If this is better suited for the flower gardening forum, please feel free to move it!
Last fall, I planted my front flower bed with dwarf asiatic lilies and grape hyacinth. They came up beautifully, with most if not all bulbs producing. I was incredibly excited, weeded the beds regularly, mulched them, and was happy. Then, by mid-summer, the weeds got too bad for me to control. I was spending 2-3 hours a week weeding the beds (which only total less than 50 square feet), and I was still losing the battle with the weeds.
So, my plan was to dig up the whole bed to both retrieve the bulbs as well as remove all the weed roots (once we have lows consistently below 50 so the bulbs are dormant...a couple more weeks, it looks like), put in clean fill, install a weed barrier fabric, and then re-plant the bulbs. But I know, even from this first year, that perennials, particularly the lilies, like to travel.
So, how do I both use a weed barrier effectively to prevent weed infestation while also allowing the flowers to grow? Should I not mulch it until the plants come up in the spring so I can cut the fabric around the desired plants to let them grow? In future years, is there a certain amount of space I should cut around growth I got the year before to allow new growth?
I just can't keep up with the weeds, so I have to do something to prevent them. The only thing that's proven effective (for me) is the fabric barrier. I have neighbors who don't keep up their yards, so seeds and root tubers end up in my garden, no matter how well I keep up my yard.
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Lindsaylew82
- Super Green Thumb
- Posts: 2115
- Joined: Wed May 21, 2014 9:26 pm
- Location: Upstate, SC
I wouldn’t do all that work, if it isn’t necessary. I am NOT a fan of weed preventing fabrics. They just don’t work long-term. At all. They’re nearly impossible to remove once unwanted roots dig in and go through.
I’m a BIG fan of big rolls of brown paper and then mulch like pine straw (my favorite). You can get rolls of brown paper in the painting section of most home and garden stores. It’s fairly thick. When everything dies down in the winter, roll it on, cut to fit, wet it down well, and then mulch it. Your bulbs won’t have any trouble growing through it in the spring.
I’ve got shade, and I’ve found that ajuga covers things fast, and well. It can be invasive, though. It jumps bed boarders here, and forms pretty dense cover. Lily of the valley does well in shady spots here, too. It’s slow to spread, though the perfume might be one of my favorites!
My favorite sunny cover for color in the summer is purple verbena. It spreads pretty quickly, and in SC, it comes back yearly. Phlox is beautiful here in the spring.
Everything I’ve mentioned is pretty common and should be easy to find for you! Pretty low maintenance, too!
A sprinkling of preen after you mulch will help prevent a lot of weed seeds from sprouting, but won’t affect tubers or bulbs. I don’t use it, but the neighbors do, and they stay pretty weed free. Understand that you won’t be able to start seeds if you use it, and it won’t affect anything that’s already germinated.
Hope that helps!
I’m a BIG fan of big rolls of brown paper and then mulch like pine straw (my favorite). You can get rolls of brown paper in the painting section of most home and garden stores. It’s fairly thick. When everything dies down in the winter, roll it on, cut to fit, wet it down well, and then mulch it. Your bulbs won’t have any trouble growing through it in the spring.
I’ve got shade, and I’ve found that ajuga covers things fast, and well. It can be invasive, though. It jumps bed boarders here, and forms pretty dense cover. Lily of the valley does well in shady spots here, too. It’s slow to spread, though the perfume might be one of my favorites!
My favorite sunny cover for color in the summer is purple verbena. It spreads pretty quickly, and in SC, it comes back yearly. Phlox is beautiful here in the spring.
Everything I’ve mentioned is pretty common and should be easy to find for you! Pretty low maintenance, too!
A sprinkling of preen after you mulch will help prevent a lot of weed seeds from sprouting, but won’t affect tubers or bulbs. I don’t use it, but the neighbors do, and they stay pretty weed free. Understand that you won’t be able to start seeds if you use it, and it won’t affect anything that’s already germinated.
Hope that helps!