Covering for a seed or plant bed

Claim 1

A lightweight, highly porous and pervious and highly flexible, substantially rectangular spun-bonded covering for a seed or plant bed comprising: a flat substantially planar highly porous and pervious and highly flexible spun-bonded body portion formed of a nonwoven reticulated filamentary structure of overlapping, intersecting continuous synthetic organic thermoplastic filaments highly and randomly curled and intermingled and autogenously bonded to each other at a multiplicity of irregularly spaced points along their lengths wherever they overlap and intersect, said continuous filaments being disposed in random, intermingled configurations uniformly distributed throughout said structure without a pattern of parallelism between said continuous filaments so that no two parts of the structure are identical, said spun-bonded body portion weighing from about 0.3 ounce per square yard to about 6 ounces per square yard and comprising continuous filaments having an average denier of from about one-half denier to about 10 denier; reinforcing edge portions on both sides and both ends of said covering; reinforcing strips of synthetic thermoplastic materials positioned within said reinforcing edge portions; a plurality of openings formed at space intervals in said reinforcing edge portions; metallic or plastic grommets in said openings; and fastening devices extending through said openings into the ground whereby said covering may be secured in place stretched in a relatively taut condition over said seed or plant bed during normal use and basically out of intimate contact with said seed or plant bed during such normal use thus permitting excellent air passage and ventilation to the seeds and plants but being capable of stretching when wetted such as by rain to come into intimate contact with said seed or plant bed to prevent washout and erosion of seed, plants and soil and, subsequently, upon drying out, being capable of contracting and recovering its original stretched relatively taut condition out of intimate contact with said seed or plant bed, thus again permitting excellent air passage and ventilation to the seeds and plants.