[shokkyy]

Now that things are starting to quieten down a bit, I want to have a blitz with weed fabric so I can reduce the weeding burden, which is well over the top at the moment. I've never really used it before, so have some questions that I'm hoping someone can help me with.

I've got a long bed of fruit bushes which is murderous to keep weeded. I'd really like to be able to put some weed fabric down all along this bed. I'll have to cut it for the standing bushes, but rather than doing a hole I was going to cut across and do an overlap, so I've covered right up to the stem of each bush. I'll then cover the whole thing with a mulch of manure or leaf mould or whatever I can find. What I'm aiming for is a semi-permanent weed barrier, so in future years I don't have to do anything but top up the mulch. Will this work? Will they get enough nutrition from a manure mulch sitting on top of the fabric? And what gsm of fabric should I go for?

I also want to put weed fabric on my 4'X8' veggie beds and plant through it, to minimise weeding. Should this be the same gsm or lighter? These beds will need more feeding than the fruit bushes, which I normally do through the growing season with BFB, but will that go through the fabric?

I also want to use the fabric on the broken up concrete that surrounds my veggie beds, which is currently infested with weeds. It will be a bit of a jigsaw puzzle cos I can't easily move the beds out of the way to do it, but it's the best I can do. I was then going to cover this with gravel. What gsm should this be?

And on the beds, do I still need to peg the fabric down if it's covered with a mulch, or will the mulch be enough to keep it in place? Obviously I can't peg on the broken up concrete, but the gravel should hold that in place.

[daisy1990]

work on the basis that weeds will grow in the smallest space if they get light.  The thicker the fabric the more light is excluded (but the less pliable the fabric so you may not get as close up to the stem as you would with a thinner material_. Stones work well to secure the fabric (depending on how windy the site is, mulch can easily be dislodged and digging birds/animals can make matters more difficult.  The ideal situation is to put a thich membane down, cut crosses in it and plant through the cros and immediately replace the membrane (but life is rarely perfect and whatever you do will be easier on the back than weeding!)
Daisy

[shokkyy]

work on the basis that weeds will grow in the smallest space if they get light.  The thicker the fabric the more light is excluded (but the less pliable the fabric so you may not get as close up to the stem as you would with a thinner material_. Stones work well to secure the fabric (depending on how windy the site is, mulch can easily be dislodged and digging birds/animals can make matters more difficult.  The ideal situation is to put a thich membane down, cut crosses in it and plant through the cros and immediately replace the membrane (but life is rarely perfect and whatever you do will be easier on the back than weeding!)
Daisy

Thanks, Daisy. But what about feeding through the membrane? Will BFB get through it, and tomato feed?

[waddecar]

If you use an organic mulch over a membrane the mulch will rot down and create the perfect weed seed bed - back to aquare one - trust me i have that problem now

[shokkyy]

If you use an organic mulch over a membrane the mulch will rot down and create the perfect weed seed bed - back to aquare one - trust me i have that problem now

So basically there's no point using weed fabric unless you either cover it with gravel or don't cover it at all - is that what you're saying?

[Yorkie]

Weed fabric is great, as long as it is sufficiently robust / thick for the job.  There's just not a lot of point in adding a mulch on top if you want the mulch to enrich the soil beneath the fabric.  If the purpose of the mulch is to protect the fabric, then that's fine but there will still be annual weeds to keep an eye on.

[shokkyy]

Weed fabric is great, as long as it is sufficiently robust / thick for the job.  There's just not a lot of point in adding a mulch on top if you want the mulch to enrich the soil beneath the fabric.  If the purpose of the mulch is to protect the fabric, then that's fine but there will still be annual weeds to keep an eye on.

Thanks, Yorkie. What about BFB, would that penetrate weed fabric so I can feed without moving it? Cos if I can't feed at all without taking the fabric off, I don't think it would really be very useful except under paths.

[Yorkie]

I don't really know for sure.

I guess that it will dissolve in rain / watering, and thus percolate through the fabric to the soil below.  My hunch is that it won't be as effective as if applied directly to the soil but won't be pointless.

[daisy1990]

I use liquid feed and foliar spray feed to overcome the problem.  The fabric is permeable to water so anything that is liquid will seep through.  I would definately use it again in the right conditions (large area with permanent planting that is prone to weeds)

[Kristen]

For permanently planted "crops" (e.g. the hedges here) I lift one side of the weed fabric and put manure mulch under it once a year. Bit tedious.

I have put fertilizer granules on top of the membrane to be washed in by the rain, which does work, but they run around on top of the membrane, find the "gullies" in it, and then if the membrane balloons with a wind blowing over it the granules all get turfed off.  Would be better to get the fertilizer under the membrane, but that would be tedious several-times-a-year.

Might be OK with granules on top if the membrane is weighed down with Gravel or Bark perhaps


I think making a "join" at each point where there is a plant, assuming the plants are only a couple of feet apart, will leave you with lots of 2' bits of membrane that are hard to anchor down. Where plants were already established we either made cross-slits and gently teased the plants through them, or for bigger plants we made a cut half-way across the width of the membrane, put around the plant, and then bunched up the membrane so that the two cut edges overlapped (and there was a pleat on the uncut side).

[shokkyy]

Where plants were already established we either made cross-slits and gently teased the plants through them, or for bigger plants we made a cut half-way across the width of the membrane, put around the plant, and then bunched up the membrane so that the two cut edges overlapped (and there was a pleat on the uncut side).

Yes, that's what I was thinking of in my fruit bush bed. I thought if I did that then dumped a load of mulch (manure, leaf mould, whatever) on top it would anchor everything down and leach a bit of nutrition down through the fabric. However, if I then end up having to constantly weed the mulch that's a bit of an exercise in futility, really. And if nutrition can't go down through weed fabric effectively, it's a non-starter for the veggie beds too.

I'm beginning to think weed fabric really only becomes significantly useful underneath a gravel path or driveway.

[bigben]

I am planning on doing using it with fruit bushed and thought that you could make disks of cardboard with slits and slide these on from one direction and the weed fabric from the other so they cut down more of the places for the weeds to peek thru. If you want to be really thorough then one disc from each direction leaving just a tight hole, then slide on the fabric to hold down the cardboard. Once a year lift the fabric, add fertiliser and replace the fabric. Renew the cardboard when you need to.

[crh75]

The only time I have used weed supressing fabric was to plant onion sets through.  This worked very well. The black fabric heated the soil up and they grew well quickly. I did not feed them as I have added all the nutient I needed to the soil before.  However, I also planted similar sets straight in the ground and although slower to start with the final onions were similar.  If you keep on top of the weeding (hoeing every 1-2 weeks in summer) then weeding is not too much of a bother.

Personally I would not use it for fruit bushes as I think it would be more hassel than it is worth. Hoeing round the fruit bushes every few weeks takes no time!

I am considereing using some for strawberries though. I see lots of other people doing this and I think it would be a lot easier than straw, but straw does look nicer (my dilemma!)