51 cent biodegradable tree mat?

[SD51555]

My mind is always spinning. I accumulate a lot of cardboard boxes from where I get groceries at two different places. I shop at the cheapest grocery store for some things, and the most expensive for others.

At the Aldi for those of you that haven’t been, you have to pay for paper bags, 12 cents each. Ive been buying some for fire starters because they work perfectly when starting a fire with dry balsam fir. I wondered to myself how they would work for tree mats for mulching.

So I grabbed 4 and my silage fork and headed out to one of my tree rows with a lot of variance.

The one In the middle is fine on its own. It’s the four replacements around it that need to catch up.

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[SD51555]

These are all trees up near the cabin, so I’m into projects like this to keep me out of the woods in preparation for hunting season. I also took some time to cut up or rip apart boxes I had. I’d take the fragments of cardboard and line them around a tree and also cover in chips.

Both ideas work very well for what they’re doing. The bags are already the right size. The cardboard takes a little work, but also has purpose. Not sure I want to mess with the boxes when I can do this for basically 50 cents per tree with Aldi bags, and there’s no plastic trash years from now.


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[SD51555]

Here’s a hemlock a friend sent me. I had one box and decided to rip it apart and try it. This one was a tad ugly, but got the job done.

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[BuckSutherland]

I've tried just about everything there is to try for a weed mat.

-big desktop calendars lasted about 4 months and the grass and weeds took over and then I had to redo the weed mats
-leftover soybean and corn seed bags with plastic liners inside lasted about 1 season and then had to be redone
-carboard lasted a few months and then needed to be redone
-plywood scraps are impractical
-cheap landscape fabric from menards or amazon probably doesnt even last one season and needs to be redone
-political campaign lawn signs work ok, but are often too small
-cement silo staves work great but most of us only have one pair of testicles to make them practical
-drywall scraps are impractical


5oz non woven landscape fabric is still probably the best choice. I bought 2 rolls (4'x250") off Amazon in the last 8 weeks for $66/roll. Works out to approximately $.75-$1 per mat and then you are done. In a few years the woods will swallow up these pieces of landscape fabric and nobody will even know they are there. They just disintegrate like everything else and get swallowed up by soil, leave and your mulch.

 

[SD51555]

Rotten logs are still my favorite. They just get hard to source enough some times. I’ve got logs on some cedars and they sending very well.


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[bwoods11]

I saw a weed mat online far around a $1, I’ll try that & see how it goes. For apple trees I use the Menards tree rings and that seems to work !

 

[RGrizzzz]

5oz non woven landscape fabric is still probably the best choice. I bought 2 rolls (4'x250") off Amazon in the last 8 weeks for $66/roll. Works out to approximately $.75-$1 per mat and then you are done. In a few years the woods will swallow up these pieces of landscape fabric and nobody will even know they are there. They just disintegrate like everything else and get swallowed up by soil, leave and your mulch.

Costco usually sells rolls in the spring. You can get them for around $30. Sometimes cheaper as they clearance it out. I think they're 4'x250', but might be a little shorter.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

More info / pics of this 5 oz. fabric? Who makes it?

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

My cabin yard apple trees get cardboard mulch around them from any boxes we use up there. Most of the cardboard lasts about a year, but random weeds will fill in the cracks between boxes. It does make a difference though as those trees grow at about twice the rate of trees growing without the cardboard boxes. The yard trees occasionally get a 5 gallon bucket of water while we are up there, so that probably helps as well.

At home I use leaves and grass clippings as a weed mulch around my apple trees. It also helps build up sandy soil as it decomposes - after a few years it will add 4-6" layer of nice black decomposed mulch.

 

[omicron1792]

I buy mine off temu for cheap