"Claude" wrote in message

I have some old carpet with felt underlay that I'm going to use as a
weed
mat rather than newspaper. It looks like an old berber and as best
as I can
tell is wool not synthetic. There was plenty of dust underneath it
when I
pulled it up so I expect it would let water through OK. Does
anybody have
any cautions or can see any reason why I shouldn't use it on the
garden?

Tehre are a few problems which may occur. The carpet may have been
mothproofed - that stuff is long term and could kill good microflora
in your garden. The carpet may look like it's all wool but often it
has synthetic fibre int eh baking and you have trouble seeing this
wihtout looking very carefully - the old patterned "Axminster" was a
good carpet to use as a weedmat but it's rare these days.

The felt underlay may be a better option but I'd try that out in a
small patch to see how it rots down as it too could ahve synthetics in
it.