Many years ago, I decided I wanted to try to grow watermelons in the south part of the garden. The problem was that the area still had lots of grass in it, and my thinking was that because I wouldn't be able to run the tiller through there once the vines started growing I should put something down to block the grass and keep the area looking "nice."
We had some old carpet that we had pulled up from the inside porch and I thought it would be perfect to block the grass. So I dragged it out to the garden and spread it out by the watermelons.
It was a nice concept, but it didn't really work out (for reasons to be explained later).
The watermelons didn't grow very well, and I ended up having grass growing there anyway - not through the carpet, but on top of it.
If I had been smart (sadly, I'm never smart on the front end), I would have pulled the carpet up that fall and taken it to the landfill.
But I didn't do it.
And I didn't do it the next year, or the next year, or the next.... It doesn't seem possible that it was that long ago, but I want to say that it may have been there for close to 20 years!
I never forgot forgot that it was there, but after the Bermuda grass grew up over it, it became one of those "out of sight, out of mind" things.
And that's how it was until about two or three years ago when I decided to plant some blackberry plants my sister gave me there in the south side of the garden. I planted a couple of them, but when I tried digging a hole for the third plant, I was perplexed when I couldn't sink the shovel (really a spade) down into the dirt. I stomped on the shovel really hard...nope, not going in.
I dropped to my knees and started pulling grass to see what was going on. That's when I found it...the old carpet from many years ago. I mentally kicked myself...several times.
I don't think I really believed the carpet would break down and turn into dirt. I knew it was made out of synthetic fibers. I guess it was just something that was in that category of "so long as it's not bothering me right now, it's not bothering me."
I ended up using my box cutter to just cut slits in the carpet where I wanted the blackberries to go. Later when I planted the Jostaberry and my raspberries I did the same thing...I just cut through the carpet so I could dig the planting holes and said to myself, "I really need to get that carpet out of here."
But I didn't do it.
The blackberries did Ok, but I just couldn't seem to keep them watered. It was the same with the Jostaberry. It grew a lot in the spring, but once summer came, it started to look quite ill, and eventually almost every single branch on it died. The raspberry that was planted into the carpet also died.
I thought I had lost the Jostaberry, but this spring, it put out one small branch. I cut off all the dead parts, hoping that it would survive.
I had ordered an Aronia berry from Food Forest Nursery, and when it arrived, I planted it between the blackberries and the Jostaberry. Again, I had to cut through the carpet to dig the planting hole, and again, I said to myself, "I really need to get that carpet out of here."
But I didn't do it.
The single branch on the Jostaberry grew quite a bit, but not as much as I had hoped it would. And when hurricane Beryl came through in early July, the wind broke off the single branch. I cut it into four sections to see if I can get one to root. But that was that. The plant did not put out any more branches. I had lost it.
It has been so dry this summer that I was also starting to worry about the Aronia berry. It hadn't grown much at all, even though I had been carrying water to it and had put mulch around it.
Something just wasn't right.
One evening, I decided to pull the mulch back from the Aronia berry so I could make sure the water soaked in all the way around. And that's when I did a literal "forehead smack" because I knew then what was wrong.
It was the carpet.
I tugged on it to try to peel it back so I could water the plant, and to my dismay, I discovered roots growing on top of the carpet in a thin layer of decomposed grass and leaves that was only about 1/2" thick. The roots were very dry.
I pulled and tugged, and tugged and pulled, carefully working the Aronia berry roots loose. Some of them broke off because they had embedded themselves into the carpet. But little by little I managed to free the little plant's roots from the horrible synthetic fibers of the carpet.
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| An orange root from the Aronia berry, broken on the end, but free from carpet. |
And once I had pulled the carpet away from the Aronia berry, I decided it was finally time for me to fix my mistake once and for all.
So I pulled and tugged, and tugged and pulled (and mentally kicked myself several times) and little by little, I was able to peel the carpet back.
Underneath, the ground was like concrete.
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| Hard packed dry dirt under the carpet. |
It was bone dry and so hard that I couldn't even drive the pitch fork into it. The carpet was intended to block weeds and grass from coming up, but what it ended up doing was actually blocking water from going down!
In hindsight, it's really amazing to me that ANYTHING was able to survive where that carpet was. I think the blackberries did Ok only because they are planted in a low spot that is shaded in the afternoon by the big pecan tree, so there might have been more moisture in the ground there.
But it's no wonder that the Jostaberry and the one raspberry planted into the carpet died.
Pulling the carpet up wasn't easy because while the carpet hadn't broken down, the sharp pointed rhizomes of the Bermuda grass did manage to pierce it and had intertwined themselves all through it and anchored it to the ground everywhere it has put down roots.
The carpet was only about 6' wide, but it ran all the way from the third blackberry plant down to the first raspberry plant, a distance of about 20''.
(Incidentally, as I was pulling the carpet out, I also found the remnants of a colored cardboard box that I had put down to block the Bermuda grass. The corrugated cardboard of the box was gone, but the colored layer on the outside was like a thin film of plastic. That's why they say don't use colored cardboard like that in the garden.)
It took a couple of evenings for me to finally get it all pulled out.
So now I have a pile of dirty old carpet to take to the landfill (what a shame), and I have learned a couple of valuable lessons about trying to block weeds.
First, and most obvious, don't use something that won't decompose. That's just asking for trouble.
Second, things that block grass and weeds from coming up also block water from going down. If it's being used around trees or shrubs, it needs to be pulled back when I water so the water will actually go down into the ground and not just run off the top of the weed barrier. That's what was happening when I watered last summer. I just didn't realize it.
I'm still a big believer in using cardboard or newspaper to block weeds and grass, but I'll never again make the mistake of using something that won't rot in a few years. Twenty years - that's a long time for that carpet to lay there and still be mostly intact. I am pretty positive that my mistake would have outlasted me...I think had I not finally pulled it out, that carpet would have still been there long after I've died and decomposed.