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Using breathable membrane
Nicky Dewfall
Posts: 14
I am considering putting membrane on one part of the garden before covering with small stones. How easy is it to remove it all to put down fresh compost at a later stage, or is liquid fertiliser the easiest option? I usually put down the compost from my bin.
Thanks.
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Posts
What do you want to do? Put stones down or enrich your ground to grow plants in?
sounds like a bit of a faff to me.
How easy it is to remove will depend on how deep your " small stones" are laid.
Are you planning to plant through the membrane and are effectively using the stones as cover for the membrane, or is it an area you don't currently plan to use and want to tidy it up?
HelloKT53,
It is a small area I want to make more rockery-like, and was going to plant through the membrane.
As hostafan1 says it is probably going to be a 'bit of a faff' so I may not bother, but wanted to see what ideas others had!
Many thanks!
I'd just put the gravel down. If you can get your plants in first, leaving them slightly higher than the surrounding soil level, then you can lay a good couple of inches of fine gravel up near to the neck of the plants, which will help prevent rotting . It also allows good drainage for the plants, and weeds seeding in from above are quite easy to remove
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Fairygirl and Lantana, some good points there. Many thanks!
more than 3 inches of gravel most weeds (barring things like bindweed and dock) won't grow through, if you want to be double sure you can use wet newspapers underneath the gravel, these rot away after a year or two, but stop most pernicious weeds coming through.
Be aware though that weeds can grow IN the gravel after a while, the weed suppression fabric won't help with that.
It depends what you want to grow though, Nicky. Alpines don't need rich soil, and they certainly don't want to sit in wet conditions. I'm assuming that's the kind of thing you want as you mentioned rockery. If not, you'll need to condition the soil accordingly
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
We are replacing our current driveway of stones with block paving, so I have a plentiful supply of stones for creating this patch!
At the moment I have heucheras in the patch along with a couple of small evergreens. They give me some colour for most of the year.
Many thanks again for all your ideas and suggestions; time for some thinking about exactly what I want out of it.
Nicky
I found loads of ants under this membrane in a part of our flower bed. My mum had put it in and planted an oriental poppy. We removed it to let the soil breathe. Also I don't feel it really suppressed any weeds as there were weeds growing all through it!