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Belgium

Next season after roto-tilling my patch i'm thinkin of covering the soil with black blankets (that stuff that lets water trough but keeps sunlight out). When the plants are vining remove them piece by piece for rooting the vines. All this i'm willing to do for weed-free soil. Did anyone tried this? Or is it a bad idea?

12/16/2004 12:24:09 PM

C N Y

it is the wave of the future.
i grew a 307-pounder on top of some weed-block fabric, which is like Typar, an incredibly strong, spun plastic or nylon fabric that is supposed to keep the weeds down.
it is grey, and unfortunately the weeds actually DID grow underneath it, causing some "swellings" in the patch area
where the weeds were growing under the fabric.

so that stuff might not be advisable, unless it is covered with a mulch to keep the light out entirely.
HOWEVER, the last couple of years on the exact same soil
i grew tomatoes. the stuff i used as a weed block fabric was called WeedBlock(TM) from Easy Gardener, maybe it would be easygardener.com, i don't know, but sounds likelyit is available at any major home center or garden place.

it is exactly what you are talking about.
i NEVER had any weeds in my tomato patch wherever the
fabric was. it was held down and stretched tight and overlapped at least a foot on each 4-foot wide piece
by fabric pegs, not staples, and i used a lot of them.

my intent last year was to cut a slit under each vine when it got long enough to have secondary rooting, place it against the exposed soil and then bury it with some other soil or compost, but i had a few too many plants and SEEMINGLY not enough time to do it all. i woulda had a 500-plus pounder had i done the burying! anyway, i had thought of this while i was planting and growing the tomatoes, and then Jack La Rue claimed at a seminar that he had grown a
500-600-pounder on top of black PLASTIC, no secondary rooting to speak of....hence, i tried it last year, and next year i will go Nesbitt and cover a 600-square foot area with the stuff, or two, if i can find it in a larger size than 4 feet wide!
good luck with it, and i hope others reading
this give it a shot as well. i'd better order some right now before the supply runs out from other growers! lol----eric

12/16/2004 2:19:31 PM

Cologne / Germany

WeedBlock is avaible over here, but the price is outstanding. If you plan to cover the whole patch - good night.
My basic concern would be on a hot sunny day that black stuff will heat up much and your plant could wilt more than without. I saw that before.
I used the stuff Jantje described and even found mold on top of the surface, right under the blankets. Personally I´m not going to use it again. I don´t think you can control the "breathing" of your soil pretty good. Okay for a single plant like tomato, difficult for a vining plant like a pumpkin. My plan for next year is to have some sort of raised soil beds following the vines. Better to control and to water.
Concerning the weeds - who said a patch is something you can manage without work? :)

12/16/2004 3:06:26 PM

Ohio

Only thing that would worry me about covering it like that would be the Bugs, like snails,they love dark places and pumpkin leaves, but you might not have to worry about that if it makes the soil hot, it might just cook the bugs under it. I dunno though.

12/16/2004 3:15:29 PM

Hobbiton New Zealand

I have used old house carpet over gardens befor it will do the same job and if you get hold of a place that installs carpet you can get it for nothing. If the carpet is 100% wool then it just slowly breaks down.

12/16/2004 8:29:39 PM

Montoursville, PA

Any mulch from material that will rot is following mother nature's ways.

I have found that an inch of ground leaves stops most weeds from seeing daylight. Those that do emerge are easy to turn and cover or hoe out from nicely maintained damp soil.

Natural mulch encourages earthworms to tunnel and pass cast along the way. The tunnels become avenues for oxygen, water and humates in the mini compost created between the soil and the materials that are slowly rotting.

Plastic or any form of plastic prevents all of the above natural events.

12/17/2004 12:34:22 PM

C N Y

all good points, and advice well-read and understood!
i had no evidence of any slugs, no cuke beetles or vine borers, i am not sure about the temperature of the weedblock, but the plant grew right along, "happy as a lark", i dunno what a lark even looks like, or larks like, lol, but my ONLY regret was not having allowed the plant to root through the fabric. okay, distinction---i used black, (porous with little holes) WeedBlock last year, on my tomato plants, and the spun fabric this year, on one pumpkin plant. i will use the black weedblock fabric from now on, for the experiment in '05, and perhaps the grey, spun fabric on another plant, with some kind of a mulch or compost or something on top of it....but then, weed seeds from the AIR might make a home of THAT!
okay, just black WeedBlock on a plant or two in '05......

12/28/2004 2:39:54 AM