Gasoline doesn't work when you feed it to a horse.

Landscape fabric can be affective if used properly but isn't for every site and situation. I tend to use newspaper instead but when fabric is lifted and recovered with mulch annually it has its uses. It can also be covered with gravel for a more permanent type of use.

The mistake is when people believe it solves the weeding problem FOREVER. I use it with a inch or less of wood chips and leaves sprinkled on the top - this thin layer dries out to quickly for weed seeds to sprout (much) and in the winter I sweep it all off to the side and repair the fabric. Usually the mulch has broken down into compost and it gets swept under the fabric. So it is still a lot of work - but only two weekends of the year as opposed to every stinkin evening pulling weeds.

I've used the professional grade of fabric for the past two
years without mulch on top and it has kept my melon patch totally weed free. The mulch is a breeding ground for weed seeds to germinate in. So I don't mulch at all. I pull up the fabric every year, til the soil, and reinstall the fabric, and I'm weed free all season long. Best money I've ever spent. You won't get the same results with the inexpensive stuff sold at the big box stores.

I can certainly see some good usages as mentioned above, I am just afraid many people used them or thought they can use them the same way as my previous owner did. Image installing a landscape, planting some trees and shrubs in places and thinking that you may never need to dig another holes for new plants? If you need to,which is very likely, then it is so clumbsy to do so. Besides, the idea alone is so un-practical and so much contrary to the nature of gardening, I thought.

Annie lee, I bought a place with a lot of permanent mulch over black plastic. To dig a hole, I simply scrape the mulch back and cut 3 sides of a square into the black plastic.

I then dig my hole, plant the plant and fold the plastic back into place, cutting a small hole around the plant. The permanent mulch is then raked back into place.

Marginally a little more work than just digging a hole, but not much more work.

I wouldn't have installed all the plastic, rock, and bark, but it would be way to much work to remove it, so I figured out how to work around it and how to actually make it look decent. You work with what you've got.

Annie-lee,

You are so right. Landscape fabric used incorrectly (probably the way most people actually use it) can be a nightmare and cause more problems than it solves. It (at least the better grade/professional stuff) can also be a wonderful thing if used correctly. Maybe warnings like yours will make people think about the possibilities before jumping in.

I agree with Brandon7 here. I often have seen situations where landscape contractors just keep piling on the mulch year after year until there is a wonderful humus layer above the fabric rendering the fabric useless and making its removal very difficult.

Thank you Brandon7 and others for commenting on this subject. Speaking of "black plastic", Oregonwoodsmoke, it is even worse material to use, in my opinion. Over years, it tends to become semi-disintegrated, so if you pull it, it falls into pieces. Oh, it was such a mess, such un-sighting! We gardeners like to dig around, try around, move things around from time to time, and it was such a sinking feeling to put a forceful dig into the ground and felt a sturdy fabric underneath it. Basically, we are tangling the unnutrual material with the natural soil, and that makes it very un-natural to gardening with it even if it works somewhat. But I think I had said enough on this point.

Black plastic is totally rejected as a semi-permanent layer for trees in cold areas because it encourages very shallow rooting that leads to winter kill.

Weeds will also grow on the nursery grade stuff as soon as organic matter gets on top of it. It's still the same basic situation, regardless of how heavy the fabric is.

A vegetable patch is not a permanent landscape installation. When you are re-doing the planting every year you can do things differently than when not.