How to Use Black Landscaping Fabric in the Garden

Utilizing a woven, black landscape fabric can prevent almost all weeds in a garden bed, and humidity flows through the cloth to the soil. Proper installation of this fabric ensures weeds can not breach the bed’s seams or edges and prevents damage to the cloth. Think about black landscape fabric a long-term mulch since it doesn’t require annual replacement. It is best suited to perennial flowerbeds and shrub and tree beds since annual plantings require annual digging that can damage the fabric.

Add compost, fertilizer and other soil amendments into the garden bed’s soil. You won’t have the ability to enhance the soil after you set up the black landscape fabric. Smooth the amended soil so it’s level and flat.

Unroll black landscape fabric over the garden bed with the cloth’s heavenly side in contact with the soil. Fold 3 inches of the cloth borders upward, and smooth them against the edging enclosing the garden bed so no difference exists between the cloth and bed edging. If you use many sheets of fabric to cover the garden bed, overlap each sheet of fabric by 1 foot so weeds can not grow between the sheets.

Catch a hexagonal backyard staple through the landscape fabric and to the soil, anchoring the cloth into the ground. Repeat that process, placing U-shaped garden staples every 1 foot round the garden bed’s perimeter. Put additional staples along the seams where two pieces of fabric overlap.

Cut a hole in the cloth with a utility knife to every plant you want to place in the garden bed. Make each hole 4 inches wider than the foundation of its individual plant, especially with perennials, so that stems and trunks have room to grow.

Spread a 3-inch thick layer of organic mulch, such as wood chips, over the top of this black landscape fabric. Mulch camouflages the dark fabric, protects if from the elements and keeps soil from overheating beneath the cloth. Pull the mulch away from the foundation of all the plants so mulch does not rest directly against plant stems.

Water the fabric-mulched bed as usual, using either overhead or drip irrigation. Because moisture gathered through landscape fabric and to the soil, special watering is not essential. Apply fertilizer right to the soil near the foundation of the plants, taking care never to get fertilizer on plant stems and foliage.

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