Landscape Fabric Weed Barriers👎👎👎👎 – In this video I go over some of the reasons that I think we shouldn’t be using plastic weed barriers in our landscapes and gardens.
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33 Comments
Weed Barrier – The biggest joke in landscaping!
However, i find the non fabric barriers best for areas that won't have any plants…often walkways and large gravel beds.
Yikes! I put some down just last year. I guess on the positive side, I should be able to remove it next summer before it starts breaking down. Thanks for the info! ❤️ 🇨🇦
Yuk hate the stuff ripped mine up years ago what a stupid trend that was.
How about Dupont Xavan?
I wish I had seen this 12 years ago. Plastic sheeting was put down in my back yard. Now the soil under the plastic has not changed. It’s horrible white clay. Above the plastic the roots of all the shrubs and trees are trying to survive and get nutrients. I’ve tried getting the plastic out but it comes out in pieces. The soil above the plastic is rich and black from all the mulch being put down after 12 years. I so wish I knew more about gardening and had never put it down.
Exactly: “Improving the soil.” Thank you for these good points and reminders.
We bought a house with a garden that had not been taken care of for years. We are still finding shreds of landscape fabric. Just don't do it. Up your groundcover game. It works, and it looks more natural…
The landscape crew hired by our house builder back in 2019 put down the lined heavy-duty fabric in the shrub bed that was adjacent to the Bermuda grass (ugh!). Very common thing to do here in Central Texas. In 2020, the first year I worked on that shrub bed, I removed all of the fabric except for the 1'-1.5' section adjacent to the grass. Even after one season, the soil had a rotten smell. By 2021, the Bermuda grass and a few other weeds started to embed themselves within the fabric, making it impossible to remove the weeds & grass. The end of this month, the rest of that fabric is coming out. I can deal with the weeds and Bermuda grass as long as I stay on top of it.
I've mentioned this on every DIY site I'm on. I own a lawn care company and one of the jobs we do is is pull weeds out of flower beds, any that have the fabric where there every week because the weeds just grow right through it, so it's impossible to pull out the roots. Home owners trying to cheap out are going to use hardwood mulch and also never enough that just breaks down making a great place for weeds to grow. One customer I have was using stone, instead of mulch. I told him let me spray total vegetation killer first and do not use any form of weed blocker. Nope, he used "weed blocker fabric" then the stone. He now pays me at least $50.00 a week to just pull weeds.
Was going to install these but decided against it. I’ll happily continue to pick the weeds every couple weeks to not deal with this stuff later on.
Hate it! I think it inhibits root growth and movement of water and nutrients…. It would be better to use something bio-degradable such as layers of newspaper under mulch.😎
How well we have learned about this stuff over the years! Thanks for making it more about the health of our soil and the earth. It makes it all the more important.
Not just no, HELL NO. Its effectiveness is vastly over-rated anyway; you're much better off just putting down cardboard to suppress weeds. And heaven help you if you ever want to put something else in that spot that has landscape fabric under it. It will be a nightmare of tangled roots and shredded plastic when you try to pull it out. We bought a new place last year and there's landscape fabric all over it. It's really a pain to deal with a few years after.
Appreciate the tips on mulch timing Jim
Soil, baby, it’s all about the soil! Yay, Jim! I moved into sandy Fuquay and have been building the soil for 9 years. I have oodles of trees and oodles of leaves that remain on my gardens. My soil is a living organism and gosh, it’s pretty easy to maintain as well. Another great video! 👍🏻
Excellent video my friend. Weeds are just something that requires maintenance and staying on top of them. As you said, the oldest problem in gardening.
Thank you for the insight, after 12 years in very established garden beds my husband and I took all the fabric out because of your advise. The soil was suffering and the nitrogen level was nonexistent. The removal was extremely difficult and we did damage root systems however in the long run I have hopes this is the beginning of restoration to the soil so the plants will thrive instead of barely surviving. Thank you for sharing all your knowledge, I appreciate all your videos!
Preach Jim!!! I tell my customers that all the time. They want to lay it down so they never have to weed. Guess what its part of gardening and maintaining a nice landscape. A nice Japanese garden hoe/sickle makes easy work of any weeds.
humm interesting my problems maybe different here in the Philippines. grass and weeds much worse then i ever had in usa… you mention cardboard is better. problem is cardboard sheds water, i guess if i had drip irrigation but hard to find that here as well as this is a peso budget, my long term plan is raised beds- asp composting- mix vermicast etc, worms already expanding but will be year before i have tons of vermicast. so i was planning to use a little weed barrier because the weeds are so overwhelming. it would take hours every day with 2 or 3 people to keep the weeds and grass in check– yes it really grows that fast. i am impressed that you say after 20 years the weed barrier will be a mess i had no idea how long it would last and thought if i had to replace every year i would do good ( growing crops year round no winter here- 12 hours sun year around)
, well hopefully the raised beds will give me the weed control i need i can replace the top few inches every year as needed use that soil for fruit trees maybe ,and add new soil mix to keep weeds under control
i have on order 4 rolls of the heavy duty kind guess i will experiment and hope within a year to start replacing with raised beds hope it will help for a year. would you say from your experience that after 2 growing seasons you can still pick it up in one piece?
I totally agree. I've removed landscape fabrics several times. I hate it, yet people keep using it.
So many great tips!! Thank you!
I am having a serious case of gravel regret from this house's prior owners!!! Luckily it's not a huge area, but it is SO unnecessary. That could have been LITERALLY anything else. Three-quarters of the beds have horrible plastic under cedar chips, and the other quarter is tiny little pea gravel. I am eyeballing the pea gravel and a shovel for my next good weekend.
We’re struggling to dig/ plant on property we just bought bc we’re hitting two different layers of landscape fabric buried about 5” below and 5” further down. SUCKS! Existing tree/shrub roots were suppressed/hampered and huge air spaces formed under them, resulting in impaired nutrient uptake and growth.
I recently pulled up some fabric with woodchips on top. The woodchips, of course, started to decompose. Very aggressive weeds came right through the holes of the plastic pins that keep it in place, and where the parts overlap. Weeds finds it's way. It was vey smelly, just like you say. I will use cardboard, or newspapers, as a short-term. Only to give me time enough to get up to speed in this garden.
I moved in here for only 2 mths ago. In the mean time I just don't want the weed to think that they can still grow all over the show. When they are weakened a bit, I will get them up by the roots. I know the roots of our weed in Denmark goes very deep, and side-ways, and entangled in the roots of other plants as well. But, after some rain, it is easy to get them, follow their lines, and eventually get up as much as possible. It is impossible to plant anything, because there's just roots all over the place. Thick as roots from the hedge, or shrubs. They have quite a network down there! Thanks for your follow-up video.
Thank you – I was about to order this stuff – but something just bugged me, re using plastic. So glad I watched your video.
I'm new to gardening and trying to gather as much information as possible. If landscape fabric causes such a mess, are we opposed to managing the garden and pulling weeds as we see them or is that an even bigger chore?
How do you remove gravels mixed with soils. I have one small shady area has more gravels than soils. The only thing that grows in that area are moss, and all the weeds you can think of 🤦♀️ from bindweed, hairy bittercress, broadleaf plantains. Mostly moss infested along with lots of gravels mixed in with the soils.
Great video and thank you for showing we could see in the future if we tried to use it.
The best way to have the best soil is to mulch it before weeds try to grow.
Just like with what you did with the wood chips on top of the clay soil (GA Red clay is notorious in my area).
You can free wood chips or mulch in most cases. The local cities and counties may have a place for you to pick it up.
Some locations may just dump it right in your yard for you! You may need a wheelbarrow and a rake but it will be worth it in the long run for sure.
Keep up the great work!
I use weed/landscape barriers as a base for the "pea stone gravel" on top, for the walkways between my raised beds. Not in the garden itself. The landscape barriers work very well too to block any weeds coming up in the stone walkway.
So, I first dug out about 3 inches of soil evenly in the walkway area (about 3 feet wide), then pounded it flat using an 8×8" steel tamper. Then I placed down the landscape barrier fabric careful to add some overlap up over the edges before cutting it. I secured the fabric using "sod staples" every four inches. Then, before adding in the pea gravel to the walkway, I wanted to first clean off the stones.
The bags contain a kind of grimy, stone residue in it. I guess that's from the process of bagging and transporting the stones. If you add it to your walkway straightaway, there will be this grime on your shoes or feet for a while. So, I used a wheelbarrow and hose to take care of that. It takes a while but it's worth it. So, I cut open a couple bags and poured them into a metal wheel barrow, and then used a hose to fill the barrow with water so it rose over the stones. Then I agitated the stones with my hands, and poured out the dirty water slowly. (Be careful not to over-tilt the barrow as its kind of heavy and you'll pour out all the stones). I repeated this process a couple times until the water appeared clear.
Then, used a shovel to transfer the pea gravel atop the landscape barrier. Lots of shoveling, but it began to fill in. And it was well worth it. I have a bit of clay soil, so the hollow of the walkway lip held the pea gravel perfectly inside. Walking on it was firm but pleasant too. Especially barefoot. It was like a massage! It gave way a bit, but filled in as you walked. And after a rain, the pea gravel glistens.
This is great. I live in a forest in the Sierra Foothills. I just spent the the last two weeks extending my veggie garden clearing out blackberries and poison oak. Tomorrow I’m putting down hardware cloth to keep rodents out but knowing where I live, the blackberries and poison oak will come back. From what I get is that cardboard is a good one to keep them at bay. So I’ll start with that tomorrow and hopefully that will work. Should I put the cardboard down first or the wire?
Is this helpful in keeping underground pests like: moles, chipmunks etc. Out and away from messing/eating your plants/ flowers?
Basically just use the 40 year stuff or a tarp to Solarize and remove before planting
For my limited needs, I'm going to use the fabric. WHAT brand is that heavy duty stuff you said you used in the nursery?