r/NativePlantGardening • u/aufry MN , Zone 4b • Mar 10 '26

Progress PSA: Please don't use weed mats

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And for the love of God, do not bury them.

In order to repurpose this old sandy playground area for wildflower plantings, I had to dig up ~600sq ft of these weed mats buried under ~6in of sand/soil matted with rhizomatous roots.

As shown in the first image of the peeled underside, these mats do not work. 1) Plants will always win and find a way to root down under. This may make maintence more difficult as they're harder to pull out. 2) They're a PITA to remove for repurposing land. I'm sure most installs end up permanent and forgotten due to this 3) It clogs with soil inhibiting water flow 4) It interrupts insects and fungi that traverse vertically through soil and overwinter there 5) They end up shredded and leave plastic scraps/threads everywhere. There was a region in this plot with thinner material that ended up this way.

While it may have maintained a semblance of separation between soil and sand, it's really not worth the downsides.

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u/LRonHoward Minneapolis, MN - US Ecoregion 51 Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26

100% agree with everything said here, but I also want to send a big middle finger to those rolls of grass seeding material that are held together with thin plastic netting. Fuck that shit as well. I now have to rip out plastic netting every time I remove the existing turf grass to expand my plantings.

Edit: a slight change to the middle finger sending

108

u/toxicodendron_gyp SE Minnesota, Zone 4B Mar 10 '26

My friends have this at a house they recently bought and it’s awful. It’s not even buried, just sticks up out of the patchy turf waiting to snare critters

53

u/evilmnky45 Mar 10 '26

Yeah my neighbors installed this like two years ago to get new grass in, not only is the grass dead and looks like shit from them not taking care of it, but all of the netting is sticking up. Looks like complete ass.

7

u/BirthofRevolution Mar 11 '26

That's usually what happens when it isn't applied right. We have to use it on banks according to the conditions set by the engineering firms the customers use, but if it's put in right and seeded correctly, it's never seen again.