I've got couch grass coming through from a neighbouring field smothering my flower border. How can I stop it?
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Answers:
Digging out couch is possible, but it is easy to leave behind small sections of rhizome in the ground. These quickly re-grow and need to be removed before they form a new network of underground stems, so perpetuating the problem.
Chemical control
Late summer treatments are more effective than those done early in the season, but try to avoid drought conditions, as results can be disappointing. Glyphosate-based weedkillers are very effective and, if correctly applied, should kill out even heavy infestations of couch in one application. But as these products are not selective, care is needed to prevent spray landing or drifting on to other cultivated plants and causing damage. Protect them with polythene while spraying and remove only once it has dried. Alternatively, a gel-formulation weedkiller can be painted on accurately.
In heavily couch-infested areas, it may be better to dig up cultivated plants, carefully tease out any couch grass roots that may be in the rootball and relocate them temporarily while treatment takes place. It is unnecessary to remove bulbs that have died back and no part of the plant is visible above ground.
The grass should die back within three weeks; but treat any re-growth as soon as possible. Do not cultivate the soil until the grass has been completely killed.
Use a solid border edging from Home Depot or similar.
Keep in mind that grass roots are at Least 3" so you`ll have to place the edging deeper.
You can also get weed/grass stopper cloth but your garden is prolly already established.
It`s a Pain to place the cloth around the plants after..
Hope this helps.
RT
First, take the time to thoroughly weed out the grass; use Roundup, if necessary, being careful of course to avoid spraying your flowering plants!
Then I would advise using a vegetative preventative like Preen. This will help keep the grass/weed seeds from germinating. No germination, no grass :)
One caution though. If you plan to add any new additions to the flower bed this year, leave the Preen off that spot, or it could adversely affect their growth. Good luck!
move.
Round up never fails. If you dont want to spend the money or poion the soil you can pour boiling water on the grass or any unwanted plants.
I would just dous it with round up
Good luck.
Sorry, but you probably can't, especially given that there's a source constantly replenishing it from the field. In two different gardens I battled it for years. In the end, we just planted lawn up to the boundary and when the couch grass came through again, we just mowed it with the rest! We put a flower border elsewhere instead. Couch grass roots are very deep AND they trail. And they just grow right through stopper cloth.
Personally i would just dig it out, but if you want to kill it you should spray with a systemic weedkiller, any which contains the active ingredient Glyfosate; which acts on an enzyme (EPSP synthase) which produces an essential amino acid, so reducing the production of protein in the plant and inhibiting plant growth. This is why it takes up to 10 days to work. It is not usualy absorbed from the soil by the plants so it can be used to clear ground for planting.
A few weedkillers containing Glyfosate are B&Q complete, use as a general and a spot weedkiller, Roundup, general weedkiller to clear for planting and spot treatment, Tumbleweed, general to clear for planting and as a spot weeder.
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