Membrane recommendations please

I am very fortunate to have a huge garden. The down side is battling with weeds, a battle I never seen to win however hard I try! I am surrounded by farm land so have plenty of hedgerows, field margins etc which accomodate pretty well every weed known to man.
I am in the process of hand weeding a huge bed of Rhododendrons and Azaleas and know it will weed up again by the time I get from 1 end to the other!!!!. I don't like hoeing this bed (plants being surface rooters) and I just don't have the time to keep hand weeding it, so altho it goes against the grain, I'm giving in and going to use membrane and bark to at least give me some breathing space before the bed needs attention again.
I have used newspaper and bark in the past but that doesn't last for very long and I need a solution which will combat the worst for some time.
I know there are different grades of membrane but don't know much else about the stuff. I'd be grateful for any advice as to which are good/bad makes and what sort of grade I need. The bed will not be walked on except perhaps for the odd escapee sheep or the visiting deer (grrrrrr!). I'm presuming buying in bulk is best? The bed I am definitely going to do is about 30 mtres x 10 mtrs and I might use membrane on another shrub bed to try and make my job a little easier.
Any information would be much appreciated. Thanks.

 

I use a normal fabric weed barrier under the gravel topping on my pots and also as a liner in the pond baskets too.Most have been removed and washed through at least 3 times over the past few years and are just as good today including the pond ones. I've also got 25ml gravel on the drive at the front and also the entire back garden but for that i used a driveway fabric weed barrier for heavy traffic which isn't showing any signs of stress or puncturing after being laid 5 years ago. Can't remember the make but they all came from DIY stores.

 

Snap :(

You need the Woven type. Other than that a higher number for the GSM (Grams per Square Metre) indicates more heavy duty and thus the longer it will last. Although once covered with bark sunlight won't be reaching it to get it to rot and if you look at, for example, Shiney's membrane for his Runner Beans that is exposed to sun and has lasted many years

I bought mine on eBay wherever I could find a quoted GSM and a price that I liked. Have also bought off Amazon on occasions.

The Pegs are relatively expensive. If you are installing membrane against an "edge" (rather than making a join between two pieces of membrane) I think you would be better off cutting a slit with a spade an tucking the edge of the membrane in. Up to you though, the pegs work fine, but you always have a "flappy bit" of edge in the middle between each peg ...

I recommend you put down large bark chips. There is less stuff that weed seeds can start life in (compared to using a finer bark). I got the local farmer to collect for me from local forestry outlet using his biggest grain trailer! I think it worked out about £8-10 a cubic metre. Depends how big an area you need to do though, if one builder's bag will do you that is probably easier

Once the membrane is down you have no access to the soil. I mulched mine with lots of manure before laying the membrane on the grounds that I would not be able to again ...

Consider width of membrane. 4M width covers the ground easily, and no/few overlapping joins, but hard to accommodate existing plants! Dunno what is best for an existing planted area, but perhaps 2M wide. Then cut from side of membrane to centre of plant to work around each plant. The more plants there are the less successful that will be ... too many loose pieces. Where we have done that we also made a 80cm-ish square, with a single cut to the middle, put that round the plant, and then the actual roll of membrane, so that the slit-to-plant didn't allow weeds to come up (because of the small piece underneath).

For small plants we cut an X and fed the plant through the "hole". (This worked well retro fitting membrane along a recently planted hedge; we tried planting the hedge through the membrane but it was neigh on impossible)

You might consider used carpet instead? Particularly if you can get it cheaply enough. Nightmare if you ever need to remove it, but it will probably rot down better than membrane will - particularly a wool carpet. Any cruise-liner refits anywhere near you?

 

Thanks all for your great advice and help. Armed with the info I have already purchased some rolls of 2m having taken Kristen's tip as do have a fair few large plants in the area to be covered. Totally agree about the big bark it seems to last longer too. I'm going to a local timber place tomorrow which sells logs, maybe they would be delighted for me to take bark off their hands!! Afraid a builders bag of bark ain't going to touch the area so have a feeling the bank balance is in for a torrid time but if the membrane and bark will keep this bed more or less weed free it will save me a good week's worth of hand weeding about 3 times a season and that time could be much better spent doing something else much more interesting in the garden. I hope the wind doesn't start to blow once the membrane arrives as I could see me going purple trying to lay the membrane if it's a force 8!