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Landscaping issues
ThornMartin
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
My wife and I recently purchased our first home. It is a bit of a fixer upper especially when it comes to the yard. Our yard is tiered in the back, we would like to make the bottom most tier a flower bed, however it is proving difficult because the previous home owners laid weed barrier fabric and after years of neglect in some areas the fabric is exposed and in some areas it is buried by several inches of soil with well rooted grass on top of that. In addition, grass and weeds roots have grown through the fabric.
So here are my questions:
1) Can you lay weed barrier fabric over grass and weeds?
2) Should we remove the existing fabric before laying new barrier fabric?
2.a.) If so, is there any trick to removing existing fabric, as it's difficult because of the weight of the soil in some areas.
3) If we were to rent a power tiller, can we till through the existing barrier fabric?
Thanks.
So here are my questions:
1) Can you lay weed barrier fabric over grass and weeds?
2) Should we remove the existing fabric before laying new barrier fabric?
2.a.) If so, is there any trick to removing existing fabric, as it's difficult because of the weight of the soil in some areas.
3) If we were to rent a power tiller, can we till through the existing barrier fabric?
Thanks.
ThornMartin on
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2. Don't wory about it.
3. Absolutely do not do this unless you want to pay for repairs on the tiller. While there's a slight chance it'll work, it'll more likely wrap the fabric around the blades and bind it up so tight it'll have to be cut off.
Rip it all up. Weeds and dirt clods and all. Anything that hangs onto the fabric, it goes in the dumpster too. Then, you want to consider if you actually want to put down more barrier. Plenty a wonderful landscaping has been accomplished with no barrier to weeds. Take into consideration:
- A weed-barrier is only blocking weeds that would be coming up (and also seeds, but those are so abundantly produced every year that the few underground are in the minority of problems). Most weeds are little annual bastards that stake their surface claim in fall, sprout up in early spring before everything else, battle it out for nutrients over landscaping plants (well, seedlings and such), and are otherwise assholes*
- Some weed barrier cloths, well, suck. Despite claims, they don't allow water, or adequate amounts of, through. Along with gas exposure (which soil does do). In short, they fuck up with a soil's natural cycle, along with killing or severely reducing a soil's ecosystem (beneficial symbiotic fungus', worms, etc). Basically sterilizing the soil so that in the future event of wanting to plant there, you have to basically rejuvenate everything and this can take a year or two to get back in sync. Also, there's a possibility you may have to help rejuvenate things now, but if you've got loose dirt, not rotten smells, abundance of small, hairlike roots (or even better, faintly visible white 'hair' roots (which may actually be those aforementioned fungus' as well), you'll be in OK shape
- Weed barrier still takes maintenance. Got to keep mulch on top of it. It doesn't last forever, so you're looking at doing all this again in 5 - 15 years (you pay more for durability in the cloth)
- Plus you still need to keep surface seeds from popping up. Which you can do sans a barrier underneath.
Me, I go for a healthy landscape. Plants, when at their best, will out compete most weeds. Combined with occasional physical maintenance (eg, 'come here ya' bastard dandelion *rip*), maybe some periodic spray to keep weed seeds from germinating at all (labeled as a 'pre-emergent' ... ask your local garden center / nursery what they carry. Plus a bark mulch to keep things looking good (Personally, I say pass on the dyed shit. It never looks natural, it seems as natural and good for the soil as pouring a can of latex on your garden). If you have gaps between large landscape plants, either (A) fill them in with a ground cover plant / annual flower bed / more plants or (B) avoid watering and fertilizing there. Also, don't fertilize more than you need to, and that goes for synthetic or organic fertilizers. Excess just goes to the weeds.
Oh and a couple things I forgot: You want to kill a section of lawn? Lay down a few sheets of cardboard over it. Leave it for a few months, longer if you pull it up and still see any green. Some of it will be worm-digested, leaving you wonderful tiny piles of fertilizer. The rest you can rake away, and now you have somewhat virgin land.
And no, don't go through the barrier with a tiller. You'll just have strips of black shit in your soil for what seems like forever. Oh, and also possibly fuck up and pay out the ass for, a new tiller. Not fun.
*The exceptions are perennial weeds, which range from troublesome grasses (depending on your area), to just unwanted plants (hell, a rose can be a weed if you don't want it), or worse. Like sedge grasses. Those are a bitch.
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Serious machines for serious business
3DS FC: 4699-5714-8940 Playing Pokemon, add me! Ho, SATAN!
(and yes, it is a woven fabric not plastic.)
3DS FC: 4699-5714-8940 Playing Pokemon, add me! Ho, SATAN!
everything you do to the house you should be considering how it might affect the resale.
The nice thing about this method is all the components eventually break down into soil.
It's been about a 1 year 8 months since I planted a bunch of Vinca and Jasmine and with a minor amount of regular weeding (I check everytime I mow) the Vinca has taken over the entire bed and will likely take over most of the lawn under the tree in a few years (something I was hoping would happen). I did it for groundcover, but you could do it with other plantings.
You can use a fabric weedblock to do the same thing, but it may inhibit the plantings from spreading, particularly creepers that send out tendrils that want to root.
This right here is what you need to do. Pull that existing worthless "weed barrier" fabric and don't bother replacing it. The only thing that barrier plastic/cloth is good for is popping up in the most annoying and hard to re-cover way possible. A pre-emergent spray applied every year in the spring and spot treatment by either old fashioned pulling or using something like Round-Up is the best way to go as far as stopping weeds.