covered in for example river rocks. It will keep the rocks from migrating down into the soil. This is the true use case for installing landscaping fabric.
Yes, and every so often, depending on your environment, you can remove the river rock, clean out the accumulated organic matter, and then replace the rock. I do similar with some mulched areas. The decayed mulch is removed every couple years and added to my compost pile then fresh mulch is laid back on top of the fabric. The fabric may last decades but it is never maintenance free. That is the real mistake people make with the stuff.
You can build with bigger rock as a foundation first
Agree, I would never use this under a garden area with plantings for all the reasons outlined in this video. However, we have it under some crushed shell pathways, border around our pool cage, seating areas, etc. For that is seems pretty good however some weeds push straight through it yet it is now difficult to remove said weed- if you pull them the roots stay underneath and Roundup doesn't seem to be killing everything underneath. Also sometimes the edges of the fabric can make their way into view.
All that being said, it is in fact nice not having a muddy mess in a bed of crushed shells and the fabric underneath does help prevent this.
I’ve use heavyweight fabric under rocks. I live in an area with Sandy soil so rocks need an underlay to keep them from getting lost in soil. Just once did I need to remove all my rocks then wash them and then I chose to relay with a much better fabric before putting the rocks back down. After a while I started to just set pots on top of the rocks. In the winter I just rounded up the pots into a group to protect them from the coldest temperatures. After awhile we start changing how we garden for the best of all situations.
I moved into a place with weed barrier under river rock and pea gravel - weeds still came up right away because of leaves and dirt blowing on top, and perennials breaking through.
So even for rock, you need not to the area to be protected, and also not have trees dropping litter?
Glad I came across this. Moved into my home a year ago and the previous owners did unfortunately put this down. And while we did put off anything gardening or landscaping for the first year, I definitely experienced weed roots becoming intertwined in the weed barrier. Many times I've pulled weeds and I come up with roots and a chunk of weed barrier. Luckily the garden beds are small and it won't be anything too major to remove, however, still a pain. I was honestly dreading having to put this material down on our beds once we clean them out in the next few weeks... glad I won't have to... or waste the money on the fabric.
7 years in and flower beds are still basically weed free. Landscape fabric is a life saver and works great, especially for those of us who use stone instead of mulch.
This is the exact application it was intended for, same with large areas of mulch
Thank you. I have 2 gardens in front of my house. 1 with 3 small bushes that will grow larger and on 1 with 2. My goal is to weed everything but these bushes out, put down the fabric and cover it with stone. Ultimately I want the bushes in each of the beds to grow together into 1 solid hedge on either side of my front door that can just take the trimmer to every now and again. I Hate gardening with a capital H so I want my yard to require as little maintenance as possible. Will that plan work?
Depends on the types of weeds you have. I moved into a place that had purple nut sedge and Bermuda grass that was poking through the fabric with no problem. The only practical way to weed the rock beds was with herbicide. Never using rock beds again.
My mom had lava rock on landscape fabric. It worked for a couple years. But now, it's all full of weeds. Dirt from the wind settles on top, and leaves and other organic debris decomposes on top. Creates a perfect soil for seeds to sprout. It's also absolutely terrible for the environment. Landscape fabric does not work.
@@jshkrueger you have to keep it clear. Lava rock also leaves a lot of space and breaks down itself. Fabric works fine when used correctly and in the right circumstance. Nothing is one size fits all and nothing is completely maintenance proof unless you use concrete and fake plants.
I am so happy I used commercial grade landscape fabric. I originally did my whole flower bed with corrugated cardboard and mulch. Unfortunately I have a weed called mare's tail that happily continued to grow right through this cardboard mulch combination. All that work and it was totally useless. I was finally able to get commercial grade landscape fabric and it has worked like a charm. Instead of regular mulch, I am using pine bark mulch. It is more expensive but it takes a long time to break down so it is not as likely to form a soil for the weed seeds to grow. I am on my 4th year and it's still doing great!
You had a point when you mentioned weeds going along the surface and finding cracks. Commercial landscape fabric is 12 feet wide so there is no overlapping. Thus I have eliminated that possibility. Also, instead of just cutting a hole in the landscape fabric and putting in my plants, I have burnt a circular hole in the fabric. I then removed the dirt and set it aside. I prepared a plastic hanging basket by cutting the bottom off. I inserted the plastic hanging basket tightly into the hole with the rim overlapping the fabric. There is no way for weeds to find their way to the surface. I then refilled the whole with the dirt I took out. I amended the soil and planted my annuals and perennials. I have had no problems with that pesky weed. Nor do I have problems with weeds growing with the plant. Because I don't have the rest of the garden to weed, it's a simple task to remove the few weeds that do pop up.
BRAVO with your intuitive lining of the ground with a planter and rim overlapping on landscape fabric! I am absolutely going to try this!
Thank you! Finally validation that this stuff is worse than useless. So maybe it blocks weeds trying to grow up through the fabric but after a season or two weed seeds in the bark or gravel grown down through the cloth. The damn cloth actually reinforces the weeds and makes it impossible to pull them.
YES
Agree with everything you say... only way weed fabric has somewhat worked for me is putting it down in areas I have no plants in the ground and put decorative rocks on top of the fabric instead of mulch.... I still get some weeds so when the weather gets warm I spray the rocks with weed killer or vinegar salt combo
My uncle was an amazing gardener he didn’t use plastic yet he used egg shells nutrient rich soil and hay, literally his plants grew higher than his home, it was absolutely beautiful, but gardening was his life, if I have time to plant anything for the spring I’m lucky but I don’t have the time nor the passion to have plants grow talker than my house so I do use plastic, RIP Uncle and sorry I didn’t get your green thumb I hope your still proud of me in other aspects ❤ You are missed❤
Installed weed fabric 13 years ago, and still LOVE that I DO NOT have to weed 14K of space, which would take days by hand, and do not want to spread chemicals. Sure, I get few straggler weeds, but a quick swipe of my foot takes care of any offenders. I've done 5 of my properties, which was a chore up front, but saves me EVERY FRIGGEN WEEK FOR 13 YEARS of NO WEEDS! And no chemicals.
Amen to that. We bought a property 5000m, in three tiers. The house on the top tier had grass which was a nightmare to trim. Mostly I had to dig it up by hand, a pick being the favoured tool. Probably used about 200m of membrane, and covered that with a volcanic gravel. Still hardly any weeds coming through or growing after 15years. The 2nd tier ihave almost completed, digging out weeds, (by pick), this time I covered with crushed stone. A light grey colour, looks beautiful. However almost as soon as it was laid, the weeds started. I think it was seeds germinating in the dust which came with the crushed stone. The next load I buy, I will sieve before applying, and use thedustina concretemix as sand. Live and learn. But as for using membrane, YES, every time. Incidentally, any weeds growing above the membrane, can easily be pulled, but before they get chance to root through it. You know it makes sense.
I am also going to have to agree. We installed weed fabric around 2008 or so in our front yard garden island. We're talking a garden that is about 10+ feed wide & also the length of the house. It lasted for a decade, with barely any weeds. But in hindsight, it could have lasted longer. What happened was we put down 1 layer of fabric & then we put down river rock from a landscape supplier. We used river rock because it was the cheaper of other size rocks. What happened over that time of a decade was that the rocks probably sliced their way through the fabric over time because of some of their sharp edges, along with gravity, plus the factor of the environment & the elements that also partly eroded the fabric. The other problem was we had stray cats around our neighborhood which would sometimes scratch the surface where the fabric was exposed. Since I knew & fed those cats, I was partly ok with that as they did not scratch everywhere. Today, it would be difficult & tedious to remove all that river rock & restart with new fabric. Now I have weeds popping up everywhere coming out of the rocks, so that now I have to just spray with herbicide & then use my weed-eater to cut the weeds shorter & then the remaining weeds will just break down eventually from the spray ... ashes to ashes. If I had to do it over again, I should have put down 2 layers of fabric, which could have made it last potentially 2 decades & then maybe perhaps just use mulch or barkdust (which was the material we used before 2008). Or just smaller rock on top, like pea gravel, which would be easier to rake off if we need to remove fabric again. Raking river rock is hard on the hands, arms & shoulders! The point of the weed barrier fabric is that it indeed keeps weeds away. You just have to figure out what's best for its application. I still want to renew it again, so maybe I will just rake off the river rock a little at a time. There are other complications in the way to having to start that work, but I will have to wait & see.
I think it probably has a lot to do with climate, and how many trees are around the area. I live in a very soggy climate, with an abundance of tree that are constantly dropping leaves, needles, cones, branches, etc.. In my case, this stuff is a complete waste of time, money & effort to put down and inevitably rip out. Just my 2 cents.
You sound lazy and seem to be as lazy as possible 🤑
It seems like such a good idea, but in my decades of experience as a gardener, it never is. Perhaps it might help keep weeds down in an environment where nothing really wants to grow anyway, but for a GARDENER, this stuff is worse than useless.
Good video. Everything you said is true. I have weeds growing through my landscape fabric a year after I installed them.
Great video. I am vegetable gardening with 3 raised beds one lined with this stuff as a test. My goal, being in FL with very sandy soil and lots of rain, we lose good soil in the beds to runoff and draining. My thought is to prevent so much loss and lessen the need for amendments. I know all the beds need additive biomass but hoping the fabric prevents the good soil from leaving so fast.
I believe you are thinking along the right lines. Every problem which you've described is avoidable using mesh strainers, such as weed fabric. Why, I think if you really got serious about it, you'd have almost zero soil loss after many rains for many years. Be meticulous when you work. Any place a worm or a lizard can crawl through may lead to voles and moles and then gaping holes. Aluminum or steel screen can do wonders for your beds as well. Cheers
That's my experience also, but it does help slow weed growth for awhile. When the top layer over the barrier composts to a layer of soil, then you get weeds on top, but because the layer is shallow, it's easier to pull the top layer weeds since the roots are shallow. But as the fabric degrades, weed roots eventually penetrate the fabric, which then eliminates the original advantage. Then you just have weeds plus a raggedy layer of fabric beneath them.
Agreed! In garden beds it's terrible!
I did an 18 inch strip around the foundation of our house were we didn't have gutters. I doubled the 36 in wide fabric for use under river rocks. A few weeds get thru, but not many. I needed to remove the rock in one area for a project and the fabic sure made it easy! I used a regular stapler to stable the fabic and keep it folded in the proper shape as I added the rocks.
When I give away plants that I no longer want, I put the bare root ball onto a square section of fabric. Then I tie two corners together with a square knot. The knots make nice handles on either side of the plant to lift it by, and the root ball stays intact.
I have used paper-based landscaping cloth for years and like it, but I avoid a few of the issues that the narrator mentions. I don't use any mulch that will degrade into dirt over time but instead use lava rock / small gravel/stones on top of the landscaping cloth. The paper-based landscaping cloth under the rock mulch is much better about absorbing the rain / water than plastic landscaping cloth. Seeds that get in the rock mulch do sprout, but they cannot put roots into the dirt because of the paper landscaping cloth and thus are easy to pull out. The results are that I have a fairly weed free bed that looks good and doesn't have the issues mentioned in this video.
We have a farm and have used this (farm grade) for over 17 years and we LOVE it!!! cuts down on tons of work!! wouldn't farm without it!!!!!
lol good for you. It's a terrible option for the home gardener for all the reasons mentioned in this video. It's a sure way to degrade the health of your soil, it doesn't let water or air through, it doesn't let mulch interact with your soil, and it's ugly.
@@danielcrespo4010oh yeah? Well, that's just like, your opinion man. - the dude
@@guitardaddy6 The only part of what I said that’s an opinion is that it’s ugly. The rest has been scientifically tested and proven.
What do you usually farm?
We have 4 different kinds of fabrics over the years. Worst to best: the gray one, thin black, thicker black, then indestructible last forever black industrial one. First three will last 7 to 15 years from the scorching sun. It does control weeds, a lot. It will last much longer if covered with bark or mulch. For the first three, some weeds will grow above and from below but easy to maintain and bull out. Without fabric you need to maintain new weeds after a good rain, major work for us requiring weed wracking /spray/digging.
Exactly. The only negative comments about weed fabric are by people who had to redo a hack's job. The stuff is amazing once you understand it's benefits and drawbacks.
You make a lot of great points. We use pro landscape fabric under our rock scaping and seriously, most people do not put enough rocks on top to prevent growth from underneath. We put on a good 6 inches of aggregate before we put any additional decorative rocks on top. The perennials and trees we plant to grow through are mulched yearly; yes, we weed around them regularly. Gardening is never, easy but landscape fabric is awesome when applied correctly and covered properly.
Good discussion.. The main takeaway is that weed barriers require a degree of maintenance. Nothing is fix and forget. Weed control is a constant ongoing task which requires numerous approaches.
Although, if you have some, it can make a great wall covering for a winter greenhouse to trap extra heat from the sun and can make a decent summer shade for outdoor gardens as long as it doesn't get wet. I had some as sunshade in my greenhouse to keep cooler crops from blistering and it disintegrated where the windows were after 3 months due to getting rained on.
Good points. I like the stuff for many uses myself, including solar absorption in addition to iy making a fantastic weed barrier and soil moisture control to boot. I only hate it when hacks use it and I have to pull it up and redo it the correct way😆
It disintegrated b/c it's not UV-resistant---it's not meant to be exposed to sunlight. But using as a temporary sunshade or heat trap is a good idea, as it's pretty cheap.
My husband thought he was helping me and bought me a huge roll to use to make paths in my vegetable garden. Everything you said is completely true! Thanks for the great video and information 💙
I use the paper sack lawn bags and I also have a small yard so it works for me. It works as long as I need it to before I make changes. I also used it under a small planting bed between the paved driveway and walkway and then covered with rocks. It works fantastic. Plus it's cheap. It's a bit fussy to cut or fold to size but it's basically a 2 layer sturdy paper bag. I made the mistake of using the fabric once and it was a huge PITA. That was just after a season or 2. I just decided to never use the fabric stuff again.
I learned to hate that stuff years ago! Just like you explained, it doesn't work long-term. And then it is a real pain to get out. Another terrible product for gardens is rubber mulch! Use organic products that will add to the soil over time!
Have to agree. I spent considerable time, effort and money to install weed barrier fabric about 3 years ago. Either cedar mulch or white garden pebbles were used over it. In all areas now, weeds are prominent. Most disappointing.
I have used it some. It has some decent use cases, though I should be clear where the video isn't--I use the woven type, not the unwoven. The woven is more durable. I have used it as a floor in a temporary greenhouse. I have used it for a mulch underlay when growing some food crops. Lots of weeds here can get through several inches of mulch, especially established perennial grasses. In both these cases, the fabric gets taken up at the end of the season. It's not staying there for years getting weeds on top and perennial roots tangled up in it. Getting water to the soil hasn't been a problem. Another case where I have used it is as a liner in a net wire ring being used to contain a compost pile for woody material, with plants grown on top, essentially making a raised bed system. For what it's worth, I'm not too concerned about looks--I'm growing food, not beauty.
Same here. The fabric is seasonal, not a put it down and forget about it kind of deal. Till the soil, plastic, plant transplants, mulch. Keeps all those pesky weeds away. Warms the soil and keeps it evenly moist. In Fall, remove veggies, pull up plastic, till the soil.
*EXACT-A-MUNDO* i'm not a professional gardener but have worked on many gardens and when i saw this i knew that wood chips / mulch would decompose, dust, bird dropping would make a perfect bed for weeds 👍
The application you talk about for a garden, is extremely different than what I've heard. A homesteader on UA-cam has demonstrated using it several times. He lays it out using spikes to hold it down. Then uses a mini torch to put holes just big enough to put in the started plant or seed. He then uses drip irrigation which soaks right through. No weeds at all. End of season, the just roll up the fabric & store it. They never put wood chips or other counterproductive components on top. They ammend the soil as neaded, organicly, before putting down the cloth. They been using it for years.
This is what I was thinking to try, thanks.
@@firebird77clonefirebird89 The homesteader on UA-cam I referenced is Living Traditions. The last video about the weed cloth, is almost a year ago. The title mentions controlling weeds. And the thumbnail shows it in the background. Also, they mention the brand & where they get it.
This seems like a much better method. A lot of landscapers and gardeners just chuck it down, bury it and leave it forever haha.
100% agree with everything you've said - wish i knew this before i used this in our front garden, 2/3 years later it keeps getting exposed, and it ugly also like you said after a few years weeds just start to grow on top of the fabric, but the main point ...what ive learnt is that the soil doesn't get enough water and air which means plants just don't grow as healthy as they should - next job is to remove it all :(
One you didn’t install it properly two you don’t do maintenance. If it’s two , then it would have went to crap way sooner without . So weeds can’t grow in plain mulch and rock but can find the way out of fabric 😂😂. If you can’t stop weeds from growing up on the edge’s you have not installed it right . Do you go on vacation for months on end ? You know it’s fabric not a magic carpet that makes it so you never have to try
The water has to do with your slope and drainage, it will actually slow water down and prevent losing top soil . Honestly don’t listen to this guy. I can’t wait until you see how many weeds you have without it hahahhaha
Someone’ didn’t get it last night 🤣
It has proven it's usefulness in my garden. I use it underneath a boardwalk and decking and it effectively prevents weedgrow and thus them popping up between boards. I did avoid to use it elsewhere however.
You are right, I hate landscape fabric as I have been removing it for years. One can use all sorts of mulch to reduce weeds. The soil and degrading material builds up on the fabric. It becomes a desert for plant roots. I usually want more and more plants so eventually, I don’t have much exposed areas. I am delighted to be part of the third group of gardeners.
I have used landscape fabric for over thirty years and believe that where applied it works as expected. I live in an area of the country where it is very feasible and the right choice to use in your landscape design. Where I live a garden is where one grows food like vegetables and I wouldn't try to use landscape fabric in a garden. Also where I live most people don't cover their flower beds with fabric or mulch. I live where it rarely freezes thing don't decompose like in the colder areas. The fabric I have used is interwoven strands of nylon fabric which allow the ground under it to breath and water does penetrate through it. Weeds will grow above the fabric but the roots of the weed don't penetrate the fabric and into the soil therefore you can with your bare feet uproot them. If I lived in an area that had weather that decomposed as some have said here I might try using a colored pee gravel instead of mulch or rubber mulch that probably doesn't breakdown like natural mulch. I don't believe that this fabric is a bad thing at all. I just believe that people have tried to us it as a cure all and when applied in the right areas it works VERY WELL.
100% correct, i have pulled up so much of this over the years, if you want a nice border or bed with healthy plants you have to look after the soil and weed it. It has many uses, but covering borders is not one of them.
I am a newly retired landscape contractor who specialized in garden maintenance. Your explanations about the pitfalls of weed barrier fabric is spot on! Yes…you might suffocate the underlying weeds that haven’t germinated yet but no matter what…you have to put something on top of the weed barrier to hide the ugly, black plastic look. You might use rock, mulch, bark….and THAT material is what the new generation of weed seeds will grow in. Pulling weeds out of the weed barrier is far more difficult than pulling a weed out of soil. There IS a horticulture reason that you touched on where the weed barrier is harmful to your garden. People cut Xs in the barrier to plant. As plants get rooted and expand over the years the ‘X’ that you cut is not big enough and chokes off the plants. In garden after garden that we maintained I found plants girdled and their growth inhibited by the weed barrier fabric. If it harms your plants what possible use does it have. I use it ONLY if I am building a dry creek bed because it prevents the rocks from sinking. Nicely done video. Gardeners…quit using this nasty stuff. Use compost, mulch, tree chips. These materials are the organic materials that will make a healthy garden.
It also prevents proper air movement between soil and atmosphere. It can also wick moisture out of soil and displace moisture from irrigation and rain fall. I have a degree in horticulture culture and have fought with so many people wanting to put this down. I wouldn't guarantee plants that I planted, if they insist on putting this stuff down.
Most people simply don't know how to use landscape fabric. And fwiw, it definitely does not "wick moisture out of the soil". In fact it does the opposite. I've landscaped and gardened for more than 3 decades and I can say with 100% certainty that when properly used, the soil beneath will remain moist consistently for longer periods without rain or watering, while the ground which has no barrier will quickly dry out. The key to keeping weeds at bay is "preventative" and regular weed pulling/killing maintenance which is always necessary and usually more so when landscape fabric isn't used.
Everyone in this comment thread is cussing some hack who had no clue what they were doing when they put the stuff down- same as I've done myself countless times 😆
@@Rick-the-Swift Rick…I agree with you. I don’t think it wicks moisture either. I just see it as a giant pain in the…ummm…caboose with no real benefit. I personally prefer using mulches, tree chips, composts. I lived in a garden for 40 years that was glacial till that was so bad that you couldn’t get a jackhammer through it in the summer and you sank up to your ankles in the winter. I don’t think that all soils are equal so I respect the hard work that anyone puts into their garden. It is soul food to me. I have always found that gardeners are really awesome people, smart and introspective. If it works for you do it!
To everyone in this thread. I have an area that does not receive sun. It is considered front of house & first area you see when you drive up. Because it is a very damp area I was going to lay down lava rock. But, what if anything do I lay down first?
@@tigq1430 Definitely lay down a heavy duty weed fabric and make sure it has at least 4 inch overlaps, otherwise your lava rock may slowly sink down into the mud and disappear over time.
So I have a ground cover grevillea going down an embankment. (It's called 'Bronze Rambler). It is riddled with weeds and grasses which, due to the slope, is extremely difficult to manage. If you're not using weed matting what are you supposed to do?
I definitely regret not putting down matting first.
You're right, it works great for me in the pathways of my garden plot. I prefer walking on it to bending over to pull weeds. I also use it to cover the area where watermelons will grow. Just leave a small open area where the plants are. To irrigate the watermelons place a cheap bucket with small holes drilled around the bottom near the plants and fill it with water, the small stream will allow the water to penetrate the fabric and not runoff. Fertilize this same water with MiracleGro as directed. It's also great for covering raised beds in the winter to prevent winter weeds (in Georgia).
Everything you said here is spot on, I would never use this stuff in my own yard. Right now I'm doing a job for an 83 year old lady, I'm laying a bunch of this stuff then mulch on top. her daughter asked, "How long do you think it will last?", 'a few years, but that is a long time when your 83' I replied, it'll work well for its intended purpose at that place
It really depends what is meant to be achieved with the fabric. It makes perfect sense to use it under a wooden deck, dry creeks / small areas with pebble stones where gardening is definitively not the aim, but rather getting a piece of landscape visually tidy with little to no maintenance. Yes, organic matters will build up over the years and some weeds may still come out on top of the fabric, but that's then a very contained issue to deal with and, in my opinion, the fabric achieves exactly what it is meant for. Other abusive applications in the garden are far more questionable indeed and I don't think you need a degree in horticulture to understand things will likely go wrong further down the line. In my opinion, there isn't such a thing as a nice looking, prolific, sustainable but yet very low maintenance garden. No pain, no gain.
If you want an effective weed barrier where there's no gardening, heavy black plastic is a better choice. Should not be used in large areas, don't expose to sun.
@@vintagelady1 Then you just have to consider where water runs off it, the weed barrier (maybe a better one than showed in this video) will let water and air through. I would agree with the OP that the purpose is for something like an area of gravel where small weed growing among the stones are easy to remove, where as without the barrier you would have to kill the weed and grass to remove it and the gravel would quickly get mixed with the soil. It’s not meant to make things weed free, just to avoid deep roots and make things easier.
@@thomas_from_denmark My experience is that stuff grows up from underneath the fabric & then it's almost impossible to get out b/c the barrier is holding it in the soil & you have to rip up a chunk of the fabric to get at the weed. Whereas in my gravel beds, I just give the weed a pull & it pops out with just a small disturbance.
@@vintagelady1 I suppose if you have a decent layer of gravel and remove the weed frequently it should work without it, but it’s kinda the point that it’s for lazy people like me ;) Maybe also in term of removing enough soil to make the gravel layer thicker, but so far with the fabric I’ve only had small weed with thin roots running though the stones that are easy to remove. It doesn’t last forever of course, but to me it’s more convenient to potentially have to rake it all off after several decades than to always keep things clean.
I haven’t really used them where I want something to grow, but I can see the purpose in some situations, though in that case I think it would make sense to just get a bio degradable one.
I started hating landscape fabric after a few years when I noticed weeds growing on top and they were very difficult to remove because they grew into the fabric. I do not use it anymore. Primarily I mulch using groundcover along with some cedar mulch. Some weeds come up but there aren't many so not much weeding is needed. They also aren't that noticeable so I can ignore them for awhile. On new plantings that haven't filled out I use cardboard covered by mulch.
New hobby gardener and this was very informative! I didn't like the old stuff left behind from the original beds and it was horrible to clean up to redo the beds. I will be leaving that out on my builds
Wise.
Just subscribed. I have applied landscape fabric under garden beds and have found it to be useful. Do notice extra weeds growing around the raised beds so it seems to have served it's purpose in the meantime
Thank you!! I have been telling friends and family for years that this stuff is terrible. I used it about 30 years ago and planted holly bushes in front of my deck. When they grew too large, I decided to cut them down and dig them up. What a disaster. I threw out my back and had to wait a couple of years for them to die so it would be easier to dig them out. Never used that stuff again.
Dang, sorry about your back bro. Try putting some lavender oil on it. Never tried it but heard it can work.
In regards to the landscape fabric, the stuff is fantastic, but like concrete it can definitely leave the body sore and the mouth cussing for it's stubbornness, which is it's best and worst characteristic once established.
I use a HD fabric in my vegetable garden. I pick it up every year. Works great for me. I just do the pathway between the plants. The weeds in my area are horrendous. When I used to weed by hand, they were back in two weeks even thicker. Cheap fabric let the water through but the weeds actually grew under it and lifted the fabric off the ground. The hd fabric I roll up for the winter then roll it back after cultivating and planting. Saved me hundreds of hours with the fabric. Nice video though.
I own an eco-friendly landscaping company and we do not use landscaping fabric for all of these reasons!
So, what do you use under river rock bed ?
Great informative video. It’s in people’s nature to do things the easy way. If you have a pot belly, don’t stop stuffing your face or go to a fitness center, get liposuction. If you have weeds in your garden, don’t pull them out, cover them with plastic. Thanks for this great video and reasons to back it up!
Totally agree about not using it with mulch on top of it … it’s a nightmare to deal with removing it from mulched garden/landscaping beds …however, I suppose I am the exception to the rule lol but I do use it in my vegetable garden … I have a rather large garden area approx 50x75 feet that my method of watering is flood irrigation … I have been gardening for years, 30+ .. fighting the weeds …. mulches don’t work since they float away when watering .. I use Dewitt heavy duty woven weed barrier …. I Used a small torch to burn planting holes through it … it’s more work in the spring but for me it’s well worth it .. virtually no weeding the whole growing season …I clear it off in the spring … roll it up and amend the soil for the season … then roll it back into place and replant through the existing holes .. going on my 5th year of using it so time will tell if it’s a long term solution or not …
yes it looks like a garden center floor but I’m ok with that 😊…. Thanks for all your insightful content I really enjoy your videos your videos !
That is an excellent use for it. I’ve seen many market gardeners using this technique and it does seem to be a massive timesaver as well as also has the advantage of raising soil temperatures earlier in the season for crops like tomatoes.
Yes except the microplastics in your food. Someone should make cheaper natural felts
@@TheEmbrio Who cares microplastics in the food you grow or the food you buy from the grocery store. Lots of commercial growers both organic and nonorganic use landscape fabric on their soil.
I was coming to post nearly the exact same thing. Here in the deep south, weeds grow faster than the veggies. It's the only way to hold back weeds in a large garden. That being said, removing it and amending the soil every year is the key. Been using it for years now.
We've been using the fabric for close to 10 years in our garden, they always worked and are super easy to rip-out and replace, the fact that little bits get exposed is literally not a problem as even 5yo can fix this by adding a little bit more mulch.
I’ve used it for years! I leave it exposed and roll it back up every fall. Super easy and effective. I will agree it doesn’t look the best but I don’t put it down for looks.
Is this about use on soil only? Works great underneath my self-compacting gravel path.
Used it twelve years ago and still working very well, if you don’t like something you can always find a fault with it
OK...don't you dislike something BECAUSE you've found it to be faulty, not the other way around?
Well everyones yard is different. For me, we have an incline and the previous owner didnt have a way to keep the dirt and mulch in and the rainwater made a mess, mixing dirt with mulch with eventually oak leaves.
I used the same plastic that you put for house foundations. The thickness is superb. Also I double layerd it. And if you have plants in the area we're you put the barrier you want to leave about at least 8 inches from were the barrier ends that way your plant gets the sun it needs. I don't agree with alot what he's saying but, when he said the sun will be neglected due to the barrier that's because people literally put the weed barrier like 2 inches from the plant
I use it between by raised beds and put nothing on top of it and cardboard under it. it works great for that application, yeah I get weeds at the edges but its way better then the whole path being covered with weeds. I just replace it every two to three years before it gets too bad.
I have grown a garden for 30 years. I made a couple of raised beds 4' X 50' X 1.5'. I filled them with a mixture of cow manure from a local meat packing plant composted with cricket manure from a local cricket farm that was tilled into the garden soil. I covered the beds with weed blocker fabric with my soaker hoses underneath. After planting I topped the fabric with a couple of inches of cedar chips sold as animal bedding. I grew vegetables in the beds. Tomatoes, okra, squash, bell peppers, etc. It works really well if when you clean out the beds after the growing season is over, I never left it over 2 seasons, you remove the fabric and cedar chips and dispose of them and replaced it the next spring. It absolutely will not stop nut grass, but it did reduce me having to weed the garden a great deal.
As a side note. After tilling in the compost when it rained the first time both beds were jam packed with those mushrooms that the hippies used to make tea out of. I guess from the cow manure.
Professional landscaper here. I never apply the barrier fabric when installing bark or wood chips because weeds do grow on top and are a pain to weed out. I do apply it on gravel but even then after a few years weeds do come out but is easier to weed out. Tearing it out with roots is even worse so as a landscaper I don't really like it
I have a rock bed with landscape fabric underneath. I have weeds here and there, but the fabric is exposed and is degrading. I was thinking of replacing it with new fabric. Would that be a good idea?
i think before you replace it try to find out why the fabric is exposed first. Maybe you have a runoff issue where the rainwater collects a lot or erosion? @@muna866
Uh@@muna866
Thank you as you validated what my husband and I already felt and thought towards that stuff!
I had renters who were really clueless. They put down the fabric, but instead of covering it with mulch, they put down a thick layer of planting soil! Can you imagine how weeds loved that? Yup! Best crop of weeds ever! 😂😂😂
Not very deep I guess, easy to pull out
But guess who had the pleasure of weed pulling? Not them. PLUS, in clearing the bed to put the cloth down, they had pulled out all the flowers I had planted, my perennials, bulbs, self seeders, etc. At least they meant well.🌹🌸🌻💐🌺🌷🌼🥀🪷
@@annmeacham5643 Yeah, covering the other stuff sucks 😏
Well, I shall find out! I already put this down for my pumpkins. I can't hoe a pumpkin patch and I don't have enough mulch to apply. In a perfect world I'd have tons of mulch to cover my whole big garden, but I don't. Thanks for calling my attention to a potential problem!
I have been using high quality landscape fabric for two years. I think that landscape fabric works great as long as the mulch does not decompose quickly. I live in the desert where there isn't much rainfall and I only use the fabric in paths where there is no irrigation. A thin layer of wood chips takes a long time to decompose in that scenario. I also have a serious bindweed infestation. Its the only way I have found to eliminate bindweed from a large area.
My issue is a bit different. Our fire pit is surrounded by a huge circle of pea gravel. I put the black plastic type barrier down. Bermuda pokes holes in it and grows like crazy. Will the fabric or the woven type barrier you showed with 20 yr guard against degradation work better against intrusive Bermuda?? I need poke free protection under the pea gravel..
We love our fabric, it has helped eliminate so many weeds for me. Yes, a couple weeds sneak through but that’s fine with me considering what I use to deal with
I've been using weed cloth for 6 years and think it's awesome. I literally never have to weed my flowerbeds. Sometimes new shoots from the flowers get lost underneath so I need to fish them out or make the hole slightly bigger. Almost everything in this video is counter to my experience. Except I haven't had to remove any of it so I don't know how difficult it is to remove.
I’ve had it for 12 years and have no problems, where I don’t have it the weeds are out of control.
We had installed over 20 years ago in our Southwest xeriscaped yard and it functions very well to this day. Make sure you use a felt-like material where water can seep through. The re is nothing that will stop weeds completely and you will definitely have to pull some weeds, but I would never do any other xeriscaping without it.
Thanks for boosting my ego by saying not to use weed barriers or landscape fabric. Pulling it out is a million times worse than pulling up some weeds now and then. If there is enough space and the mulch will be thick enough, I've used cut up cardboard and newspaper. They are biodegradable and you don't have to pull them up. (Plus red worms and night crawlers love it and provide bait for fishing while aerating the soil) Glad I found your channel. Subscribed and looking forward to the old and the new videos. Thanks!
Thank you for this. I was just getting ready to do this. Do you have any tips for how I can tackle a large stone bed that is being choked up by weeds? Thank you!
sorry but I do not agree with all you on all points .
I use the more moister permeable version of this this in my annual veg garden on raised beds and it it awesome, it saves me days of weeding every season.
the soil gets feed compost before covering every season...... i punch hole through to plant or reuse old material.
the soil heats up much faster because of the black cloth.
this is a great product for raised bed tomatoes.
Sounds like a neat system to me. I use it for my paths. Experimented this past winter with red clover as a living mulch, erosion control and then dry mulch. It is working fine. I think the key to backyard gardening is narrow beds or raised beds and a nice weed barrier around either, unless your raised bed is a nice, grass only, lawn. I also left my white clover in one narrow bed with maters and onions. We will see if it impedes fruit production but one thing for sure...I only pull a "weed here, a weed there" because the clover keeps the non desired plants at bay. Not saying it works. We will see at the end of the season how the maters do.
Hi, I thinking of putting a rock bed along the front of our house, no plants. Would using fabric work in using it that way and keep the weeds from growing? Thanks.
The solution to what he is talking about is finally presented here: 7:25 yw
I need some advice. I moved into a house about 3 years ago and now notice the landscape fabric is exposed along with weeds growing through the fabric and rock bed. What should I put underneath my rock bed so the rocks don't sink and is ok for my plants?
As a gardener and a home landscaper, I recommend this fabric WHOLEHEARTEDLY! I use it on my veggie garden and the time I save each summer NOT weeding is tremendous. The few weeds that MIGHT grow in the veggie slits is SOO minimal I actually ENJOY pulling them. The weed seeds that germinate on top of the fabric struggle, and if they take root are SOO easy to pull off, compared to the near constant deep weeding most gardens require. It lasts several years uncovered by mulch, and MANY more years covered. Any mulch will break down and make for weed fodder, so I rake it around when it does and get a few more years of weedfreedom, then I replace the mulch altogether, to the compost pile. I use pea-gravel ontop of the fabric in places, and use a leaf blower to rid it of debris. That minimal effort is $OO affordable compared to no fabric, that its cost is completely absorb-able. I also use it under the decorative mulch around my ornamentals and trees and it makes me smile everytime I DONT hafta weed, I smile ALOT. I also use it under AND around my raised beds and the weeds that take root are minimal compared to not. The annual plants in the beds dont go deep enough to bee stopped by the fabric. The Grapes and perennial deep rooters have slits I cut into the fabric, and their roots seem to find them and go deeper as needed. Watering/rain is not stopped by the fabric, whose design totally allows seepage and air transfer. If not, I run soaker hoses underneath the fabric on timers, OR hosed drip emitters right at their slits. I laugh at my neighbors who lose the weedbattle around mid-July. It MUST bee installed thoughtfully and correctly to bee useful. I overlap in places and use a TON of fabric pins both plastic and metal, to hold it in place. I also fold under the edges when pinning, or some unraveling will occur, especially when I mow up to and over the edges. When I eventually dig up the soil beneath for tilling or fabric replacement or adding compost, theres always tons o worms. I add and remove plants regularly through the holes or slits I cut, and I have no problem with that. Some of my fabric is near 20 years old. Tho they seem to have made it better then, just like everything else, amirite? It takes effort to use and maintain fabric. BUT NO WHERE NEAR AS MUCH as not, imho!!! Cheapest place to find it is on eBay. Yerwelcome.
what brand are you recommending? I couldn't find anything called wholeheartedly
I use Scotts which is a cloth mesh type weed barrier in my Tomato plant garden. I also don't cover it with any mulch. I replace it every spring with new. I love it. Water will flow through this type and I only have a few weeds pop up around the holes I cut in it where the plants come up. I agree with the video to not use the plastic type. The Scotts mesh type is great. Weeds growing your garden will take away nutrients in the soil that could be going to the plants you are trying to grow.
@@bruceonlygoodvibes3639 I employ several different brands actually, whichever is available cheapest, and they all seem to work as well. I'd direct you to the thickest option you can find/afford as it will last longer. They measure the thickness in millimeters.
@@fasst5511 Newer Scotts fabric is weird. If you dont cover it, it will deteriorate to powder in a season from UV. I find that BS! I have older Scotts that was made to last, and I use it over and over. Save your money and invest in a better quality, and just roll it up for winter storage every year.
@@eranorion thanks! gunna try it
Reading through many comments. Can I get a confirmation whether I should use this product if #1 there are drip lines installed, and #2 we will be placing River Rock on top of it, not mulch? We live in an area with high winds. Past 7 years we have spent hundreds of dollars [thousands] replacing mulch every year, and then watching it blow all over the place and eventually blow away by the end of the year, exposing the soil and then weeds taking over again... I am to my wits end. I would like to stop with mulch and start replacing it with river rock [will have to do sections at a time, because $$$$]. So, in this scenario, should I place a weed barrier underneath the river rocks?
We use the weed barrier, cutting appropriately sized holes for the plants.
No mulch is put on the fabric. Coupled with drip irrigation, it makes for easy gardening.
At the end of the season, both the irrigation line and fabric are rolled up and stored.
Compost is then worked into the soil to break down until the next growing season.
Only takes a couple of hours each year to set up and saves me hundreds of hours of weeding and watering; plus saves $ in water usage.
We’ll NEVER stop doing gardening this way!
Understand what you are saying and agree, except…I have put down cardboard and 8-10” of wood chips over areas of lawn that effectively smothers it, but in one area there was bindweed lurking and broke through the cardboard and is now all over in the chips in one area. As you probably know digging it up is usually futile, possibly can wear it out eventually by digging down chasing root some, but I find it loves wood chips and creates a lot of paths so root chasing is impossible. I was going to use the landscape fabric to try and cover the wood chips to kill the bindweed. This apparently takes a little longer (4weeks) than solarizing with clear plastic (3 weeks). I have extra wood chips and thought I would cover for this period just because I hate black plastic, and it would create a lot of heat. Remove after it hopefully kills some bindweed, little hope it is complete. Do you have a better idea? .
You don't know what you're talking about. Woven weed fabric is it's own mulch you do NOT add mulch on top of it. If you measure the soil temperature underneath the weed fabric versus with soil with no fabric in hot direct sun the weed fabric soil is at a minimum 5 degrees and up to 10 degrees cooler soil temp in hot sun. You also do NOT CUT woven fabric, you burn holes the size of your plant with a torch so the fabric doesn't fray. I've used this product for 3 years straight and LOVE IT as IT WORKS GREAT!
Using straw as a mulch you're almost guarantied to be adding weed seeds with that straw as all straw has seeds that sprout
I noticed that point too per cutting. The top manufacturer plainly tells you to burn not cut so that end seals like the end of a burnt rope would do. Obviously any weave cut is going to fray.
"Woven weed fabric is it's own mulch you do NOT add mulch on top of it" - but nobody wants to look at plastic mulch!
@@Gardenfundamentals1 I'd rather look at that than weeds all over my garden!
This is the best comment on the subject by far!! This is exactly what I do. Thank you!
Agree with most everything said here. Was looking for comment on alternative of this stuff under rock beds. I think the key is just plenty of rocks, keep blowing grass clippings, leaves and other organic matter out, and apply lots of pre emergent
I love my landscape fabric.
A channel in the UK said she uses Lady's Mantle.. do you recommend that for preventing weed growth?