Should you invest time in weeding or money into expensive barriers?

Every season all the gardeners out there swear that this year is going to be different. This is the year we’re going to stay on top of the weeds and not let them get out of control. In fact we might even lessen the number of weeds for next year by carefully digging each and every one out by the root. No haphazard pulling out of frustration this year! And every year it turns out we were just lying to ourselves again. While weeding is and always will be a necessary part of gardening it’s no one’s favourite part. In fact in just a few hours and weeks every year most of us are over it yet again.

I’m a big advocate of taking the considerable amount of time to install very high quality barriers under mulch once and barely weeding at all going forward for the foreseeable future. You might be thinking that even a double layer of landscaping cloth breaks down in just a few years and plastic though effective will strangle a garden by depriving it of water. And if that were the only choice available to Gardners now I would say that you are right!

While it’s not an entirely new product geotextiles are making a big splash in the gardening world as of late. Geotextiles were originally developed as drainage and stability cloths in the excavation world and have performed well in that field over the last 15- 20 years. One excavator operator I regularly work with says that when he happens to dig them up a decade later they look the exact same as when they were installed 15 years ago!

Over the last few gardening seasons I’ve started using a non-woven felt-like geotextile instead of professional landscaping cloth in my work. It is usually available only to contractors from wholesalers and must be purchased in rolls over 350 feet long. The cost per square foot is approximately triple that of a good quality traditional black landscaping cloth I believe it to be worth it.

When installing it there is no need to weed a garden except about a foot from the edge and around the base of plants where there will be a hole in the cloth. Mulch can be applied on top to hide it. Geotextiles are very permeable to water (their original use was drainage after all) and most weeds will not grow through. It will control goutweed, clover, dandelions and almost another weed although I have seen horsetail grow through. After installation a gardener will only have to weed the edges of a garden and potentially around the base of plants. It should take your weeding time down from several hours a week to several hours a summer! If weeds to grow in the much on top of the cloth over time they will fail to really take root and will be easy to pull. The geotextile will probably last longer than the much on top and can be reused when it’s time for the mulch to be replaced!

As great a weed solution as geotextiles are they aren’t appropriate for installation in every scenario. It might not be the perfect solution for you in these cases:

• A multi season garden such as one with bulbs.
• When you are only managing a very small space.
• If you plan to rework the garden year after year leading to many holes in the cloth.
• In a garden that is so heavily planted that it is just not feasible to instal barriers around every plant.
• Where mulch and mature plants are already doing a great job of controlling weeds.

There are several types of geotextile available from drainage, stabilization, load distribution under pavers and only some are appropriate for use as a permanent replacement for landscaping cloth. It is often not available to the public for purchase and must comes in quantities that makes it hard to use for homeowners. If you’re sick and tired of constant weeding it might just be worth it to hire a landscaper and get back some of your summertime!