Installing Landscape Fabric
How to Analyze and Prepare Project Sites
Landscape fabric yields excellent results when we carefully analyze and then prepare project sites. Checklists are important and useful before planting and/or mulching.
Installation of landscape fabrics (geotextiles) is an undertaking within landscape projects that may cut down on project maintenance over time. However, analysis and preparation of the project site is crucial.
We will probably be impatient with using valuable time to stick with a detailed plan for site preparation. However, time invested at this point always saves time later correcting problems that come up because of inadequate groundwork. This is not the time to cut corners!
Detailed checklists are important and useful in the site preparation process. Here is one such list to help with careful preparation of an area to be covered with landscape fabric and then mulched and/or planted:
- Measure and mark off the area with landscaping spray paint or sticks and twine.
- Remove existing vegetation by
- stripping the top few inches and composting (ecologically sound, but time consuming);
- covering with black plastic for a year or two to kill vegetation (the longest and most time consuming); or
- spraying with a contact herbicide (the quickest but least ecologically sound).
- Rototill and manually work soil amendments - compost, and appropriate amounts of lime and slow-release fertilizer (or rock phosphate and green sand) - into the bed.
- Lay out the fabric and measure, cut and fasten it with anchoring pins.
- Between each plant, measure and mark diameters expected for mature plants. Mark the center of this circle - this is the "plant on center" mark.
- Make each planting hole by cutting an "X" with a skill knife at each "plant on center" mark. The diameter of the hole resulting from the "X" should be large enough to accommodate the plant. It is not necessary to cut out fabric.
- Tuck flaps from the "X" underneath the large sheet of fabric to prevent them from working up through decorative mulch layers and contributing to moisture deletion.
- Install plants and water thoroughly.
- shredded bark or bark chips;
- purchased (expensive) or homemade (cheap, but perhaps full of weed seeds) compost;
- peat or peat mixed with sand;
- gravel;
- coarse grit, or crushed stone or shells.
- The first is Landscape Fabric: Pros and Cons, posted on June 15, 2006.
- The second is Using Landscape Fabrics, posted on June 24. 2006.
- Selection and Use of Mulches and Landscape Fabrics by VA Cooperative Extension Service.
- Mulching Landscape Plants by the Ohio State University Extension Service.
- Gemplers Landscape Supply - Professional Weed Barrier Fabrics and Accessories
- Weed Barrier Pro - Commercial Grade Landscape Fabric
- Outside Pride Landscape Products
A. Begin your project here.
B. If you plan to install plants, proceed with these next steps in "B." If you are making gravel pathways, stone gardens, etc. proceed to step "C."
C. Cover the fabric with 2 to 4 inches of your choice of decorative mulch:
D. Pull germinating weed seeds and established weeds by hand. Dispose of these in compost or trash.
Installing Landscape Fabrics is the third of a series about Landscape Fabrics and Geotextiles.
For more specific information about landscape fabrics, here is a list of Internet Sources:
©
Text and photograph by Georgene A. Bramlage, June 2006. Reproduction without permission prohibited.
