Pros and Cons of Ground Covers

Weeds, weeds, everywhere weeds! What’s a gardener to do? You can spend your time dancing with your hoe. You can invest in mulch or weed suppressing fabric. Or you could try to fight fire with fire. Planting a fast-growing ground cover could out-compete the weeds and help you prep your beds for the crops you want. But, they don’t work for every gardener or for every situation. Here are the pros and cons of ground covers to help you decide if they are right for your garden.

Pros of Ground Covers

There is a lot to like about ground covers. They can offer a lot of advantages over traditional weed suppression or removal methods. Here are a few of my favorite things about ground covers.

If you grow your ground cover correctly, it will suppress your weeds. Choosing a quick growing ground cover will allow the plants to take over your garden area soon after planting and choke out or shade out any weeds. Leaving soil bare is the biggest invitation to weeds, so covering the ground will help your garden stay weed free. You can even choose ground covers that have specific chemicals that will inhibit the growth of certain problematic or tenacious weeds. Planting your ground cover extra thick will prevent weeds from sneaking in and keep your garden schedule on track.

A second pro of ground covers is that they can actually enrich the soil of your garden. Clover, alfalfa, and other plants in the legume family can fix nitrogen in your soil while the act as an effective ground cover. This not only keeps your garden beds weed free, but preps the soil for your next heavy feeding crop. Even if you choose a non-legume ground cover, if you chop and drop the plants shortly before you’re ready to sow your seeds, they can act as a green manure. All the organic matter of the ground cover will add nutrients to your soil and help your garden thrive.

Another benefit of ground covers is that they can help your garden soil retain moisture and nutrients. Bare soil allows rain to runoff, nutrients to leach out of the soil, and valuable topsoil to blow away. Covering your garden beds with a ground cover provides an root system to to keep your soil healthy. When you are ready to plant, chop the ground cover into a thick mulch. The mulch will continue to provide coverage while your seeds sprout. As the ground cover composts into the soil, your chosen plants’ roots can take over preventing erosion and nutrient loss.

A final pro of ground covers is that they can be less work than conventional weed suppression systems. If you time your ground cover planting right, you can get it well established and ready to mow down or till under just in time for planting. You may never need to clear out a bed full of weeds again. Also by preventing weeds from going to seed in your garden, you can potentially reduce the weed seed load in your soil over time. A solid ground cover rotation can make turning over beds for succession planting and extended season growing easier and more profitable.

Cons of Ground Covers

Despite all their advantages, ground covers aren’t for everyone. You need to consider which ground covers might work best for your situation. Or if you want to consider other weed suppressing tactics. You may also be dealing with such significant weed pressure that you need to try other methods for a while before ground covers can work. Here are some of the drawbacks of ground covers to consider.

If you choose a very vigorous ground cover it can be hard to fully get rid of it. Then it can continue to grow and even outcompete your desired plants. Most ground covers grow like weeds when they first sprout. This is a big advantage, but if you choose the wrong one for your area or accidentally let it go to seed, you can create your own weed problems. One option to prevent this problem is to only plant ground covers over the winter and choose plants that will be killed by cold temperatures. This protects your soil in the fall and winter, but gives your plants a fighting chance in the spring.

Another con for some ground covers is that they can take too long to break down once you mow them. Planting a ground cover, letting it grow, chopping it down and letting it start to compost before planting can be too much lead time if you have plants that need to go in the ground early in the year. You need to make sure your ground cover will be ready to remove before you need that bed for production. One way to deal with this is by only using ground covers for warm weather vegetables, or using over-wintering ground covers for early spring plant beds. This gives you enough time for your ground cover to go through its full cycle before you need to plant.

A third con for ground covers is that some of the more vigorous options can create thick sod or root mat that can make it difficult to plant into. Depending on what plants you are putting in the bed after the ground cover, they may not be able to fight through the root mat to get well established. One thing you could consider is transplanting larger seedlings into beds with thick ground cover roots. You can dig holes in the areas where you transplant to clear the sod. Then the root mat blanket will help supress weeds everywhere else.

The last of the pros and cons of ground covers that I’ll mention is that if you don’t grow your ground cover properly, it can actually end up making more work for you. Some gardeners have accidentally introduced invasive weeds when trying to pick a good ground cover. Then they spend tons of time trying to get rid of their ground cover instead of enjoying the benefits. Do your research ahead of time and consider the planting, mowing, or tilling methods you plan to use. Ground covers that large scale farmers use may not be appropriate for a small scale garden. Letting your ground cover go to seed because you can’t get it mowed in time can create a long term problem in your garden that you’d rather avoid.

Ground covers provide a lot for a gardener to think about. There are many pros and cons of ground covers. Consider which options make the most sense for your and your garden. Then get out there and implement your plan! Good luck!

Looking for other ways to protect your garden, especially while your plants are growing? Check out my blog post How to Protect with Mulch for my three secrets to keeping your plants happy!

Ready to work ground covers into your master garden plan, but don’t know where to start? I can help! My Garden Planning Masterclass will give you the tools you need to think through each step of garden planning and consider all your options. It’s just the kick you need to finally plan your perfect garden!