I have an ancient yard chock full of bermuda grass and 75 years of misc planting (i have some creeping vines with trunks 4 inches thick!). to make a flower bed and ensure i don't keep fighting the same old weeds I took off the top 3 inches of bermuda grass filled soil. this basically took me down to the texas clay layer.

talking to the guy at the garden shop, we came up with the idea of putting down landscape fabric followed by 2" of soil followed by 2-3" of mulch. this way the new plants would have soil to grow into but the deep seated weeds and plants below it would never grow through it. my plan is to cut a whole in the landscape fabric (below the 2" of soil) when i plant new plants.

now that i've been researching on the web i have not seen this approach referenced anywhere and i'm wondering if it's still such a good idea?

any thoughts? experiences?

thanks,

rob rojustic@cisco.com

-- robert justice (rojustic@cisco.com), April 21, 2001

Answers

Response to should i put soil *over* landscape fabric?

I've done that before and it worked fine. I did get tired of buying landscape cloth and now only use that for very nasty spots. Now I just put down a thick layer of newspaper, then mulch about 2 feet and let it sit for a year. If anything comes up through the newspaper, I just re-paper and mulch that spot after pulling that plant. I've had very good luck with this approach. I don't bother putting soil on the top because the mulch breaks down enough that I have soil by the next year. For mulch I use fresh soiled bedding because the fresh manure will burn any plants that manage to come up through the paper.

-- Sheryl Adams (radams@sacoriver.net), April 21, 2001.

Robert, when we lived in central Arkansas, I had the same problem and nearly gave up gardening all together. One year, we were given a piece of UV stable plastic that the donor had used as a pool cover. We used it to solarize the soil, putting it down in mid April and taking it up Memorial Day weekend. It killed off the Bermuda in that spot for over a year before the grass started invading. We repeated the proceedure every year we were there in our vegetable garden with good results. Sadly, it wouldn't work in a perennial bed obviously and Bermuda loves growing up through a mulch that would stop any anything else. To this day, I hate the stuff.

-- marilyn (rainbow@ktis.net), April 22, 2001.

In East Texas here. If you put any soil over the landscape fabric the runners on the bermuda will just grow on this soil. If you use it just under your mulch, though it will kill most of the bermuda, wherever you punch holes through the fabric to plant, the bermuda will need to be weeded out of these holes also. This was the biggest reason we always gardened in raised beds, and even 12 inches above the grass, in the very corners of the beds where the soil doesn't really get packed down, the bermuda runners would have to be pulled periodically. And of course if you mow your lawns with the grass long enough that it has seed heads, these seeds will blow into your beds and germinate also. Between fireants and grass.............Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), April 22, 2001.

I have used it to line the sides of my planters before, but not 'under' soil. Your idea seems like it would work - but only for a year or so... Reason is that the fabric will rot.

My folks got talked into using tar paper one year (before all this stuff came out). Even with the thickness and chemicals - weeds came through by the third year.

-- Sue Diederich (willow666@rocketmail.com), April 23, 2001.

Hi Rob! I use the method you described only with black plastic. It does wear out but it is a sinch to pull up. I had a jungle of weeds around my garden so I put down a cheep black plastic from (Walmart) that was about $3-4 for a 25'roll. It will warm the earth, hopefully cook the weed seeds, and I can cut a hole in it and plant. It worked great last year and kept the weeds down around all the plants. You can move the tarp over a patch of weeds and it will compost it. :-) I do put down some compost under the new tarp in the spring, and make sure you have enough drain holes in the low areas so there is no standing water. This year is year three on one of the "tarps" and it is pretty battered up. I throw a shovel of dirt on and some straw here and there to weight it down. Rocks along the edge or more dirt. We had 60-75 mph winds last week and the tarp is still down. I have added another two tarps it has worked so well. ~Brenda~

-- Brenda (brenclark@alltel.net), April 24, 2001.

Dear Rob, let me tell you the bad news about lanscape fabric. I recently volunteered to help the garden at a musium in southern Ark. and I had to deal with this fabric. You see they had put this out in all the planting beds and covered it with mulch many years ago. We had to take this all out so other things can be planted. At least that was the idea we had completly cleaned out one bed, it took us 20 hrs. of hard labor to take it out. I would suggest that you think very carefully about this unless you never plan to remove it and who knows what you might want to do in your lanscape. It is very, very hard to remove later on. I hope this helps you.

-- Wynema (nemad_72039@yahoo.com), April 24, 2001.