weed suppressing membrane

[Urban Fox]

I am slowly working my way along the plot - digging and removing as much of the couch grass and bindweed roots as I can find.

Next I want to cover with a weed suppressing membrane. Trouble is the really good stuff which is woven and lets moisture in - is expensive.

My (half) plot is 6m x15m - now I don't need to cover every square inch

But I was wondering - would something like this be OK.

http://www.screwfix.com/p/black-membran ... x-4m/59191

or can anyone suggest an alternative.

all the best

Christina

[peter]

Old carpet.

[Nature's Babe]

There can be a chemical component in old carpet, not sure but I think its the flameproofing, it's made worse in fact dangerous if you burn it.

[sincerity]

Most societies/ councils have banned the use of old carpets on allotments. In fact a number of previously recommended practices have since been banned e.g. use of tyres, use of railway sleepers. Stricter rules on health and safety and EU directives on pesticides/ herbicides have all had an impact in recent years. If you have come across some older books on organic gardening, their advice could now be out of date. I have also heard concerns about use of copper based preparations, due to rising levels of copper in ground samples - I wondered if the life of copper fungicides will be limited.

[peter]

As I have previously stated elsewhere on the forum, at length, NEW carpet has more chemical payload than old, source Greenpeace and you should ventilate for some weeks post installation.
Old carpet is better, unless you believe the hyped up marketing pitch of various US steam cleaning companies, who would have you believe they are a toxic disaster, contaminated by that dirty outside air and the soles of your shoes where you walked to the shops & back picking up minute traces of asphalt.
The worst carpet is all wool as it rots so fast you cannot remove it, an artificial carpet is pretty much coloured, tufted woven membrane. Just don't leave it down longer than a year, even if that means rolling it up and out again on the same day.

If you lie on your carpet, let babies & toddlers play on it,.........

Copper is bad if overused, as French wine growers found out historically. :

[Geoff]

If you can't find anything free like carpet or cardboard some of the LBS products are cheaper than the Screwfix and probably better.
http://www.lbsgardenwarehouse.co.uk/Gro ... EDCONTROL/

[FelixLeiter]

I'd definitely plump for the LBS product. The ScrewFix stuff is purely for buildings. It doesn't let moisture through, which leads to puddles, and water being shed to the edges, which can result in a boggy marsh where you don't want one.
I've used old carpet a few times in the past and it's a pain to dispose of. It's heavy to start with, and even heavier once it's wet. It can disintegrate in all sorts of unpredictable ways: rubber backing can disintegrate into horrible little black fragments, fibres get horribly entangled as they unravel (some rot and others don't). The tufts can end up persisting where you don't want them to, also. And it's often not really very weed proof. Once you get weed rhizomes tangled up in it, it's a slippery slope.
The LBS Phormisol will be a good investment. It lasts for years.

[Urban Fox]

Hi Rupert

I did a lot of searching around for a good deal as I needed a lot of the weed suppressing membrane. In the end I bought it from theses guys

http://www.scotplantsdirect.co.uk/weed- ... at_30.html

I got the 50m X1m roll - which was loads. In fact I still have some left over.

First of all I had a serious bindweed and couch grass problem - I also have tough perrenial thistles. So I did use glyphosate (Roundup) to get on top of it. This takes about a month to really get deep into the roots. Once everything was brown and dead - I started digging. slowly and methodically. Whenever I found white roots of the couch and bindweed still alive I placed in in a seperate pile for burning - the ash was scattered on the plot and compost heap (so not wasted). Anything else went on the compost heap. Remember any small piece of root left behind makes a new plant - so do not rotovate and don't try and compost it.

Next - I measured up.

I laid down cardboard for my paths (50cm wide) and then folded the membrane in half (lengthways) to cover the cardboard paths. My growing beds are all 1m wide - which makes it easy to reach everything from the paths....and also the reason why I bought the 1m wide membrane.

I also bough some fixing pegs from Scots Plants

http://www.scotplantsdirect.co.uk/plast ... _1435.html

They do work but they are a bu**er to remove if you want to recycle the membrane. You have to make a bigger slit to get them out. So, next time I would buy those metal U shaped fixing pegs - much easier to remove.

I did grow a few things in the first year. But mostly I stayed patient and kept a lot of the plot covered.

I haven't won the battle yet - but I'm now on top of the problem. If the beds are not being used - I keep them covered. on an allotment there are a lot of annual weed seeds blowing about. So covering the soil reduces their ability to get into the soil. Next year I hope to use more green manure (Phacalia)

http://www.organiccatalogue.com/p398/PH ... _info.html

It will act as a weed suppressant - the bees love it and finally it will go in the compost heap.

Now the weather has warmed up the bindweed is growing again - This time it is easier to get in the trowel and just remove it. If it is coming from under my paths - that's not so easy - So I am going to follow Helen Yemms advice (The Gardening Telegraph)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/ga ... weeds.html

let it grow up a bamboo cane and then zap it with more glyphosate. She used to make her own glyphosate gel - by adding wallpaper paste to the solution. But this is illegal now to make your own - and anyway you can buy it ready made.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Roundup-Ready-U ... glyphosate

the gel is good for individual plants - as it doesn't splash on the things you want to keep.

Christina

[robo]

I bought a roll of flebay, not impressed at all with it I planted all my onions through it they hardly grew at all ,I removed it 2 weeks ago the ground was covered in weeds , the onions since have grown since removing it on average about 3 inches

[Urban Fox]

>>>I removed it 2 weeks ago the ground was covered in weeds >>>

weeds will still grow under a weed suppressing membrane - but they should be weaker because they won't be getting any light. In fact it is normal to cover the fabric with a mulch so that so little light gets in that the weeds are too feeble to penetrate.

>>>I planted all my onions through it they hardly grew at all <<<

was it a woven fabric? If it is just a plastic sheet the rain won't get through to the soil and your onions would suffer.

The stuff I used was a woven plastic fabric - so the rain still gets through.

Christina

[Colin Miles]

Glad this has resurfaced as yesterday I just started redoing my fruit cage - the old one collapsed due to not removing top netting and in any case was too small and bending. Have had weed suppressing stuff down which sort of works, but weeds, especially grasses, eventually grow on top.

The suggestion of a mulch on top of the membrane - what kind of mulch would work best?

[Colin Miles]

Following on from my last post, LBS recommend 2ins of bark over the membrane - ok. But has anyone any idea of how good the B&Q commercial fabric is
http://www.diy.com/nav/garden/garden-care-watering/pest-weed-control/landscaping_fabric/Commercial-Landscape-Fabric-12M-1M-11907612?skuId=12418318 or what it's actual spec is?

[peter]

All, Rupert was a spammer and has been banned.

Sadly the majority of posters whose grasp of english syntax appears shakey and wuo make posts with little gardening speak in them, tend to make a handful of posts, then a while later will add an advertising link to their signature as they make one or two more posts.

This will get them banned and their posts expunged.

[Flanjamin]

If you are using the woven membrane as a permanent fixture, for instance around fruit, you will find that couch grass can spear it's way through it, and grass will creep across from the edges. So some kind of extra layer is a good plan, although you still need to be vigilant - it isn't a fit and forget solution.

For clearing ground and/or keeping ground in good heart until you can use it the woven membrane is ideal, and with care will last for years.The metal staples are best for securing it but they do tend to disappear and turn up in the tines of your rotavator at the most inconvenient time!

[appsy]

Yeah as Flanjamin just said, weed can sometimes get through the fabric or can sit on top. I rake regularly and that means that i see no weeds. Worth doing every now and again.