My stepdad just got his license to grow and we’re both trying out our own methods as new growers. Today, one of his coworkers who used to grow back in the 70’s and 80’s before doing some hard time told him he could use black fiberglass shade cloth as a soil cover to keep weeds and pests off the plants. Does anyone have any experience with that method??
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Personally I wouldn’t use fiberglass anything in my grow, but as long as it isn’t agitated a lot to where it “breaks down” at all, It’s probably fine. But you could use tons of other things and get the same effect.
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That’s what I was trying to tell him, so I’ll just bring up that’s there’s better alternatives.
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To what end really?
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I’m not entirely sure, when he gets home I’m gonna ask if that’s really what he wants to do with his pots.
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Tell him to not be a cheap ass and just snag some of these! Hahaha
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Is it actually fiberglass? It looks like some very thin landscaping fabric.
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It is, they use it for some exterior work at the painting/contracting company he works for.
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I like this suggestion a lot more
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They come in all sizes 
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Problem is wind, etc. will loosen tiny fiberglass fibers which will get ALL OVER the plants. Which would be hard if not impossible to wash off of the buds once resin forms.
You couldn’t pay me to smoke it.
Out of a few 100’s of growers on this site, i doubt anyone uses fiberglass ground cover.
Imho, shade cloth or weed cloth, dried hay, woven fabric, canvas potato sacks etc. anything else is safer than fiberglass.
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Now I need like 50 of these.
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Those covers are great! I make my own from old plastic pots i cut down the side, then cut off the bottom, and paint w white latex primer.
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I really like the idea of making my own. I just gotta keep the yard from looking all “Sanford and Son” as my wife calls it, then I’m good!
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I laughed a good one at that. Thank you. Or Beverly Hillbillies my wife would say to me.
We have a nice park bench for sitting out front, but of course i use it to store shovels, etc. lol.
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If you’re looking for trades-type materials to use for this, just find/buy/barter for some windscreen or privacy fabric, the green or black stuff they cover chainlink fence in parking lots and yards with, that’s just plain old polyethylene or polypropylene like real farm shade cloth, it’s basically the same thing, 70-90% shade factor and UV-stabilized mesh fabric. Should be able to get that pretty easy somehow and it won’t make fiberglass fuzz.
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Mesh truck tarp would also do the job just fine, the stuff they stretch over a dump truck if you’ve got access to a junkyard or truck garage to salvage some.
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Exactly this. Perfect, weatherproof will last many years. Green color is great it won’t absorb heat.
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Another option that’s easy to get free/used is Reflectix, whether it’s from homes/construction or just get the bags they use to line those food delivery boxes with if you’re in a place where you see those in the trash. Each of those meal boxes has a big Reflectix sack in there, I use two or three inside each other as a soft cooler in the summer for cases of soda or beer, works great! The silver side really reflects solar heat so the low R-value pulls above its weight class on the beach or a sunny picnic table, and the deep wind proof sack keeps the cold air in there. You can cut disks out of it and put a hole in the middle for the stem with a slit to the edge and just put it over the top of the pot, make it bigger than the pot so it hangs over the side and helps shade the walls a bit for max cooling effects.
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I won’t be using the fiberglass shade on mine, I was just looking for a some opinions to try and change his mind on it. He really trusts the guy who told him about it and I couldn’t talk him down from bringing the roll home through text.
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