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| I have the roses in place. They are growing in raised beds and have compost around each one. I was thinking of adding landscape fabric and then topping it was bark.. Will this be ok?? How do you finish your beds?? |
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| No no no! The mulch will decay and form a layer of muck over the landscape fabric which will support weed growth. The fabric reduces penetration by rain and makes fertilizing less efficient. Just renew a 3" mulch of any organic material (bark, chips, yard waste) every year and pull the weeds that manage to grow through it. |
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- Posted by Strawberryhill 5a IL (My Page) on Tue, Jan 31, 12 at 9:57
| There's an old thread in the Rose Forum that people cited reasons for NOT using landscape fabric. I don't use mulch here with our rainy and wet climate (it breeds black spot spores). I use free horse manure as mulch. The stable here uses lime to deodorize their stalls, so the horse manure has lime, which is alkaline but works as a potent fungicide. I have zero weeds with horse manure mulch. The professional landscape company put lime on my neighbor's lawn to suppress weeds. If your soil is NOT alkaline, using horse manure with lime is a good idea. My soil is alkaline, pH of 7.7, but I use horse manure as mulch since the folks in the Soil Forum told me that lime (calcium carbonate) stays put where it's applied, and doesn't leak down to the roses' roots. |
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| I only used landscape fabric once, NEVER again! Thankfully it wasn't around any of my roses. It was in a shrub bed and it did keep the weeds out...for that season. After that the weeds started growing on top of the fabric just like Michael said. The mulch decays and becomes soil for the seeds and then you have weeds, mulch, fabric all in tangled mess. I'm still trying to pull peices of it out of there. Just go with the mulch on top of the soil. As it decays it will feed the soil too. Be careful not to push the mulch up against the trunks of the roses though. You want to leave a circle free of mulch at the base of the rose for air circulation to prevent some cane diseases like canker. As for compacting, I have that problem too because my beds are big and I have to walk in them to prune and such. I have paths but somehow I always end up off of them, lol. In the early spring I take a pitch fork and VERY carefully loosen up the soil in the bed. You don't want to stab the fork down in too close to the rose or you'll damage roots. Just stick it in as far as you can and gently rock it back and forth too loosen and airate the soil. I also turn in some of the bottom layer of the leaf mulch from my winter protection. It's usually already fairly decayed and full of worms. It's good soil food! |
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| If you feel you absolutely MUST put something down, use some of that Landscaping paper that composts away by the end of the season. But my vote goes with the others. You're best off with just shredded or chipped bark over compost. |
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