Landscape Fabric Is Not My Friend

I’ve spent the past couple of months with Paul removing landscape fabric that has become entangled with plant and weed roots.

Actually, Paul has been doing most of the work. I’ve mostly been checking in on his progress.  He’s earning money during summer vacation while I re-design the front garden for my clients.

I don’t like to use landscape fabric. I use to use landscape fabric and then watched how over time it disintegrated in the sun, start sending up little waving flags of black fabric and getting entwined with plant roots.

Then I tried pulling up the stuff and realized that landscape fabric is not easy to remove.  Also, it’s difficult to weed – it takes much longer to weed an area that has landscape fabric then just plain mulched.

I do like landscape fabric for areas that will not be planted; under compacted quarry fines, for instance.

Instead of landscape fabric I like to use a thick layer (about 2 inches) of mulch. When the weeds do come up from underneath or get blown onto the surface (from your neighbor’s yard of course!), it’s easy to remove since the weed growth is weak.

Another option is to sheet mulch. This is what I did with Paul today. After removing the worst of the perennial weeds, we applied layers of cardboard onto the surface of the soil; overlapping about 6 to 12 inches where pieces met.

Next, we watered down the surface of the cardboard so it was pliable and then covered all the cardboard with 3 inches of mulch.

I usually use this method when the weed problem is fairly bad or if I’m trying to kill a lawn.  Basically the weeds (or lawn) are prevented from coming up by a barrier of cardboard and mulch.

What I like about sheet-mulching is that after a rainy season the cardboard usually has broken down and you can just start planting.

Sheet-Mulching Tips:

• Try to get as large pieces of cardboard as you can.  This will make the work quicker and provide less openings to allow weeds to come up.
• Remove plastic tapes and labels from the cardboard because it doesn’t break down; just lingers!
• Use fine-texture mulch instead of coarse-texture.  It looks better and I think creates a better seal.
• You can also put down a thin layer of compost (or chicken manure) on the surface of the soil before applying cardboard.  This helps to encourage germination of seeds in the soil and then die.