Weed control fabric

[Tim Lamb]

Interesting challenge for the gardeners.

Strawberry plants were traditionally kept off the soil by a straw layer. This has morphed into a square of weed control fabric. You know the stuff; woven from thin strips of plastic that the birds pull out to use for nesting!

Anyway I decided to experiment with heat sealing the edges. The first technical approach was two parallel strips of aluminium angle trapping the material on a plywood sheet. A modest blowtorch flame quickly removed the waste material and left a rather knobbly but sealed edge. By this time the electric soldering iron was hot and proved to be a more practical solution.

[Thomas Prufer]

Sometimes I'll have a part, item, device in a sealed plastic baggie, and not be sure if it fits. Standard procedure is to rip open the bag, measure, tape up the bag, and take it back.

I cut the bag, and if I need to reseal the bag, pinch the edge between two metal strips and seal the edges together, using a lighter. Makes it look so much more neat -- which makes returning an item easier!

Thomas Prufer

[alan_m]

And seems to rapidly deteriorate when exposed to UV. OK for a while when covered in bark chippings etc. but usually a complete PITA to remove after a few years where someone has used it.

[Tim Lamb]

I have found the cheap stuff under 50mm of shingle does not actually stop some weeds:-(

The Strawberry job is seasonal: while they are fruiting. I'll be disappointed if they can't be re-used.

[alan_m]

You don't necessarily need soil for weeds to grow. The roots will be in damp conditions under the 50mm of shingle, and still be in the dust and anything washed in. What the membrane may stop is weeds with deep tap roots but some of these have shallow fine roots when a young plant.

[Tim Lamb]

Yes. I expect the seeds germinate in the shingle and, as you hint, fine roots can penetrate the fabric and expand a hole.

[Joe]

It's only a matter of time before you have soil anyway. Leaves, petals, bark chippings, just about anything organic will get under the gravel and turn to compost.

And if roots can break through concrete....

[Andrew]

But generally such weeds can be spotted and removed intact with all their roots as soon as they appear

[Tim Lamb]

In message [e-mail]>, Joe [e-mail] writes

The job is done! Real d-i-y! First job, create a template. Bit of thin mdf 250mm diameter with a 50mm centre hole and a slot cut to the perimeter.

Using the woven plastic mesh was painfully slow with lots of re-work to get a clean cut. The plastic welded well.

Mindful that these things can be purchased for around 1ukp each, I moved on to the plastic tissue stuff. Big discovery. My iron would cut and weld 3 layers of this mulch as fast as I could follow the template.

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