I don't want to embarrass or offend you, but I have to be honest. It's time to replace your carpet. Get a new one, or install that wood or tile floor you've always wanted. Heck, you can even decoupage your floor with pictures of cats for all I care.
I just want your old carpet.
I'll begin by discussing the problem your carpet will help me solve.
Weeds.
I'm only aware of three methods of controlling weeds.
You can use chemicals. Pre-emergent herbicides prevent weed seeds from germinating. They will have the same effect on your radishes. Post-emergent herbicides kill plants after they've germinated-they will do the same to your plants. I don't use chemical herbicides in my garden. I don't like the smell, for one thing. For another, as klutzy as I am, I'm sure the tomatoes would take more hits than the tumbleweeds.
You can manually remove the weeds. However, rototillers are noisy and cumbersome, and while I have a variety of interesting weed-removal devices-scuffle-hoes and the like-I prefer to think of them as aesthetic objects. I love work-worn tools, as long as someone else did the actual work.
Hand-weeding has its place; there's something morally uplifting about a planting bed freshly hand-weeded. However, I have a lot of garden, and I only need so much moral uplift, especially when the next good watering will undo any progress my morals might have made.
The third method is to put something else where the weeds might grow.
Organic mulches are useful in planting beds; they decompose and provide nutrition to the soil even as they cool the soil and keep it moist.
Organic mulches aren't practical for bare spaces, and I have lots of them in the form of paths and areas with shrubs or trees. And that's where your carpet comes in.
Old carpet installed upside down has all of the advantages and few of the disadvantages of commercial landscaping fabric. They are both permeable, so water can get into the soil, and they both suppress weeds. The weight of the carpet holds it flat, so you won't have to use landscape staples, which provide access points for weeds.
Carpet is more durable than landscape fabric. One area of my yard has paths, which I created three years ago by putting mortar sand over landscape fabric. There are already holes in the fabric. Last week, when my nephew was helping with some digging chores, I kept yelling at him every time the point of his shovel even neared the path, because I knew the thin fabric would tear. (Sorry, Henry!)
Eventually, both landscape fabric and carpet will fail, and when they do, the carpet will be easier to remove. It will come up in big chunks, while the landscape fabric will tear into small pieces that are hard to remove.
Best of all, old carpet is free. Or it will be if I can just convince you to replace your carpet. Did I mention that blue (and green, tan, grey, rust and all patterns) is so last year?
When Teresa Howell is not advocating bogus redecorating projects, she teaches English at Great Basin College.[[In-content Ad]]
