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Ridgerunner said:

Check with an appliance store. They often have huge boxes and may be willing to let you have them.

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also check auto body repair shops. we've given our local auto body place so much business the past 15 years that they're always glad to see us. we figured at least a few cars worth between the two of us and three different cars.

with cardboard you definitely want as few cracks as possible or use a few layers and overlap by about a foot.

craft paper will let some light through, but newspapers and smaller chunks of cardboard can help there. also mulch over the craft paper will cut down on light going through.

in all cases it is only temporary anyways depending upon how much rains you get there and what walks on it. for me i'm glad if i can get one season out of it, but sometimes i can get two if it is in a lower traffic area and the deer don't manage to shred it when they walk on it.

when people are speaking of a plant being able to grow under a barrier that to me means it wasn't properly constructed. you need to find out how deep those roots go because just laying something on the surface is not often enough, especially if you plan on leaving an area of the plant alone next to that border.

we have some grasses here that the roots will burrow down several feet even through our clay, they will follow worm trails. to effectively block it i'd have to put an edge down about three feet. which is why it hasn't been done.

rhubarb is actually doing an ok job of helping and whatever tries to come through i dig it up and pull whatever roots i can find. still it's a bugger...

flowerbug said:

when people are speaking of a plant being able to grow under a barrier that to me means it wasn't properly constructed.

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I take it you have never lived with Bermuda grass.

thistlebloom said:

I take it you have never lived with Bermuda grass.

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me not being in the south... i'm pretty sure the ditch grass i contend with is sufficiently tough enough in comparison.

any plant can be eradicated given enough effort. continual smothering, scraping, digging up any bits of roots you can find...

in a worst case using black plastic under cardboard will completely block the light, but plan on taking it up before it starts to degrade and crumble. the thicker grades are better and will last much longer.

I have never dealt with a weed, any weed, in the north that can stand comparison to Bermuda.

Sure, given lots of time and attention it could be managed. That's the key though isn't it? Whose got the kind of time it would take to devote to a single weed. I know I sure don't. My 24 hours are pretty much spoken for elsewhere.

Finding God in the garden said:

Haha! Yeah I wish I could set fire to all of it within about a 20 ft. radius of my garden. My general tactic has been to cover the entire area with cardboard when I'm starting a new bed and then continue expanding the cardboard in a circular fashion around the existing cardboard so that it kills off the nearest Bermudagrass plants growing runners under the existing cardboard. It takes extreme diligence and because I can't get enough cardboard to do that on a regular basis it is failing. Eventually I plan to either use landscape timbers sort of like Paul does or pour a concrete footing around the garden once I get the boundaries where I want them.

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I tried landscaping timbers...doesn't work.

Beekissed said:

I tried landscaping timbers...doesn't work.

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that's hardly any kind of edge at all...

thistlebloom said:

I have never dealt with a weed, any weed, in the north that can stand comparison to Bermuda.

Sure, given lots of time and attention it could be managed. That's the key though isn't it? Whose got the kind of time it would take to devote to a single weed. I know I sure don't. My 24 hours are pretty much spoken for elsewhere.

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well if i'm really trying to establish a garden space for vegetables and perhaps some other plants i surely wouldn't want to do it poorly so that i have to contend with a pesky grass the rest of my gardening time in that space. so i would want to do it well and spend the time up front.

with a deep rooted grass, i would consider double digging and putting a deep edge in if i were leaving in that grass along the edges. on top of that i would also use cardboard for the temporary nature it provides of breaking down after about a year. so that provides a secondary barrier that will turn into worm food eventually. i would also likely plan to check the situation out after the first year to see if may permanent barrier was working well enough or if i had to go deeper.

putting layers of cardboard down deep means the plant roots and leftover bits from my initial digging that i might have missed would have to expend energy trying to get through the temporary barrier. i've used this technique a bunch of times already for getting rid of grass roots down deeper that i bury so they don't have an easy shot for the surface.

i know that in a place that has had grasses for a while that i'll be contending with leftover seeds in the soil and also bits of root that i may have missed so i'll need to keep the scraper going through for several years before i'll have all that i've missed taken care of. this doesn't mean an area is kept grass free because the animals, wind, rains will move grass seeds around, but at least they are often not too many to control after that.

This guy uses a window, but one could easily just use a piece of plastic sheeting for solarizing a large area....

Beekissed said:

This guy uses a window, but one could easily just use a piece of plastic sheeting for solarizing a large area....

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if you are trying to get rid of it in a large area a big roll of heavy mil black plastic is probably the surest way to do it without using a lot of pesticides or having to dig it all up repeatedly.

the issues around what the black plastic might leach into the ground are probably not nearly as bad as most of the herbicides that could be used instead, but i doubt anyone really has much concerns about this sort of thing other than a few of use die hards who are trying to do organic growing in the middle of chem-ag-wastelands.

the other issue with black plastic is that you have to know your drainage situation for that area as you don't want a lot of water sitting on top of the black plastic and mulch or you'll have mosquito problems. so having the low areas covered with a barrier fabric that does let water soak through is how i've done that here (and then the rest of that higher area around those low areas are the black plastic).

in terms of cost it isn't too bad. depending upon what you can come up with for mulching materials on top of the black plastic you can cover a pretty large area with one big roll and a truckload or two of mulch.