How to Use Ground Cover Fabric and its Benefits
Have you ever dealt with overgrowth or a weed invasion where your delicate crop is growing? Don’t worry! Ground cover fabric will end these problems once and for all. To help you feel better and more reassured when you plant your crop, MALAHIERBA GROUNDCOVER offers you everything you need so that your plants can grow in the right way.
Before we get into its installation and use, it is important to know what ground cover and its main characteristics are so that you can optimize its use on your farm. It is a fabric or weed barrier cloth that is made especially to prevent the growth of different weeds that invade your yard or garden. The material used to make this fabric repels insects that carry parasites and bacteria that could threaten your crop. This helps save a lot of money in insecticides and at the same time it avoids big losses of produce. We all know that weeds suck up any nutrition they can and take every ray of sunlight they can get. Additionally, they obviously use rain water to grow more quickly. Of course, ground cover fabric is especially designed to prevent weeds from taking over. It controls the sunlight that reaches your yard, greenhouse or garden and at the same time in helps regulate the temperature by the guiding the light to the crops that need it. This is achieved with different colors of fabric, in this case, usually white or black, which can help control the intensity of the temperature.
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Weed barrier fabric is a good option since it prevents weeds from invading your crop.
In order to get optimum results from the weed barrier fabric we recommend that you clear the area you want to cover before you put it in. Plow the field to eliminate dry soil, stones, and bothersome weed roots so that your work is efficient and long-lasting. In a few months’ time, we don’t want overgrowth that was about to grow to ruin the area we’ve planted by creating uneven ground or worse by becoming the source of future pests. It is also important to mark off the area so that the vegetables or other crops grow evenly and receive uniform moisture throughout. Watering won’t be a problem for our ground cover fabric since its polypropylene fibers make it resistant to rust and prevent it from becoming weak which means it lasts between 3 and 5 years.
When you clearly understand the basics of ground cover fabric, its installation will be much easier since you will know how and where to use it for the best results. In general the rolls of this incredible fabric come in sizes between 3 and 4 meters wide and at least 100 meters long. This size should be big enough have a good size crop and with the necessary spacing between plants. Once you’ve made the necessary preparations before installing the fabric, you can proceed to unroll and spread the cloth. You should always think about the intensity of the wind at the time you are putting down the ground cover since gusts can move the material and ruin any measurements you’ve previously made. This is especially important since you have to cut holes in the ground cover to put in the plants you want to grow while at the same time covering weeds and keeping them from mixing with your precious crop.
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We recommend that you clear the area where the ground cover will be put in so that it lasts longer and is more efficient.
If you are planning to use a controlled watering system, it is also important to know where this is going to be put in respect to the fabric. If it is underneath in the wrong place it may not do any good and it could even damage the soil and you will have to remove the ground cover fabric and put it down again if it isn’t a watering system especially designed for this type of irrigation. You could end up making double the effort that might have been avoided by making some simple cuts. If your irrigation system is manual, the fabric offers you protection and durability since this material is resistant to tearing even when it is completely stretched out. You can walk over it with no problem while you are working. Of course you must be careful not to cut into it too deeply since this could cause weeds to appear in your work area.
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If you are going to irrigate your crops with an automatic system, we recommend that you take out the weed barrier fabric and put it down again when the system is installed to avoid causing any damage to the field where your crop is.
The weed barrier fabric will be completely installed in the area you want to cover when each end and lateral side is fixed down, preventing the fabric from moving like we’ve previously mentioned. Once the ground cover cloth is totally installed you only need to periodically supervise how your plants are growing and answer some questions like: Are the holes I cut big enough for the plants to grow correctly? Is the irrigation system working evenly in every part of the field? Are the edges fixed down well enough? It is best to get the answers to these questions as soon as possible so that in the case that the answer to one of them is negative, the problem can be rectified quickly before the crop area is damaged. The last revision to have in mind is temperature control. An elevated temperature could harm your plants and in the same way, depending on the field and production, a low temperature would be terrible for the growth of your plants. If this is the case or your crop has already been harvested, this incredible ground cover cloth can be reused in future plantations or if it is necessary, it can be moved without any trouble.