Quack grass- my enemy
Does anyone have tips for fighting off quack grass? We have it all over the yard. I couldn't care less that it's in the lawn. I don't like it in the vegetable garden, but with a garden fork and diligent weeding, its manageable. What isn't so manageable is having it in my flower bed; there are roses and perennials in there, so I can't just take a fork to it. Weeding by hand is the only method I know, and those roots are so tough they hurt my hands. I have wild Yarrow in the same bed, and it also spreads underground and lands in places I don't want it, but at least it doesn't hurt to yank it out.
I tried landscape fabric covered in mulch to make a path between my flower beds.. Ha ha! the grass said. For a year or two it worked, then the quack grass grew right through the fabric and mulch. Now the fabric is rooted to the ground- I can barely pull weeds out of it, but I also can't remove the fabric, other than a little piece at a time.
The worst of all however, is when quack grass roots get into your compost pile, grow all through it, and basically "eat" it.
Comments
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It is my enemy as well. I no of no organic way of beating it aside from hand weeding. If it was in a place that you could plant an aggressive annual cover crop, that is the only other thing that I can come up with.
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what is quack grass?
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Thick mulch is your friend. Vinegar and cardboard will weaken it, then you want a thick heavy mulch above it to drown it out and make it easier to control. Don’t ever use weed cloth if you can avoid it (I say that because you may need it for wrapping a french drain or lining a gravel filled ditch for drainage, decomposed granite path, or something). I like to take a gallon regular vinegar with A small handful of salt and a couple squirts of dish soap in a garden sprayer. Spray the quack grass or offending weeds just before a hot sunny day, this should kill the or weaken them considerably. Then lay down an overlapping layer of non shiny, non waxed, regular cardboard (get it from local stores/dumpsters, and your earth worms will love you for it), and add 6 to 8 inches of a good heavy mulch (like wood chips from a tree service, chips and leaves, not bark from a home improvement store). Add more wood chips after it settles (in a week or two), to bring it back up to 6 to 8 inches (you can go thicker if you like).
You can also use hardscape borders (at least 8 inches underground and above to accommodate the thick mulch) to help stop it from spreading (once it’s cleared from an area). You can eliminate it completely, all at once or in strategic stages, and then you only need perimeter mulching to keep it at bay. All my trees have 7 foot+ hardscape rings with 8 to 12 inches of mulch in them (pulled back 3” from the tree trunk). Any weed that thinks of popping up, pulls out with a gentle wiggle and quack grass can’t get a hold anywhere in it.
Mulch is perfect in a garden and if your soil is nice and loose, a thick layer of mulch eliminates weeding and if anything does try to grow in it, a gentle wiggle and you can pull it and let it die and dry right on top of the mulch. Not all veggies are keen on thick mulch, but some are and you can get creative with the rest (think planting on mounds or raised rows). I use wood chips with some garden plants, organic straw with others, but almost all of it gets mulched. If you use the cardboard/heavy mulch to kill the grass in the entire garden area (you can still grow stuff that will work with the heavy mulch for a season but don’t let any quack grass grow next to the plants), then you can turn it all under and heavy mulch the perimeter around the outside of the garden the following year (as long as you killed “ALL” the quack grass). If you don’t mind forgoing the garden for a season, go with a couple layers of cardboard and as thick as possible on the wood chips (use it for wood chip storage while you take from it to mulch other things around the yard (but don’t let it get thinner than 7 inches and make sure to extend it outside the garden area to get around the perimeter as well. Oh, and immediately pull any quack grass if a shoot happens to make it to the surface, it shouldn’t, but stuff happens and who knows).
If you weaken a plant with vinegar or anything else, and then cardboard over it and heavy mulch it, there is nothing that will survive that (I don’t care how prolific or invasive, it’s weakened and has zero chance of reaching sunlight, it’s going to die and compost in place). Thick thick heavy mulch and a little time will do the harder work for you.
Other than drainage applications, I really despise weed fabrics and cardboard breaks down and becomes soil/worm food and doesn’t make an ugly nasty mess like old torn and slightly rotted weed fabric shards. Mulch can control anything as long as it’s thick enough.
If you have a residential application then you need tall borders to contain it and look good. You can get free wood chips from a service like chip drop or calling around to local tree service companies (they will dump a huge pile, but you would be surprised at how fast you can go through that pile when you are using it to heavy mulch trees, plants, and gardens. And it decomposes pretty fast and still looks good.
-Peace, Love, and Hippie Thoughts-
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@LaurieLovesLearning ahhhh couchgrass!! Yes that is a problem, but it is not as much a problem as kikuyu grass - that is couch grass on steroids. NOTHING kills it - one little piece of root years afterwards can still come to life and spread. Whoever introduced it into NZ should have been hung, drawn and quartered in my opinion!
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I just read a post somewhere else where they fenced off the offending area and put 2 weaner pigs in, who proceeded to dig up and eat all said couchgrass, roots and all. A year later, no sign of regrowth :D
However, @blevinandwomba that is not going to help your flower garden, sorry
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No, quack & crab grasses are actually different. I am sure that we have both, but the crabgrass is worse.
I understand your thoughts on your invasive grass. :(
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turn it into medicine, its a diuretic, has antibiotic and soothing demulcent properties. remedy for gout, bladder infection,kidney stones urethritis, prostatitis, benign prostate enlargement. moves bile useful for gallstones, jaundice, and liver issues. helpful for some respiratory issues. the root or rhizome is the medicinal part. just thought id give some help lol.
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@nksunshine27 Which type of grass are you referring to?
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@LaurieLovesLearning quackgrass, couch grass, aka elymus repens, agropyron repens or elytrigia repens
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@nksunshine27 Could you start another thread discussing the uses & how to prepare it for use?
Don't forget to add appropriate tags! Thanks.
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@LaurieLovesLearning possibly not sure what you mean by starting another thread and where i'd post it,
not sure about what you mean by appropriate tags.
sorry i'm a little computer challenged lol,
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@LaurieLovesLearning do you mean crab grass and kikuyu are the same? Kikuyu is not crab grass, it has much thicker rhizomes and is a tropical import, from East Africa, botannical name is Pennisetum candestinum, while crabgrass is Digitaria sanguinalis :)
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@nksunshine27 Natural & Home Medicine would be an appropriate category.
By another thread, I mean starting a new discussion.
Just below the box where you type the post of a new discussion, there is a box that says "Tags" above it. Type a word that reflects the content of your post in there, for example, "quack grass" or "cough grass", "grass" or "medicinal". Each term needs to be put in separately. After typing one term, click just above the box, and you will notice that inside the box will be your term surrounded by a bubble of sorts, with a little "x" with it. The "x" is how you can delete that tag if it isnt a word that you want to keep.
Tags are meant to assist a search. If someone is looking for something and they want a specific term to appear in posts searched for, the posts tagged with that term will appear in their results.
I will also post these instructions as a new post for reference sake.
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I had no idea what kikuyu was until you posted about it. I just know that the grass here is relentless and it sounds like your invasive type is too. Is that any clearer?
Quack grass, which is the perennial grass with wandering rhizomes, its botanical name is "Elymus repens".
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Sorry I took so long to get back to this thread. Thanks for answering @LaurieLovesLearning
@cre8tiv369 Thanks for the ideas- I will look into the hardscape borders. Unfortunately, my flower bed is full of perennials, bulbs, and roses, so its a little late for cardboard. I am trying to mulch as I clear out areas.
@kmartin.mail I hear that pigs are pretty smart. Maybe I can train them to be quackgrass-attack-pigs, hee hee.
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Goodness! This is one comprehensive response that I feel I can add nothing more. I learned quite a bit. Thank you so much for posting!
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A couple of points that may help. Quack grass is also one of my worst weeds. The mulch mentioned by others has the added benefit of enticing the quack grass rhizomes to run along the surface of the soil just under the thick layer of mulch. I usually wait for heavy rain and pull the rhizomes out as much as I can get. If they have begun to run under the mulch instead of deep in the soil the control is much easier. The other thing you mention is you don't care if the quack grass is in your lawn. Well here is where you must begin control. I've seen quack grass spread exponentially through a lawn or garden. To keep it out of your flowers you must keep it out of your lawn or at the very least keep it out of the lawn near your flower bed. You could dig with a broad fork or garden fork to remove it from your lawn near the flowers. Early spring works great. In the lawn its easy to press the soil back down after rhizome removal. In the flower bed itself when the perennials are still small and its easy to identify the white smooth rhizomes of the quack grass. If you need to pull out perennials to remove rhizomes embedded in their roots its much easier on the plant if they haven't started actively growing yet. But don't let the season stop you from digging out rhizomes later if that's when you have the opportunity. Just water well after your done and mulch heavily. Alternatively you could place a verticle barrier between your lawn and the flower bed, it would have to go down 10 inches to keep out the quack rhizomes though. That's quite deep! Remember to keep an eye out for the seeds in June and lop those off if you can.
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I find that if the grass gets taller, that it is much easier to remove after a heavy rain that leaves the soil more soft.
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