Gardener issues warning over common landscaping product with harmful impacts: 'Should be illegal'

A Redditor was furious about what they encountered while working on their yard. 

"F*** landscaping fabric," they wrote in a post on r/gardening. "This stuff deserves a special place in hell. That is all."

The photo they attached to the post justifies their rage. 

Landscaping fabric is notoriously difficult to deal with. While it's used in theory to prevent weeds from growing in certain areas, those weeds will often grow through the fabric anyway. Combined with the root systems of the plants that are wanted in the yard, that fabric will become tangled up and difficult to remove, deteriorating fairly quickly. 

That deterioration introduces microplastics into the soil of your yard, which can work their way into edible plants in nearby soil. When people ingest microplastics, there are increased risks of endocrine, immune, and reproductive problems.

Having an impressive lawn while using all-natural weed control is entirely possible. It can mean more manual labor but less than the work needed to pull up landscaping fabric. Cardboard and mulch can achieve many of the same desired effects as landscaping fabric, but companion planting is another alternative. Planting carrots can help diminish the spread of weeds while avoiding the need for harmful sprays, which can pose local health risks and harm the ecosystem downstream as runoff.  

When asked what they would use instead, the original poster was quite clear. 

"Nothing is the best option in my opinion. Anything you put down as a weed barrier will not only fail to block the weeds but make it more difficult to pull the weeds that do come up. It also compacts the soil and suffocates the roots of desirable plants. It's a lose, lose, lose situation," they said. "If you must put something down, cardboard is the only thing I would consider. It breaks down in a couple years but then I don't really see a point."

Reddit commenters felt the OP's pain about dealing with landscaping fabric. 

"For a product meant to deter weeds, it sure makes weeding more difficult when they root through it anyway," said the top-voted reply. 

"Weed cloth should be illegal. One of the worst ideas ever in the history of gardening," said another community member.

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