weedcloth?

Hello again,

I forgot to ask in my last post - what are your experiences with using weed cloth under the bed? If you use it, what type? I am going to have soil about 10 inches deep. I have already weeded out the spot I'm going to use.

Thank you for any advice!

lavamom wrote:what are your experiences with using weed cloth under the bed? If you use it, what type?

Hello Lavamom, I have been putting weedcloth under my boxes. I have one box with a plywood bottom and I put the weedcloth inside the box. Not sure that made any sense but I did it. In another area, I put heavy cardboard down to smother anything that was left in the area where the boxes go. Then I covered the cardboard with weedcloth before I put the bottomless boxes over the spot.

I've used two kinds of cloth. One is a woven fiber material the other a plastic kind of thing with mini holes throughout for drainage. I prefer the fiber material but for me it is all in what I can find. Both of them were labeled as landscapers cloth and/or weed cloth.

Hope this helps a little.

Thank you for the input! I think I am going to go ahead and try newspaper. I found some weedcloth, and almost bought it - but I have spent so much on wood and soil that I decided to cut this corner. A hundred years ago I am sure old newspaper worked just fine, so why not now. I read somewhere here that someone used about 20 sheets. I will probably poke some holes too.

Thanks again -

i used newspaper under a bed last year worked great, 20 or so sheets the worms loved it, forgot to put holes in.it drained fine. lots of luck & fun

Aloha from the Hamakua coast of the Big Island!

I'm using a 6' wide roll of black woven plastic weed mat, bought at a nursery supply store. I hate weeds so much (especially the clumping monkey grass, or elephant grass) that I first sprayed with Round up, let the grass and weeds die, then I put a double layer of the cloth! Nothing is coming from underneath

The 6' wide roll allows me to have 4' wide beds whose sides are also protected from weeds, since the weed cloth extends beyond the edges of the beds. I put paving stones to hold the weed mat down, outside of the framed beds.

Great success!

I've learned that good site preparation prevents headaches later (and disappointments).

Have fun!

Nadine

Well if I had it to do over again, I would do something like you described Nadine. The weeds have already started coming up, and it's been barely a month. I can just imagine what the end of summer will bring. I would say definitely use a weed barrier here.

I used cardboard wrapped in weed cloth and it has worked very well. Some of it extends beyond the box and I like that a lot for keeping back the weeds that pass for grass in our yard and will delibrately form a perimeter like that with future boxes.

That sounds like a good approach, especially the extending of the perimeter. I think that is what got me, invaders from beyond SFG Land. I can't bear to think about emptying my SFG to do correct this - but that may be what I have to do next summer. Sigh.

I'm hoping this will work. My ground is VERY hard to work with because an inch or less under the grass is almost solid pebbles and stones. (We're by a creek in the mountains.) I have lots of boxes because we recently moved so I'm just going to leave the grass there and put cardboard on top. That should kill the grass. Then I'll put weedcloth on top of the cardboard and the box on top of that. For some of my boxes I will be putting down the cardboard, then a pallet on top of that to protect from underground critters. I'll put the box on the pallet but will have weedcloth between the box and the pallet to hold the MM in. Hopefully my ideas will work. Getting the pallets today and setting my garden up. So eager to get my plants transplanted and the gardens going.

On another thought, we had a huge thunder/hail storm last night and I'm hoping my plants (which are outside, hardened off and waiting to be planted) didn't sustain damage. I wanted to bring them in out of the storm but it was lightening so bad, when I went out to try to protect the plants in some way, I came back in because it was just too dangerous being out there. Well, I had too many plants growing anyway so if I lost 1 or 2, I can live with it.

Bec

I've used Easy Gardner Weedblock from Ace (they sell at other stores too). That stuff is garbage. Within 2 weeks, nut grass punctured right through it! It'll probably keep most things down, but nut grass has that sharp pointy end. This stuff is made of thin nylon(?) or something. You'll need thicker woven fabric if you want 100% protection.

I like the cardboard under weedcloth idea. Maybe I'll go triple protection next time with newspaper, cardboard and weedcloth.

BTW, don't ever use carpet, as mentioned in the book. My gf's grandfather laid down carpet in the entire yard. They never decompose. We spent hours prying it off of the ground. Since they semi-decompose, there are bits of carpet everywhere. We'll never be able to pick all of them up.