Underplantings

[Southern Gardener]

Burmuda grass (aka horizontal bamboo, devil grass and a few other names I cant mention) is my arch enemy! (besides my ant problem of course) It invades my flower beds every summer like the plague, and if I miss a week of pulling it up look out! I really dont know the solution. No amount of mulch will stop it from coming up - Id have to dig up everything in my beds and dig out the soil and start over Stupid weed! un

 

[patandchickens]

My personal curse runs more to the twitchgrass (quack grass, whatever you want to call it) than to bermuda, but I suspect it'd be similar for bermuda.

The two things that help me keep it from getting totally out of control (of course I still have to pull it up regularly) are

1) edge the beds, viciously <g>, at least twice a year. I do it with my trusty breadknife but more traditional means would work. The idea is to make a horizontal slice down at the edge of the lawn, about 4" deep, then a slanty angled cut towards it from the edge of the bed, so you expose a 4-6" wide swath of bare soil. Reduces colonization from lawn.

2) the fluffier the soil in the beds is, the easier it is to pull out exploring twitchgrass runners. Beds under trees, which therefore were not thoroughly dug over when they were started, are harder to remove the stuff from than the beds out in the open that were started with a few hours with a shovel and fork. And older beds that have had more compost and mulch added (worms and normal surface cultivation gradually work it down thru the soil) are much easier to remove twitchgrass from than the ones that are still closer to the native state of the soil.

Turns out chickens love eating the twitchgrass runners I pull out, though

Pat