Here in Galicia you’ll find a weed suppressing foil that is surprisingly versatile.
The black woven stuff with green stripes is very tough. This makes it ideal ground cover, not just weed suppressing. For example we use it in the poly tunnels, beds and areas where we haven’t decided on final surfaces.
If you know you may use rather a lot of it, it pays to buy a whole roll. It’s 3,30 meters wide and a roll holds 100 meter.
It’s not cheap, expect to pay about 3 Euros per running meter (1 Euro m2), obviously a roll is cheaper. The payback is over time as it is tough enough to withstand years of usage.
Now to some practicalities:
Normal cutting will leave you with unravelling weave. You may forever find and collect these strands. As we have cows on our field, the part we have not yet converted into a garden, we needed a way to avoid this.
Barbara nicked my soldering iron, it’s a cheap one (about 9 Euro), and with the well heated top it’s a breeze to cut this stuff. It sears the strands and they fuse, no more unravelling! Any strands left, just run the tip along a second time and, voila, done. A great way to cut the plant crosses as well, as it gives a nice and neat finish.
This is the result and if you don’t want to see black just apply a cover. here we used old hay but chipped bark works great as well.
Another great use is in autumn, when we cover a future area with this, Just leave it until spring. The grass, weeds, etc. have all died off and the soil is usually moist enough to easily dig over.
Happy gardening.
Expat
