New elderberry farmer with a question about landscape fabric

I've started 12 elderberry plants from softwood cuttings taken in late spring-early summer. They're thriving and I transplanted them into the ground. At first I put landscape fabric around some of them with sand on top to hold the fabric down.

But some of the plants have started sending up shoots, new canes, I guess. They appeared around plants that didn't have landscape fabric around them. I was afraid the new shoots wouldn't find their way to daylight around the plants that did have landscape fabric. So I removed the landscape fab from all of them. Some of the shoots were right up against the mother plant but others were far enough away so I didn't think they'd travel to the opening in the fabric.

Many things I read online recommend landscape fabric but I don't see how the new shoots can break through and find the sun. Should I put landscape fabric around the plants and if so, how do the new shoots ever make it?

Thanks for any advice.

Weedless Willy

I would not use it. A natural mulch will hold moisture, break down to feed the soil, and create a soil that allows weeds to be easily picked by hand.

I use mulch around elderberries but I want them to make more plants. I think landscape cloth might slow them down but not completely prevent new plants. Once they mature & start making seeds the birds will help spread them around anyway.  

Landscape fabric is nasty stuff after a couple of years.  It turns into a fiber-y mess.  Roots get tangled in it and it's almost impossible to pull up once it's full of roots.

I put a bunch of it down about 15 years ago and I've been trying to dig it all up ever sense.  Just when I think I've pulled up the last of it, I'll find another spot where it's still there under the mulch, but tangled in tree roots.  It keeps the good organic stuff from being integrated down into the soil profile by worms.  

I'd strongly advise you to run from it and just mulch heavily with wood chips.