Since landscape fabric has gone out of favor in the landscape industry, I suspect that you will need to go to an on line catalog for professional quality material. A couple of 6'x 250' rolls can be shipped right to your door.

Which you can then lean against a wall in your shed or garage, where they will do more good than if rolled out over soil in the garden.

The stuff doesn't work - unless you are talking about that heavy grade that is used in container nurseries, and like them are not going to cover it with anything.

Bboy's post gets to the bull's eye of the situation! This stuff isn't used much anymore because it doesn't work for landscape applications, and causes some real problems in the long run.

I don't agree that landscape fabric doesn't work in all applications. I find it works great if used to control certain weeds under certain applications, especially if you are dealing with persistent perennial weeds such as Bermuda grass and Oxalis pes-caprae. Neither of these weeds can be completely killed with herbicides without multiple applications, yet are easily smothered out if kept covered. When I have faced landscaping complete gardens that are infested with these two weeds, using landscape fabric in combination with heavy mulching with ground-up tree trimmings and plantings designed to completely cover the soil over time, I have had almost complete control of these weeds, with very little ongoing maintenance. Ground water penetration has not been diminished, weed control has been extremely easy 2 years later, and the fabric did what I needed it to do. I think the additional 4 inch depth of mulch over definitely helped, as without a deep mulch, the other posters are correct, fabric in itself is not enough to prevent weed seeds from taking hold, nor preventing certain weeds from growing through the fabric. In the case I mention, however, without the weed fabric, the new garden installed would have been quickly over-run with weeds, and 2 years later it is nearly weed free...

Get back to us in something longer than 2 years.

And your point is?

Not much of a trial period.

Ron, It is obvious to me that you don't have to deal much with Bermuda grass, or you would know that it would be fully re-established within a year if it weren't under control. After 2 years, and some interim pulling and spraying where it did come up around plants placed within holes cut within the weed fabric, it is still weed free of Oxalis pes-caprae and Bermuda. This is an unqualified success in my mind, and anyone who has had to deal with these two weeds rampantly established in a garden would likely agree with me.

I am not saying that it can't creep back in from the neighbors, or get reestablished if plants are removed or die and it blows in as weed seed, but the weed fabric in combination helped me resolve a nasty situation which would have required several months of spray, hoe, water, repeat several times, to control. I am just saying that it does have its uses, and can work rather well, and give excellent results.

I would agree with you in that as it is most often used, without sufficient mulch cover or density of plantings to shade out potential weeds, and with no perserverance to keep on top of weeds that can still germinate on top of weed fabric and mulch, it can quickly become useless. To say that it is never worth using is simply wrong, or the quick judgement from someone who is unwilling to consider other's experience, which would seem to be your modus operandi...

Well I'm certainly willing to consider my own unstatisfactory experiences with the stuff, combined with that reported by multiple posters here over the years. Including at least one other right here on this very thread. Even the heavy fabric used for nursery container yards will support the growth of weeds dropped or falling onto it, at least under a regular irrigation regime in my region. A solid layer of old, decaying bark mulch is a regular seedbed.

I'll be sure to give you a call next time I have to pull up landscape fabric with thousands of pounds of old, soggy mulch and weeds on top of it, so you can fly up and help. There will be plenty of opportunity to discuss my "modus operandi" as we break our backs undoing what was supposed to be a problem solving installation.

As has been mentioned elsewhere, a few sheets of newspaper covered with mulch is a superior substitute for landscape fabric, and decays over a year or two in a temperate climate without contributing to long-term soil compaction, no roots infiltrating and getting tangled up in it and no difficulties adding to or re-arranging plantings, to name a few of the hazards of using landscape fabric in planted areas (the stuff is not completely useless, as it can be used as a weedblock underlying a path where soil quality and plant health issues are not involved).

I've had success with the newspaper and mulch technique in a part of my former Texas garden that had been host to a "rampant" population of Bermuda grass.