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Soil, Compost & Mulch

Weed cloth and old mulch

14 years ago

Two years ago my dad put down weed blocking cloth and mulch in a couple of flower beds. Unfortunately he shortly fell terminally ill and after 2yrs of absolute neglect and abandonment (I moved my parents in with me in Florida) the mulch has broken down into soil and weeds are freely growing on top of this. Do I pull up this old mulch, toss it, and put new mulch? The weed cloth is still in good shape. How often do I need to repeat this process? This is for a yard in zone 5 Denver, CO if that makes a difference.

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Comments (5)

Kimmsr
14 years ago
There is no reason to remove the old mulch, you can simply put new on top of the old. You will probably find that most of the "weeds" are growing in that old mulch and you probably could remove the "weed" blocking fabric although even that is not totally necessary.
How long and material you use for mulch depends on what the muclh is and how active the Soil Food Web is. Many people with dead soils find that wood chip mulches last several years while others of us with a living soil find that even the wood chip mulches can be digested in a year.
iam3killerbs
14 years ago
My condolences on your loss.

You're dealing with the reason I hate landscape fabric. In due time the mulch on top becomes soil and the weeds grow anyway. People don't think long-term about it.

I'd be inclined to rip it up and get rid of it. If the mulch is deep enough and tended often enough to work as mulch its deep enough without the cloth.

If I had to put something under the mulch to smother sod I'd go with paper or cardboard.
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You guys are right, the stuff is evil. Pulling it out was easier said than done. I tried to use my prongy hoe to yank it out but it kept ripping into small pieces and I disturbed a lot of shrub roots. What I was able to pull out had grass and weeds growing into it - no moisture under it at all - BONE DRY. It was wrapped skin tight around the base of my birch tree. I used scissors to free it, but most of it is still stuck deep into the soil. The prickly barberry bush wasn't helping matters there. I have a bad neck and was in a lot of pain so I finally had to stop. Hated to leave the job unfinished - didn't even get to the flower gardens. But I realized it was more than I could take on. I'll hire a landscaping company to clean it out. Young guys with healthy necks. Yeah, that's what I'll do. I WILL get it out though. After seeing that no water was getting past it, I can't leave it in. I curse the person who invented this. Ptooey!
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bumblebees_mom
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks everyone. I'll just toss some new mulch on top then. In my own home I don't have landscaping fabric and the old mulch just blends right in. At this point I'm not seeing how the landscaping fabric is saving me much. Initially it did but in the long run I'm in the same place.
Frankie_in_zone_7
14 years ago
It more depends on whether the gardens are in good shape as-is and if you are happy with the plantings and planning to leave everything as-is, versus are having trouble with dying shrubs, intend to plant new shrubs or annuals from time to time, in which case you would be more interested in long-term gardening issues, such as improving soil content and structure being able to move things about from time to time, and the fabric interferes with that.

If not doing anything but keeping it neat and tidy, then just more mulch is simplest.
Kimmsr
14 years ago
The people at Texas A & M have found that the landscape fabrics can slow the movement of nutrients into the soil. Plots with landscape fabric had lower levels of nutrients in the soil then plots with no landscape fabric even when the same amount of "fertilizer" was added.
Mulches are put down to 1) aid in control of unwanted, "weed", plant growth, 2) aid in soil moisture retention, 3) aid in soil temperature control, and 4) add organic matter to soil. So mulches are meant to be digested and added to soil, over time, just as Ma Nature does in the forests of the world.

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