BIGGEST Weed Fabric MISTAKES We’ve Made!

hey everybody Welcome Back To Living Traditions Homestead we're out in the garden area today because we have a serious topic to talk to you guys about and that is our woven ground cover we have been using this ground cover or weed fabric whatever you want to call it for over 5 years now we've learned a lot from you from using it and we want to share some of that with you today now we started using this again a little over 5 years ago because after we moved here to Missouri we realized that the weeds here are just completely out of control and that way too much of our time was being spent pulling weeds instead of concentrating on our garden now we have used so many ways to try to suppress weeds before starting to use this woven weed fabric we used Back to Eden gardening we used lasagna gardening all of those ways that have been popular over the years to keep the weeds down and you guys they just didn't work for us and we were just just so frustrated so if you want to get the enjoyment back into gardening we highly recommend that you use ground cover like this because uh you guys you can spend your time picking vegetables concentrating on your plants and not spend much time at all during the season uh picking weeds or worrying about how quickly the weeds are growing so today we want to go over some of the top mistakes that many people make when using woven weed fabric or this ground cover just like this the first mistake that people make when using woven ground cover or weed fabric is assuming that all weed fabric is created equal this could not be further from the truth you guys the stuff that you buy at like Walmart or Home Depot Lowe's any of the big box stores is not the same as a good professional grade landscape fabric or weed barrier the stuff that we use is made by a company called dwit we're not not sponsored by them but I can tell you this is the best we've ever used this is a woven ground cover if the stuff that you buy has felt on the back on the back of it or is a solid type material that is not what you want and you don't want to put that in your garden the fact that this is woven is what makes it so special it acts like a mulch it allows air and water to still go through it and even In the Heat of the summer you guys the soil will be cooler underneath this weed fa fabric than it is uh out where there's just bare soil that's what makes this so great this is like a 3.2 o fabric it works great you guys don't assume that the stuff that you get at the box stores is the same as this now luckily this type of material has become much easier to get over the last few years when we first started using it you could really only get it from like professional landscaping companies or agricultural companies but today you can get it from places like grower Solutions you can get it on Amazon you guys and if you get this kind of stuff the woven ground cover uh this stuff is so Universal as you can see we're using it right now to keep weeds from growing in our raised beds over the winter we've also got it down on the ground to prevent weeds from growing up during the summer and in the past you've seen that we've used it also to grow directly through in our Gardens you guys this stuff will save you so much time and effort in the garden if you use the correct kind now even though this type of weed fabric might cost a little bit more than the stuff you buy at the big box stores uh I can tell you this we've got some of this that is five or 6 years old that is still going strong so this may be a little more expensive up front but if you get the good quality stuff it will last you a long time I'm guessing we're going to get at least 10 years out of some of our original pieces of this weed fabric the next mistake a lot of people make are not using long enough landscape staples and not using enough of them now most of the landscape staples that are available for purchase in the big box stores are only about 4 in but you want to use the professional landscape staples that are at least 6 in they do come in longer landscape staples a minimum of 6 in are what you're wanting while I have this landscape staple out here you can see that it's a little bit Rusty just as a side note the rusty landscape staples actually grip the ground better uh and so we prefer to have them that are a little bit older because they they go in they grip the ground and they grip the landscape fabric better that's just a little tip the other thing about landscape staples that I said is not using enough of them now you can see right here on our landscape fabric that there is a big gap here and it creates space underneath here where the sun can get underneath there and I tell you that even though there is a 6 in overlap underneath here the sun still goes under there and the wind makes it go up and down not only is there a risk that the wind will get up here and pull your other landscape staples out but the sun will make things grow weeds will grow underneath here they'll grow underneath here and then pop out and start growing all over here this is a mistake we have made obviously we're making that mistake right now so we will need to before summer before spring gets here go back and uh put landscape staples on all of these edges where this is popping up like this because we don't want the weeds and they will surely grow here the next big mistake that a lot of people make is not investing in a good torch to cut your weed fabric or to make holes in it a lot of people don't want to invest in a torch even though one of these is only about $15 on Amazon and instead they choose to use a scissors or a knife to cut the landscape fabric this is a big mistake because like I said earlier this weed fabric is woven which means if you just cut it with something like a scissors or a knife it's going to fray once it starts to fray it's really hard to stop that from happening and it's going to greatly diminish the lifespan of your weed fabric so you can see like here where we cut ours down at the end we use a butane torch we go ahead and we cut cut it off the roll and what that does is it melts the edges of the weed fabric as it's cutting this prevents all of it from fraying uh and it will give you a nice long lifespan now we need to go back because we cut this and then we put down our our landscape timbers here we'll go back here before the growing season starts and we're actually going to cut this off right at the edge of our uh landscape timbers that way we can weed eat and everything around the edge of the garden but you guys you absolutely in my opinion need to be cutting this stuff with a torch or something else that will melt it and burn it as you cut it because it will give you a much longer lifespan out of your weed fabric now another mistake that we've actually made is to put the weed fabric down on top of freshly tilled dirt the reason you don't want to put it down on freshly tilled ground is because the soil is so loose that the landscape staples don't have anything really to grab into it's so easy for some wind to get underneath there and pick that landscape fabric up and you know your Staples just don't do anything putting down the weed fabric is a big enough job the way it is but to have the next morning to come out and have it all pulled up because a big wind came and pulled it all up that is a huge mistake and it's a huge disappointment so we recommend that if you're going to be tilling your soil before you put your weed fabric down wait to put the weed fabric down until a couple days after a nice rain that allows the soil to settle back down and it gives your landscape staples something to grip onto and also like I said before make sure you put plenty of Staples the next mistake is another one that we made several times when we used to grow directly in the ground through the weed fabric what we would do is we would lay down our entire Garden area full of weed fabric and then we would burn holes where we wanted to put our plants and this worked very very well but some years we didn't use all of the rows that we had holes burned in so the mistake was that we didn't cover up the unused holes it doesn't seem like a big deal in the spring because nothing much is growing and you're putting all of your plants in on on the other rows but if you leave one row with nothing in it you guys the amount of weeds that can grow through just like a small hole like a 3-in hole in your weed fabric by the Fall is unbelievable and it looks like you have nothing down at all you guys I have seen weeds we've come out to the Garden or near our Greenhouse where we have landscape fabric as well and you might see a weed that's like this big around and you start to pick that weed and you guys it's coming through a hole maybe the size of the tip of my finger sometimes not even that big it might just be the hole where a staple used to be and you've got this humongous weed growing through that hole now we've talked to quite a few people either that have come to see us at the farmers market or that we meet in our everyday lives and they'll tell us you know what we tried that weed fabric but the weeds just grew right through it you guys I'm telling you this the only way that the weeds can come through this weed fabric from the bottom up is if there is a hole in the fabric and that is not a downside of the fa fabric that is something that either we've created ourselves by making a hole and then not covering it up or by there being a staple that came out or something like that but the weeds will not grow through the fabric unless you give them a spot to grow through the fabric now the only exception to that is once again is if you bought the lower quality fabric from one of the big box stores that stuff might not even last an entire season and we have seen weeds grow directly through that fabric because the sun breaks it down throughout the summer and you guys it just starts to fall apart that's not what we're talking about again we're talking about professional Grade weed fabric the next mistake that we've made that I'm hoping we can help prevent you from making is allowing any kind of dirt or growing material to just kind of hang out on top of your weed fabric Now Kevin was talking about how weeds can or the possibilities of it growing from the underneath the fabric up through the fabric but now I'm going to be talking about giving an environment on top of the weed fabric for weed seeds to grow germinate and then grow through the weed fabric down we have seen the tiniest bit of accumulation of soil like this even much smaller than this it gets rained on it gets wet and then a weed seed blows onto it it germinates and creates you know the the root system on top of or sometimes even through the weed fabric fabric and that's how you can get weeds growing on your weed fabric so the mistake is allowing this dirt and any kind of growing medium to accumulate on your weed fabric we need to sweep this off of here before Springtime comes and at the end of the season when we're pulling out plants and dirt flies everywhere we need need we need to be cleaning that up because it provides a perfect environment for weeds to start on top of your weed fabric now the final mistake that we see people make with this woven ground cover and you guys this is a big one it is is that they want to cover over the weed fabric with something like mulch or bark or peag gravel or something like that so that you can't see the weed fabric and while we agree that that makes it look nicer you guys if you put something like Mulch on top of this weed fabric and over time that mulch starts to break down and turn into soil guess what you've now created basically a perfect place for weeds and other things to start to grow right on top of the weed fabric this weed fabric is not some magic thing that prevents all stuff from growing uh you're suppressing the weeds that are underneath it but you guys if you put dirt on top of it even just an inch or so you're going to basically create a miniature raised bed garden right on top of the weed fabric now pea gravel isn't going to break down into soil right but what happens with Messy gardeners like me uh you know I'm I'm planting and dirt comes out or I'm taking plants out at the end of the season and dirt comes out on pea gravel there's really no way to sweep that up right so you're over time you're accumulating all of that dirt mixed in with your gravel right exactly and then weed seeds or let's face it seeds from your raised bed gardens or or your other plants just germinate in that soil and create Weeds on top of your weed fabric right so even though we agree it would look much nicer to have this covered with something uh you guys if you really want to prevent most of the weeds from occurring you've got to leave it so that you can see the weed fabric and be able to sweep up all of the excess growing medium that might land on top of it so you you guys this weed fabric has really been a game changer for us with gardening right what used to be something that we dreaded because of all the time and energy spent weeding in the hot summer it has really been eliminated and it just allows us to enjoy gardening and producing food for our family so much more than we didn't when we didn't have this weed fabric down and just had to weed all summer long right and even though if you're using it to grow directly through it might a little more work at the beginning of the Season you guys I would rather do a couple of extra hours of work in the springtime when the weather is nice and cool than to have to be out here all summer long picking weeds in the heat when it gets to Summertime you guys the only thing that I want to be picking are tomatoes and I want to be putting them directly into my belly you guys so we hope that this really helped you out this has been a tremendous blessing for us to be using weed fabric and we hope it is for you as well hey if you're enjoying videos like this we sure hope that you will hit that subscribe button before you go don't forget to give this video a thumbs up and if you're enjoying our Channel please remember that the absolute best way that you can help us is just by sharing our videos on your social media so that others might enjoy them as well you guys thank you so much for spending some time with us today out in the garden we are so anxious for gardening season to start up again uh it sure seems like it's a far way off but we know it'll be here in no time thanks for stopping by the homestead take care and God bless God bless

Channel: Living Traditions Homestead

Views: 209,418

Keywords: Living Traditions Homestead, Missouri, Ozark's, homesteading, Ozarks, self-sufficient, homesteaders, unjobbing

Id: A_sExBiy8ss

Length: 15min 33sec (933 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 02 2024