In the past I have had limited success growing watermelons. I make a mound and the melons grow, but I usually end up with a weed patch and no watermelons. This year I built a raised bed that is 2 ft wide and 8 ft long. I want to put old carpet around the bed so i don’t have to fight the weeds. Is there any reason this won’t work? The rugs shouldn’t hurt the plants/melons?
The weeds will eventually grow through the rugs. It’s best to use
professional grade landscape fabric. It’s what I use and no weeds.
This is pull up carpet from my house. Some I tore up 10 years ago is still going strong where I put it down to cover a patch of poison ivy along my wood line. By the time this wears out I will have gotten my money out of it.
Bad things will leach out of the carpet, I personally would never use. Black 6 mill plastic is the bomb.
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I am not a chemist but my guess is that plastic is not the best either. Anyway you convinced me, I will pull the carpet after the vines start getting to the carpet but for now they will have to stay. I don’t have the money, energy or time to change what I have done.
I trust @rayrose in all things watermelon, but I think your carpet thing will work for at least a few years, with one big exception. Obviously you’ll have to leave an opening of some size to let the watermelon through the carpet. With the set-up you describe you might just be thinking of running a piece of carpet lengthwise along your row and having the watermelon plants come up on the side. The problem with any of this is that the weeds that do the most harm (ie suck up the most water and nutrients and eventually even block sun) are the ones that come up right at the watermelons plant. Your carpet will make your patch in general look fairly weed free, but you will still have little clumps of weeds around each plants that will be problematic.
My parents used to own apartment buildings and instead of dumpsters, there would be a long row of like 20 garbage cans (1 for each apartment) and they would sit behind the apartments in grass or gavel areas. Every so often when an apartment would get remodeled, they would take the carpet and spread it out on the ground under and around the garbage cans to prevent weeds. One could argue which looks worse…weeds or old carpet (ha) but I must say, that carpet would block the weeds out for about 2 -3 years before we’d have to put more down. SO I think it would work as a weed barrer. @thepodpiper could be right about things leaching out, I don’t know, but I’m not aware of anything dangerous in carpet or carpet backing or it seems like they wouldn’t allow it as flooring. Then again, as flooring it isn’t breaking down as it would it your garden or our trash cans.
Plastic is a good suggestion, but I have some problems with weeds just pushing it up on the edges close to the plant where its needed the most. Also, carpet lets water soak through while if you use full coverage of plastic you will have to put in some drip lines or other irrigation I think.
Good luck. BTW…I’ve seen others propose carpet for fruit trees but haven’t seen it done.
Thanks Cityman. I will post pics later this week of what I have. Traveling now so no way to take pics.
I should have also added that my whole garden has a watering system under the plastic. Watermelons like the soil to be hot, i dont think carpet will heat up your soil.
I have a raised bed that is 2 ft by 8ft with 1 ft high wood sides. I put carpet around the beds. Some beds have fruit trees in them but they are whips so I think the plants can coexist.
My mother uses rugs in her patch in northern PA. They help quite a bit.
I had good luck this year growing watermelons (for me) - enough to eat for roughly two months - nonstop. I grew the plants in a 2ft x 8ft wood container with 12 inch sides and a 4x4 wood container with 12 inch sides that I described earlier in the thread. I had old carpet that I put around the containers which did a mediocre job keeping the weeds away. The carpet is so old that in some places the weeds grew threw the carpet (Rayrose mentioned this would happen earlier in the thread)…
Next year I want to expand my watermelon patch plus do a better job keeping the weeds out. Can you just use 6 mil plastic as mentioned earlier - will the watermelons burn on the black plastic from the heat? Does it need to allow water to soak threw? I used raised boxes this year - but I may mound or just plant without mounds next year.
Looking for suggestions or even better links to what other people use as cover in there watermelon patches.
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I’m using landscape fabric left over after installing the patio. Thicker than regular ones for garden use.
Professional landscape fabric is porous so water can go through it,
and the melons will not burn sitting on it. I’ve used the same fabric
over and over. It will last for many years. A 300ft. by 4 ft. roll only
costs $60.
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Nice looking watermelons - what variety? How big a hole do you cut in the plastic? I don’y have a drip system - does plastic work well with manual watering? Thanks for posting.
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Wow, nicely done.
Are you spraying for vine borers and squash bugs? I’ve found no good organic solution to these pests. Tried Surround, netting on a hoop house, going out with a headlight and squishing them for hours, surgically removing the borer larvae from the stem, pantyhose on the stem, BT, Spinosad. Same result, I lose some plants from the borer and the squash bugs slowly decrease the vitality until they go kaput.
In all honestly I always just let the weeds grow up through the vines so maybe that is part of the problem. I hope you tell me black plastic and no spraying worked that well.
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I usually mark my root point on watermelon with a stick. Stick a stick on the ground where you plant it. That way when it’s a jungle and you can’t tell where the roots are you know it’s where the stick is. I guess manual watering will work if you do that and cut a big hole in the plastic where the root is.
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I just slice an X in the plastic and tuck it under and I end up with about a 6 inch square opening and just plant my seeds in there and I do not spray anything. I always get a fungus on my vines but never any borers…knock on wood.
I need to spray a fungicide next season if I grow watermelons.
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Podpiper, you give me hope for future cucurbit endeavors.
Sorry for the follow up questions, but do you not have cucumber beetles or squash bugs either? I am overrun with them.