Weeds Undercover

[Urban Ayisha]

I'm sure this has been asked before, sorry, but i've had a huge part of couchgrassy allotment covered up for a year now and when i check underneath there still there!! ive got them covered in green, blue and white tarpaulin, does it really matter a lot that its not the special black stuff? how long will it take for them to completely go? and does anyone know a website where you can get really cheap special black stuff?

i wish you could eat weeds. anyone got a good recipe?!?!

[Ellendra]

Some weeds you can eat. Not sure if that's one of them :p

[prison break fan]

Hate to dampen your enthusiasm, but I am on my fourth year of digging out couch grass on my allotment! I looked round at other plots, where people have used different methods, covering up, spraying, good old digging, and we are all the same!! pbf

[Flo]

A trusty fork and dig out as much as possible - then dig some more, then try some spray, then dig some more.

It's an enemy is couch grass.

[marshlander]

Sad to say, we're having the same problem - 5th year of digging it out - you think you've got all but back it comes.

As Flo says, use a fork. If you use a spade you chop it up into lots of little bit that all grow! I tried covering one area will carpet which is supposed to kill it in 6 months - didn't work - grew through the carpet! Eventually got around to using the good old fork on that area and it's nearly all gone now - just keep weeding it out when I see it.

If you're not trying to garden without any chemicals then glycophosphate is said to be safe.

[Annpan]

It doesn't like being mowed... or should that be mowen?

I try my best to pull up the clumps by hand but I have a few stubborn clumps in awkward places... on cultivated soil it is really easy just to pull out though.

I made weed tea with all my weeds the first year I was here (just drown all your weeds, leave a few weeks and use the resulting liquid as a feed for plants) However my water butt of fermented weeds is still sitting there, and stinks like a cows bum whenever the weather gets slightly warm.

[dave45]

My jungle garden was (and partly still is) covered with couch grass. 3 years ago I made a start on converting it to allotment style veggie patches. The couch grass was only part of the problem - underneath was the wreck of a huge greenhouse - every spadeful contained broken bricks, broken glass, ironmongery, old tins and bottles, weeds, bramble roots, couch grass and more, with 3 types of soil in variable strata - pure sand, rich soil, and plasticine clay.

It is/was a real challenge. I ended up sieving the lot and chucking the crud left at the bottom of the sieve - well burying it as part of the simultaneous terracing project :-) This was VERY labour intensive, BUT the soil is now SO easy to work. Couch grass still pops up, but in the "fresh" sieved soil it is fairly easy to remove. Pull up every bit of the nasty white roots... The nasty black roots are horsetail and they are even harder to get shot of. They spring forth from May onwards.

This year I am attacking a new patch of grass.. this is a different challenge... just broken glass and TREE ROOTS underneath!. I did try a petrol cultivator on it to see what would happen.... CouchGrass/TreeRoots 1 me 0. I now have chickens, and I am slicing off turves of couch grass, and relaying them in the chook's compound.... I get the feeling the chooks are going to win over couch grass... they scratch and peck it into submission. Underneath the turves I am going to have to rip out the roots by hand and maybe sieve it all .. and re-arrange the sand/soil/clay strata... and the spuds need to go in it within the next few weeks !

I had a plastic bin in the chooks compound which I moved on saturday... it had been there for 3 weeks. Underneath was a circle of pale-green couch grass (like you say it carries on growing undercover!). The chickens zoomed in on it straight away.... less than an hour later - not a trace of green. So forking and sieving WILL work, but chickens may be a secret weapon. I know the (grass) growing season hasn't really started yet, but my money is on the chickens.

[Mal]

I know the (grass) growing season hasn't really started yet

You know, that's the scary bit for me - currently looking good and I can forget about the bindweed, grass, other stuff but I just know that one day I'll go back down there and suddenly it'll be a jungle and I'll be standing there scratching my head saying 'when did that happen'!