Simple Landscaping questions

[blessme]

I have a large garden bed about (14*4.3m), my goal is to have a garden bed that can suppress the weeds and easy to maintain

my questions:
1. Do I need to put weed mat?before putting the mulch in?How much mulch do I need to order?
2. What kind of plant do I need to put?I'm thinking of putting Daisies
3. Where to buy Daisies plant in bulk?around 80-100 with the best price?I live in Carlingford area

 

[The Fence]

No need for weedmatt, spray out with glyphosate.

Mulch with either lucern hay or sugar cane mulch. Try to get the real bales, not the ones wrapped in plastic (too dear). Divide the bales up into 4in thick biscuits.

Daisies will do it but there are many other plants that will require much less maint. Such as pigface, or even Chinese star jasmine.

I would do a mixture of several.

However, you can get bulk daisies or many other ground covers at Fernview Nursery pretty cheap.

 

[blessme]

@The Fence
Thank you for your response

What does Glyphosate do?is it the same like roundup?How often do I need to spray it?

Talking about mulch, by having sugar cane what will be the advantage compared with the pine bark?or compared to the decorative mulch - the red color one?Since it is coming from sugar cane, will it attract more ants?and becoming ants nest?I heard the decorative mulch will attract termite compared with pine bark?

Your plant suggestions are very useful as I've known anything beside daisies. How do we maintain daisies beside trimming it?I like pigface compared with Chinese Star Jasmine. In the terms of decoration how do we mix it in the terms of placement?Do we mix it alternatively or split it half half?

 

[888]

To do it properly you need a weed mat, not only you keep weeds from coming up, the mat flatten the ground so when you put mulch you would need to put less per sqm compare if you don't have a weed mat.

You just need to calculate your garden bed area (yours about 60sqm). The mulch normally come in 60L bag which approximately cover 1sqm. So to cover yours, roughly about 60 bags give and take a few bags.

There are a lot of garden suppliers in Dural, you should be able to find Daisies there.

 

[The Fence]

Roundup is a brand of weedkiller made from the chemical Glyphosate.

Most people think Roundup is the chemical. It's the brand name.

Weed mat does work, no doubting that, but weds can also grow from the top side of weedmat by seeds that are dropped in on the wind or by birds/animals etc.

We have found a good thick (at least 4inches) covering of mulch (lucern or sugar cane) does the same weed suppressing job.

I dont like any bark or wood chip mulches as they are not very nutricious and take a long time to "mulch down".

Whereas lucern or sugar cane mulches down quickly and forms enriched soil that feeds the garden as well as retaining moisture.

I trim daisies with the whipper snipper, just cutting off the flower heads after they are finished flowering or in the case of the taller varieties, trim them down closer to the ground. They love it and come back thicker and stronger.

You go with whatever suits your preferences and soil type and climate.

As far as multi planting, I just chuck them all in randomly. Depends what look you want. You could get creative and make a nice colourful design, up to you. There are not rules when it comes to that.

Good luck.

 

[Shahin_Afarin]

To do it properly you need a weed mat, not only you keep weeds from coming up, the mat flatten the ground so when you put mulch you would need to put less per sqm compare if you don't have a weed mat.

You just need to calculate your garden bed area (yours about 60sqm). The mulch normally come in 60L bag which approximately cover 1sqm. So to cover yours, roughly about 60 bags give and take a few bags.

There are a lot of garden suppliers in Dural, you should be able to find Daisies there.

We did a development and placed weed mats and over a period of time we found weed growing on top of the mat? Not sure about anyone else but we have found it to be quite useless.

 

[Sove18a]

We did a development and placed weed mats and over a period of time we found weed growing on top of the mat? Not sure about anyone else but we have found it to be quite useless.

It depends on the type of weed you have.

I had a problem with couch grass growing all over my garden bed, coming through the neighbours fence (they are not gardeners!). I went to Bunnings and asked the guy there if weedmat will stop couch grass. He said no, it doesnt work. Couch grass is insidious and will always come back.

So I got a long rubber mat, dug a trench, nailed it to the fence and covered up the trench to create a barrier between my neighbours weeds and my garden. Works a treat. For the odd couch grass/weed that dares to come out, I just get a spraybottle of weedkiller and target that weed without touching the good plants.

 

[The Fence]

Yeah couch grass is what we have and it can look for certain to be dead and get 1/2 inch rain and green the next day. Right now it's as dry as a dead dingoes you know what, and I just know the next rain fall will revive it. It's tough.

We sprayed out some large sections of couch lawn to convert to garden beds last summer.

Sprayed out 2 times with glyphosate over a perion of a couple months then covered with sugar cane mulch, nice and thick.
Left it for a few months over winter then planted out early spring.

The plants are doing the best we have ever had for new plantings but that couch keeps coming back here and there. However, it does pull out very easily and we now look to have it beaten.

Those beds dont have any weedmat at all. The mulch does the trick.

Need to put it on very thick though.

 

[Hypnotic Cat]

Couch grass as well as Kikuyu often comes back unless you dig out every runner. I speak from experience – took me 6 months of concerted effort to dig out a large backyard absolutely overrun with Kikuyu and to a lesser extent couch. I got rid of all of it and it never came back.

Couch needs a much higher concentration of glyphosate to be killed off. You can buy high concentrate glyphosate from some garden centres or maybe Bunnings. Kikuyu dies off with a standard mix but still in my experience needs the runners to be dug out.

A standard pea straw mulch bale will give you about 1.5 to 2 square meters coverage. A good technique to stop weeds coming up is to first put down a layer of newspaper (about 6-8 sheets thick) or cardboard. This keeps weeds under control for about 18 months after which the newspaper and mulch would need to be repeated (in my view this was much better than mowing a lawn every weekend or two).

 

[blessme]

So let's say 5 inch of lucern hay will be sufficient to keep the weeds away. So the simplest thing is to put the plant first and spread the lucern hay surrounding it?Do I need to spray fertilizer on the soil before spreading the hay?

Where is the best place to buy the hay from in large quantities?

 

[MRCCON]

We did a development and placed weed mats and over a period of time we found weed growing on top of the mat? Not sure about anyone else but we have found it to be quite useless.

Weed mat is a waste of money. 80% of weeds come from seeds in birds droppings the mat is useless against that.

As has been said, give the weeds two good sprays of roundup or similar before laying mulch and you shouldn't have a problem with the existing ones.

 

[farmilor]

Don't buy mulch You're in Carlingford, if you happen to be in either the Hills Council or Hornsby Council areas, they both have free mulch. Not sure about the Parra council area.
Check out their websites, tells you the details. I know in the Hills, it happens twice a month at the community nursery where you need to take in some branches for mulching and you can take away as much tree lopper mulch as you need. This stuff is just as good for your garden as lucerne (if not better), and free ....

 

[farmilor]

Read this to find out about mulch and preparing a garden bed:

http://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=52961