Nutsedge

[Ridgerunner]

I also have doubts smothering will work. But at least I'll have a lot of good compost on that area and maybe I will have the rest under control so maybe I'll be up to tackling it next year. I may be over-reacting but right now with everything else this time of year I'm just not up to managing that area. At least it won't produce seeds. And New tubers should not form.

It's hard coming up with info on any product that works to use on a garden, they are all for a lawn. The only one I could find I need a license to use it so it's not available to me. it had withdrawal times for some things of 12 months, 18 months, and for sugar beets 36 months. I'm not putting that stuff in my garden. The nut can supposedly sprout 10 to 12 times before it runs out of energy, every two or three weeks. I could spray with glyphosate each time, it should knock it back but I don't want to spray that much in my garden.

I think I got it when I got some partially composted cow manure from a neighbor.

 

[Beekissed]

Lots to read out there on this topic! Here's a few gems that may help and certainly can't hurt...

As with all lawn weeds, the problem is generally with the lawn more than the weed, and this is no exception. These plants LOVE constantly wet feet and are often found in over watered lawns with poor drainage.

If your lawn, like so many, was sown on unamended crappy soil, aerate the turf to get some drainage going—the real way, with a machine called a core aerator pulling out plugs. Then apply corn gluten meal as a natural 'weed and feed' in the Spring to give your grass a good feeding and prevent the seeds from germinating. (Make sure the CGM is labeled as a pre-emergent herbicide; the 'animal feed' kind probably won't be high enough in protein to work on those seeds.)

Other feedings of the turf should be with compost, to help improve soil structure. (Read a few of our PREVIOUS QUESTIONS OF THE WEEK on lawn care and bulk compost for more info on this important subject.)

In his recent book "The Organic Lawn Care Manual", Paul Tukey notes that nutsedge is a sign of low calcium levels; so have your soil tested and add lime or wood ash as recommended. And everyone agrees that this weed thrives in anaerobic (low oxygen) soils. Paul recommends using compost tea to introduce more life to the soil; Howard Garrett prefers molasses. I say feeding with bulk compost should do it.

Wondering if throwing a good layer of wood chips on all of that would help over time~nutsedge doesn't like moist soils(other places says it loves a too moist soil) and the wood chips would keep it moist but not too wet, it doesn't like aerated soils and the worms coming up to the composting chips surely aerates the soil.

Ridge, maybe your idea of layering it with compost material, then the metal sheeting and then plastic just may do the trick...it may take a long time, but it may work, from everything I'm reading.

 

[seedcorn]

Here, sedge survives everything. Really bad on sandy soils.

 

[flowerbug]

i just spent an hour getting a small patch of nutsedge dug out of some clay. the past few years i've mostly ignored this patch and scraped it back here or there, but i decided that once it started invading an edge that it was time to give it more of a challenge.

digging it out root by root was not fun, of course i don't know that i got all of it, but i'll keep an eye out for more coming up and do full digging to get rid of it.

in comparison to sow-thistle, horsetail or some other weeds i consider i towards the top end of difficulty to eradicate, but it is not the worst... if i could have smothered it i would have.

in sand would be a cake walk compared to trying to get it out of clay.

i have a few spots of it elsewheres (it grows in the ditches around here so it won't ever be completely gone as long as people keep mowing and burning the ditches) but it mostly is under control in those gardens (i just pull it when i see it and there is enough other plants growing that it doesn't have an easy time growing at all). i also have patches in the lawn, but i also pull those out when i see them to discourage it from spreading. every time you can pull it out when you see it that does cause it to have to regenerate from the roots and if you can keep getting it when it is trying to get established then it eventually will run out of energy. as long as you have other plants around it giving it a challenge...

 

[flowerbug]

in round 2 this evening i thought this was only in one patch, but as i was working around the corner i found some more poking up. they were small though so after getting most of them out of the ground with the knife i keep handy for such excavations i scraped the rest up (deep enough with the stirrup hoe) and exposed them to the sun to roast - if tomorrow doesn't fry them enough they'll get some days next week to finish the job... i have them where i can keep an eye on them.

eventually i will have to scrape again i'm sure but at least this got one edge partway done (the lowest part so i could get a ridge put up to block water flows if i can) that has needed to be done for the last 6 weeks.

 

[Dirtmechanic]

Awww...I thought that was grass!

It has this nasty sharp burr seed that prevents one from walking barefoot on the grass.

Hmmmm,

Now that I say that, @Ridgerunner there are 4 types of sedge, the purple reportedly belongs in Satans' Garden, the yellow which you may have, a green killinga, and one other I can't remember. Which type is yours? The root nutlets are different and some other detail that might be useful to know.

Personally I am enjoying the attentions of the yellow variety here at the house. Its in the lawn mainly but shoots up elsewhere too so I am interested in a fix. I see most safe efforts are a burndown, leaving roots, and they just hit it 2 or 3 or more times a year.

 

[flowerbug]

if you can get it dug up as early as you see it is the best non-chemical control method. before it starts sending out nutlets/rhizomes. once you have an infestation you can repeatedly pull any that grows above ground, but you have to be persistent. i do this in the bits of the lawn areas that we have left when i see it and eventually it gives up as it gets croweded out by the plants around it.

the above mentioned patch it has been there several years and gradually spreading but since it was in clay and it was getting scraped once in a while it could never set seeds to spread faster - so it was always on my list of things to deal with but the final straws were that i really needed to weed that edge more carefully this week and the nutsedge was starting to get into the neighboring pathway (which is just some bricks sitting on top of landscape fabric). it had no trouble growing under the brick and in a crack but it did not get and roots down through the fabric yet (i got it within a few weeks of it showing up). it was just starting to send out more rhizomes for the next round when i pulled the bricks up and got it out of there.

since there are some roots going from the now weeded area under the landscape fabric i will have to keep an eye on this edge to see if any manage to try to come back in from that direction.

the good thing is now that the projects are at an ok spot to leave them for a bit, planting is done and strawberry season is mostly done i have a bit more time for weeding so i've been catching up on the fenced gardens and this other garden to get it back into shape again. going to be hot this coming week again so i'll be taking it easy most afternoons but if i can consistently get in 2-3hrs a day weeding that is a lot more than i've been able to do for the past several months.