What Not to Do with Landscape Fabric

I’ve already written about the problem with two large and two tiny garden beds at the Boreas that were created by another business.   I think the year when my then-partner Robert had a heart attack was when a different gardening business did a project that today, at last, eleven years later, Allan and I worked on fixing.

I realized we could no longer successfully weed the garden beds that Brand X business (who are no longer on the Peninsula) did by putting soil on top of, it turned out, a double layer of landscape fabric.  Over ten years of weeding since then, the soil layer over the fabric had become almost non existent.

I realized today that  the horrible fabric had to go.  The first try involved  cutting with shears, shears that may look wimpy but have done alright cutting fabric before.  But there was so much soil imbedded that shearing across did not work.

first try

Then I tried shearing and hacking with the pick in sections.

better

You can see how weed roots are all adhered to the fabric.  Never, never, never put fabric under a garden bed.  It leads to terrible things.  Thick layers of newspaper would have broken down the lawn, although neither fabric nor newspaper will keep horsetail from spearing through.

Worse yet, it was in two layers!

why?

Two layers with, after years of weeding, only about three inches of soil OR LESS on top.

While I peeled the fabric off the first bed (above), Allan went to get a load of Soil Energy from Peninsula Landscape Supply.   When he returned, he did the fabric removal from the last two thirds of the second bed.

pulling fabric out of second bed

Around this time, I went into a state of amnesia, and I am not kidding.  Not only do I not remember the next three hours, but I was shocked later to see that it was four PM.  Allan said I had been working the whole time, but I had sort of been hallucinating, too.  The hallucinations were all about the job but did not really make sense, and I have forgotten them now.  I blame a new OTC sleeping potion that I tried (and will never use again), but it was disturbing.  I’d call it a fugue state, but wikipedia informs me that that would have involved “unplanned travel or wandering, and is sometimes accompanied by the establishment of a new identity”, and Allan assured me I was there working away hard at replanting the salvaged plants, no doubt with the same increasingly grumpy personality as the rainy day wore on.  It seems he did not notice anything particularly different!  However, I have no memory of those three hours, and that is disturbing indeed, even though I could see the results of my work.  I looked at my watch when I thought Allan should go for a second load of mulch only to realize the supply yard would be closing in half an hour.

I hit the wall, hard, a bit after 4 PM and poor Allan had to clean up (in the drizzle).   I suppose we would clean up a job before going to the emergency room for amnesia.  It was scary only remembering pieces…and hallucinatory pieces at that…of the afternoon.  There are no “after” photos because the rain was pelting by then, and the job is not done.  We need another yard of soil energy for the end of the second bed, the two tiny round beds that remain to be done (they should be easy) and some light mulching elsewhere.

Thank goodness that the other garden beds were created either by me and former co-gardener Robert or by Boreas owners Susie and Bill and do not have the horrible fabric underlay.  They will be much easier to weed.  There is one former wildflower bed that does have fabric, but my friend who mows the lawn  ( has some strong young help and they will have to remove it if it needs to be done.  I think we should focus on the existing garden beds and let that former wildflower border return to lawn.

First me, then later Allan, went into a state of collapse at home.  I am up now but Allan is still down, and it makes me wonder again about gardening and aging.

I should perhaps have followed the example of my cats this past morning:

Smokey and Mary

Theirs is the example I intend to follow tomorrow, when the forecast calls for a gale and much rain.

I have to ask myself again, are we getting too old for this?  I remember someone who once wanted to garden for a living, but when I offered to pass on to her a job weeding a difficult bed, she said “But I just want to do the pretty things!”  It would actually be possible for us at this point in our career to focus on doing the pretty things and just say no to jobs that are this hard, but then….who are we going to get to do the hard things?  I could not walk away from that landscape fabric nightmare for one more year because there was no way whatsoever for anything to thrive on a bed of one inch of soil on top of fabric.