Lawn and Garden Uses For Burlap

NYP Corp recognizes that, while its many textile products are for the  nursery growers, they are also used by home landscapers.

Made from the skin of the jute plant, burlap is nature’s answer to synthetic and sometimes destructive materials such as plastic. Burlap bags are entirely biodegradable and incredibly versatile. The uses for burlap are limited only to the imagination. Burlap has been widely used in the fields of fashion and home furnishing, but it has most commonly severed its many purposes in the realms of lawn and garden.

As a result of the abundance of synthetic lawn and garden materials and products on the market, the value and incredibly diverse uses of burlap are sometimes overlooked or underrepresented in the American marketplace. Many people have got to know burlap as a material used for potato bags and other heavy vegetables, but have not considered using the heavy-duty and all-natural cloth for the proliferation of the areas surrounding their home.

One of the most common and effective uses of burlap is as a weed inhibitor. Amazingly, the structure of burlap is such that it allows roots and other beneficial elements of the growing process to penetrate its surface while preventing weed growth. In between the prepping of the soil and the insertion of new plants, laying down a layer of burlap will aid your efforts immensely by allowing roots to grow downward while preventing weeds form growing upward, all the while maintaining a completely organic environment.

Burlap can be a very good insulator when wrapped around young trees that are often vulnerable to breakage while subject to the weight of winter snow.  The bags can also be cut into smaller sections and used to line the bottoms of pots before soil is added. This will help the soil retain water and nutrients beneficial to the growing process.

Unlike sheets of plastic, which are sure to get shredded into mangled black pieces by the forces of nature, burlap biodegrades over the years, completing its tour of duty by returning its elements to the very Earth from which it came. It might not be the flashiest or most colorful product you’ll find in the home and garden section at your local home improvement center, but burlap is the quintessential lawn and garden material.

Tags: burlap, burlap uses, gardening with burlap, outdoor uses for burlap

This entry was posted on Friday, July 15th, 2011 at 11:28 am and is filed under Burlap, Nursery Horticulture, NYP-Corp News, Sandbags.