6″ Gtongoko Galvanized Landscape Staples
Most market gardeners, and even some more serious casual gardeners, use floating row covers to extend their growing season and exclude troublesome insects during critical times of the year. While you can use soil or bricks to secure these row covers, it’s a lot easier to walk along the cover and tap these landscape staples into place. They take up very little space in storage in the off season and also look much better than the alternatives.
While I don’t use this method at the moment, some gardeners like to lay out landscape fabric with pre-cut or burned holes with spacing for specific crops. This a very low-maintenance approach that can free up time for other tasks that you would otherwise spend weeding. The key is ensuring that your fabric stays secure around the perimeter of the bed. These staples are perfectly suited for this.
11-gauge staples are fine for all but the most compacted and/or rocky soils. I can tap these into previously undisturbed heavy clay soil with a few hits with a mallet with no problem. They’re heavy duty enough to not bend or disform as you drive them in.
The landscape staples available at the garden centers and box stores in my area were all thinner and almost three times the cost for the quantity I required for my garden fence project. I used these staples to secure the bottom of my welded wire garden fence into the ground rather than include boards along the top and bottom that would have significantly increased the cost of the project, build time, and the amount of future maintenance that would be required. I placed three staples evenly between each 4″ x 4″ wooden post to tauten the fence to eliminate bowing and to reduce the likelihood that an animal could squeeze under. At 6″ long, these staples have stayed in place in the ground through numerous frosts, hard freezes, and snow cover.
You’re likely to find some other uses for these staples around your property as you tackle other projects and explore new hobbies. I discovered that these were ideal for securing our son’s baseball practice net to the ground for fielding practice. I also use them to keep soaker hoses in place in the mulched landscaped beds around our house.