Before and after 40x100 4mil clear plastic sheeting installation
and during
It were fun too!
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Never heard of this before - mind telling us more about this technique?
Absolutely.
The actual doing of it is easy:
Water the area to be treated. Laydown plastic sheeting over the area where you wish to kill vegetation, securing the edges with landscaping staples, weights, boards, etc. with an eye to really get the perimeter tight to the ground. Do it in the hottest months and with the most sun exposure possible. Then leave for 8 weeks or longer.
Clear vs Black: Clear plastic heats the ground much more efficiently. While black plastic itself heats up hotter, the thin plastic is not a heat sink of any value and most heat is lost to the air above. Clear plastic allows the UV through to heat the ground directly then helps to keep it there as heat. This is a major reason why we want to get those edges tight: Trap the heat!!! I don’t know if you’re ever going to get a good enough seal to deprive the plants of carbon dioxide, but perhaps this is a factor? On the surface the plants die off quickly, and day by day the soil temperature creeps up. Counterintuitively this is why we watered. While the water does become vapor quickly under the plastic it also greatly improves the heat conductivity of the soil (imagine wet cloths in winter instead of dry) and gets the heat down to the roots, seeds, bacteria and anything else good and bad that is near the surface of the soil. In these warm wet conditions the plant’s vital systems are unable to function and the plant just dies or succumbs to rot and disease that the wet warmth encourages. Okay, back to the black. It has an advantage, blocking sun. Some plants (my hated bindweed for instance) have the potential for such vast and deep root systems that they could possibly sustain a plant through the clear solarization process, and even allow for growth during the process if a long heavily overcast and cool period were to keep the heat at bay. During such times however black plastic would hinder photosynthesis and continue suppressing growth. But as mentioned earlier, deep roots may sustain some plants so the time frame may be extended beyond (perhaps far far beyond) an 8 week period until the roots shrivel, become diseased, and finally the plant dies (or at least abandons the roots under the solarization plastic).
These comments reflect my understanding. But it should be known that some differ in their opinions. Mike Barushok thoroughly believes the bind weed will love the clear plastic. I hope he’s wrong and hangs his head in shame, but he very well could be right… I guess.
We initially planned to do both black and clear, but I was only willing to buy clear, and what members had on hand was clear as well. I do think it’s a worthwhile experiment however and will try to get some black (which frankly I had great luck with on a small section of my yard last year (after all Kansas has plenty hot summers).
Thanks for asking Dom!
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Thanks for the insight!
I have a LOT of rock bed around my house and yard from the previous owners. Over the years, the weed liner deteriorated. I replaced a small section myself… and discovered that I just don’t have the energy for this sort of thing. I never imagined how much work something as simple as “move some rocks” would actually end up being. Anyway, all of that is just to say that I’m kind of on the lookout for ways to kill weeds that don’t involve chemicals.
What kind of plastic are you using? Is it purpose-made for this task?
My extremely limited internet searching after your first post agrees with you, but in my experience with Mike B, it’s usually best not to bet against what he thinks lol
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Or just set your garbage can on them for a week… as a hole in my lawn attests…
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It’s most commonly Polyethylene, 4mil thickness minimum. There are variants that resist UV damage, or other wear, some purpose made, but these can become much more expensive in a hurry.
All the plastic we have is from different sources, find the one I just laid out here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086XL82KG?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details
I don’t know what luck you’ll have among your rocks, if you’d like enough for a small test area I think we could oblige.
You’re right about Mike… but I still hope he’s wrong!!!
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I agree on the bindweed. I had some in my garden. I dug down, following a root, 12 inches and cut the root off. It grew back.
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You could combine generated steam with plastic. I’ve considered it, turn months into hours. But you have to have a boiler. Or possible a weed torch. Heard good things about them, but who knows down in the rocks.
Steam would be super cool though. And maybe we could get interest from various areas in building what was needed. Even woods could use it for bending (I think it would have to be bigger than what steam bending normally requires)
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