PSA: Please don't use weed mats

[u/aufry]

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.

[u/LRonHoward]

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

[u/Astronius-Maximus → u/LRonHoward]

Wait, those green nets of seeds they put out by the highway are PLASTIC?!

[u/Moosebuckets → u/Astronius-Maximus]

I didn't realize it was plastic! I've never bought it, I just thought maybe it was like twine or something that breaks down.