Thought i'd share my weekend project doing some font yard cleanup(back yard to follow). Did a bit of weeding first and then applied some weed mat and some red mulch to the front yard as i was getting tired of weeding plus it could manage with a bit of a tidy up... I am hoping that this would pretty much suppress weed growth around the garden beds at least and hopefully will require little maintenance over time. Still work in progress but very happy with the result so far considering how easy it is to do(time consuming for sure..) and its a fairly cheap way to give the house a fresh look.
Looks much neater. I'm not a lover of that bright red colour mulch but I'm guessing it will fade as the sun hits it. It certainly tidies up the yard. I also wonder if they somehow forgot to add a word when they sell us "weed mat". Whenever we've used it to try to keep weeds down, we seem to grow more. I'm thinking it should be called "weed impregnated mat" because I'm sure that is what we've bought
The dyed red mulch will fade. driveway looks good but weeds will still come up. I hate those onion weeds...they have so many seeds per stock. keep removing them and they will be gone. it's a continuous maintenance but the mat will reduce.
Cheers guys, I sure hope it won't make things worse and definitely need to do some preventive maintenance throughout the year.
Looks good. Maybe you could put some pebbles down the middle of the driveway to further improve the look? I did something similar in the backyard. Had a gardener to put in weedmats and mulch on top. Worked great for first couple of years. Interesting, had a landscaper come in to quote on some work and he was totally against weed mats.
I'm pretty anti-weed mat too ... what happens after a few years is that the soil builds up on top of the plastic, and you're back to the start with weeks - but now with a sheet of plastic buried 5-10cm underground and near impossible to remove. Instead, I'm a fan of laying thick layer of water soaked newspaper ... just buy half a dozen Saturday Sydney Heralds for a couple of bucks each, spread them out over the weeds, hold them down with stones or soil so they don't blow around, much over and water. Suppresses the weeds just as well as weedmat, worms love it and it breaks down after several months.
We have tried many layers of newspaper too and that also didn't work. But we didn't soak it. Maybe that would have helped. We are about to landscape the yard *again* and need to control the weeds, so I'm going to try the wet newspaper Lizzie. But I'll scavenge in the neighbour's bins rather than buy them . Our yard is so tiny that we don't need much.
Cheers guys, i don't expect the weed mat to be a permanent solution but hoping it will simply require less maintenance to control the weeds. Preventive maintenance like spraying round up before weed season should be enough, i hope! @twistedstats , thanks for that. Will be doing adding pebbles to the driveway and maybe repairing some of the broken concrete on there.Also painting the picket fence and doing some more cleanup and planting around. Will post photos as i go
Needs to be a thick layer of paper - or try cardboard - and overlap well. Basically you are expelling all light for an extended period of time which kills off the weeds
Adding a few more photos from the latest batch of work. Added some stone edging for looks and also because Myna birds kept on digging around the mulch and messing things up !!! No weed has grown so far so seems like the weed mat is working. Cut the conifer that was too close to the house but didn't stump grind it. Instead, bored the main trunk and planted a jasmine. Not sure if it will live well but so far so good! Also did the side of the house where new fence was installed lately. Added some low maintenance grasses( a Phormium and some Lomandras). Might add some river pebbles on that side too instead of mulch. Starting to shape up well i think. Next is reviving grass and repainting picket fence.
Hi Paul, I know this was a long time ago but I found it browsing today. Would you consider posting some new photos of these areas so we can see what everything looks like now that the plants have had a chance to grow a bit? I love to see the end of a good story!
Cheers @KateSydney and no worries at all. I'll post some over the weekend but unfortunately, the area doesn't looks it's best due to a fair bit of neglect during last summer as I was away from the property for way too many weekends ... Not too bad but could be in a much better shape
Well not every story ends perfectly! But every story is an education to the listeners - so whatever you can show us would be wonderful!
Hey Paul. Your work reminds me of when we converted our small grass front yard, into a pebble and garden bed, front yard. While we were very happy with our efforts and results we did have a problem where the underlying edges of the weed mats would make their way to the surface. Did/do you have this problem? I think ours was caused by the small pebbles we used (I think about 1cm diam). I wish we had used larger ones in hindsight as these would move and flow a bit too easily for my liking and I suspect worked their way under the mats.
Hi Jezzah and yes definitely had the same problem. A few sprays of weed killer a year was enough to fix this issue on my side though. Here's some photos from today. Looks in real bad shape unfortunately but last summer , the whole garden was neglected ... All it really needed was a bit of watering though... Miner birds have been the worst problem to deal with as they keep on messing up the mulch. Otherwise, it would be really easy and cheap to get it looking in good shape.a few bags of mulch and that's about it. The weed mats had done really well.
Not an expert on this but i think it's moister that attracts termites and not mulch itself. General recommendation is keep a foot or so space between mulch area and walls. I didn't do that but my mulched areas are under soffits which doesn't get a lot of moister from rain. I haven't had a problem with termites before/after adding the mulch as far as i know.
There are many different types of mulch. If you select termite-resistant bark you should be right. Naturally it is more expensive than other types, but it is the way to go. Some of the cheaper mulches are also full of weeds, so dont get the really cheap ones. Mulch
If the cost of termite resistant Mulch is more than the Anti-Termite liquid, How about spraying this liquid on top of the existing mulch? Termiticide 1 Litre 100g/L Fipronil Termite Spray White Ant Poison Like Termidor 9336152001017 | eBay
If you dont know anything about different mulches, I wouldn't think you would know much about toxic chemicals. Ask us that question again after you have read the instructions on the Termidor labels.