Once you’ve decided on your geotextile fabric, it’s time to step back, take a breath, and remind yourself that no landscape fabric will completely, permanently, eliminate all weeds. However, it will prevent most weeds from sprouting, and when used properly, it can provide other important benefits, like controlling erosion and preventing landslides on sloping ground. That’s more than a layer of wood mulch or newspaper can do.
Now that you’re ready to get moving, the good news is that geotextiles are easy to install with a little bit of planning and some elbow grease,
Measure Your Beds
To determine how much geotextile ground cover to buy, start by measuring the sides of your planting bed (L x W) to calculate the total square footage. You can divide by 9 to determine the number of square yards you need and order accordingly, but that’s not a very precise method. After all, it’s not a good idea to cut and paste pieces at the edge of a row to squeeze the most coverage out of every square yard. Keep in mind that every joined piece requires more overlap to ensure coverage, more staples to secure it, and still represents a potential point of failure.
A better strategy is to consider the available widths of the product you plan to buy and using that to calculate how many strips you’ll need to cover the width of your bed, allowing for a generous overlap. Once you know how many widths you’ll need, multiply that number by the lengthwise dimension. That will give you the information you need to order your product in linear feet or determine how many pre-cut lengths you’ll need.
Whichever method you use to calculate your purchase, be sure to add on a little bit extra so you have plenty of room for overlap on the sides and ends of your plot.
If you’re working with large fields, be sure to contact a specialized geotextile company like BTL Liners. Given the dimensions of your project, they can fabricate single, custom-sized ground covers that are easy to deploy and secure. When a ground cover is installed as a single piece, it requires less material since there is no need for excessive overlapping and there are fewer opportunities for pieces to shift and allow weeds to emerge.
Preparing the Beds
Once you lay down your geotextile ground cover, you won’t have access to the soil anymore, so it’s important to do any necessary soil preparation ahead of time. Depending on your crop and the state of your fields, that will probably include using a tiller to remove rocks, sticks, and any grass, weeds, or other vegetation, followed by a harrow to break up clods and smooth the soil. On a smaller scale, hoes and rakes will typically suffice. In the end, you want to have a smooth surface free of sticks and rocks or other material that can poke up and tear the ground cover. Tears are simply another opportunity for weeds to poke through, after all.
Once your beds are in good shape, you may choose to add compost, fertilizer, or other amendments, followed by another light tilling. Some farmers add drip irrigation lines at this point, but if any problems pop up, it’ll be difficult to locate and repair them under the ground cover, so it’s best to place those after the cover is in place.
Keep in mind that timing is important during this process. It’s best to prep the soil in sections, followed immediately by laying and securing the ground cloth. This gets you ahead of any weeds that are ready to spring up as soon as light hits them. If you do end up prepping the soil several days in advance, it’s not a tragedy, but you may need to do a bit of spot weeding.
Laying and Securing Ground Cover
Just like the old woodworkers’ adage, “measure twice, cut once”, don’t start making cuts until you’ve placed your ground cloth over the area you need to cover. Cut the length only after you’ve made sure there’s plenty to cover the section and overlap, if that’s needed. When you do need to join sections, plan for an overlap of 6-12 inches. This may sound excessive, but as the soil settles, various forms of wildlife come to visit, or heavy rainfall flows through your rows, a generous overlap will ensure that any disturbances to your groundcover won’t leave soil exposed. The ends of your bed will do fine with just a couple of excess inches.
Once the geotextile ground cover has been laid out and cut, it’s time to secure it. You’ll want to stretch the fabric until it’s taut and lays flat. You don’t want to allow dips or curves where water can pool or loose edges where wind can pick it up and cause it to flap. Once it’s set to your satisfaction, it’s a simple matter of placing pins or staples around the edges of the cover to keep it in place. In small garden areas, you may only need to place pins every couple of feet, but in areas where there is a lot of foot traffic or other potential disturbances (flowing water, high winds, ground movement as it freezes and thaws), it’s a good idea to anchor them a bit more frequently.
On the other hand, if you expect a high amount of foot traffic, say, if you’re operating a u-pick farm, consider placing not only perimeter pins, but also line the pathways so that scuffing feet don’t shift the fabric and pull it free.
If you don’t choose to use a single panel ground cover for your entire field, you may be faced with the question of whether to use fabric between rows, since that can add cost to the project. Some farmers choose to plant annual cover crops or grass in lieu of landscape fabric, which can be a good solution, although the furrows will need to be mowed.
We’ll cover making holes for your transplants, the question of why you might want to mulch, and maintaining your ground cloth in the next article.
