By Mike Thayer
Don't use this to line your containers with...
Weed barrier fabric, a.k.a., landscaping fabric is a great product, preventing weed growth so your veggies and flowers can thrive. It's great to line pathways with, keeping your mulch, stone or brick pathway clear of weeds. Allowing water, air and nutrients to pass through it, weed barrier fabric also has another great use - you can line the inside bottom of your containers with it, allowing for drainage without losing soil through the hole(s).
Starting at $12 for a small roll of thinner, lower quality fabric, you can pay up to $200 for the premium stuff, which is thicker, made of better material and comes in a bigger roll.
Use coffee filters instead!
But I say, don't even pay the $12 for the cheap roll if you're a container gardener, besides, there's way too much cutting involved to 'customize' the fabric to fit your container size. Weed barrier fabric is good stuff, but coffee filters do the very same job and WAY cheaper!
Like the weed fabric, coffee filters allow for drainage at the bottom of your pot, without losing soil through the hole. You just need one filter for larger pots, and you can get away with halving and quartering coffee filters down to size for smaller pots. Here's the best part, you can get a package of coffee filters on the cheap! A package of 100 filters cost me $1.25 at Dollar Tree. That's enough "fabric" to do more than 100 pots!
Get the weed barrier fabric for large jobs, use coffee filters for your containers!
$pend Wisely My Friends...