Bermuda Grass infestation----Help!

[OnionPatch]

The stuff is taking over my yard and has crept into my vegetable garden as well! I'm an organic gardener. I don't want to use RoundUp or something like that but how can I kill this stuff, otherwise? For the last few years I've been pulling it out and trying to smother it with straw and plastic mulch but the stuff sends out runners six feet long or more! I just can't keep up with it. If anyone has been able to eradicate this evil stuff, I'd love to get some advice from them. I'm thinking I'll cover the entire infested half of the garden with some plastic or something and stop watering. Nothing can live around here, even Bermuda grass, without artificial irrigation. But we are coming onto the rainy season. I might have to wait until next summer for it to die of thirst. I'm wondering if that would even work.

I have to rescue what perennial plants I have in that area before I do anything. It's overrun my strawberry patch. The strawberries are about three years old anyway. Should I dig out enough runners to plant a new bed in a Bermuda-free area? I think this is the time of year to do that in southern California. What about my asparagus? Should I wait until they're dormant?

Any other ideas for eradicating this nasty stuff?

[FloridaPat]

1. Where do you live?

[OnionPatch]

3. Inland southern California

nt

[TygrBright]

2. No ideas that do not involve literally taking the whole yard/garden...

...out of production for TWO whole years, sorry. I am a mostly-organic gardener rather than an organic gardener for that sole reason. There are a couple of things that only glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup) will remedy, including bindweed infestations that have gotten a good hold, witchweed, and wiregrass. Fortunately Roundup is not very toxic to animals when used occasionally and in small amounts, and even more fortunately, it has a very short half-life; that is, it is gone from soil, surrounding areas, etc., within a day or so. At least the non-"extended" kind is.

I don't like it, and rarely use it, but if it is the only alternative to black plastic for a year, tilling, and black plastic for another year (and even THAT won't kill a really well-established bindweed root, they can 'hibernate' for years until conditions are better) I'll go out with my bucket full of dilute glyphosate and a sponge and do the leaves of the nasties.

You can, by the way, get generic glyphosate, no need to enrich Monsanto.

A weed like bermuda grass or wiregrass that reproduces from runners is especially hard to control via other methods because unless you get the entire runner and all its branches, nodules, etc., every little piece you leave in the ground will sprout new plants and runners. And it will often "run" underground for many feet before putting up leaves, so if you are trying to smother it out you have to lay down plastic for a very large area to be sure of getting all the runners.

Burning doesn't work, it just kills the leaves and the runners move along and send up new leaves. Capsicum doesn't work for the same reason.

Maybe someone else has a good non-glyphosate idea.

regretfully,
Bright

[OnionPatch]

4. I guess I should say

I'm a "mostly" organic gardener, too, because I have used RoundUp (or generic) on my property but never in any place that I grow food. If I nuke my garden area with that stuff, how long would it be before the garden could be considered organic again? I could start a new, small garden bed in an un-infested area for a while. This stuff has to go.

[TygrBright]

5. Well the "how long" question will get a lot of answers...

...depending on whether you're growing food just for yourself, family & friends, or whether you sell produce to the local co-op/supermarket/etc., or whether you take it to a farmers' market and sell it there.

Most farmers' markets have a set of standards for "organic" growing that include how long the soil has been clear of chemicals. Ordinary retail food markets have a different set, issued by the USDA, I suppose you can Google that and find them. Insofar as your family/friends/etc., are concerned, since glyphosate is a fast breakdown, I'd say a good season or so of rains, etc., should be enough to give you some confidence about it.

One thing I did in MD to help that way was put all my food-growing beds in one area and then raise them with a low stone wall around them, and put crushed marble around all the beds in the area so that there was literally nothing growing there except the stuff in the raised beds. That was a lot easier to keep weeded!

helpfully,
Bright

[LWolf]

6. Bermuda grass in so cal? Good luck.

As someone who lived with it, and battled it, for several years, that's the best I can say.

My old cottage had a bermuda lawn. Which meant that there was no place the bermuda had not infiltrated. I tried many ways of making garden beds, and I discovered that bermuda will survive every chemical and physical deterrent that you throw it's way. Don't water it for a few years. It will die off and seem to disappear, until the first hint of moisture. Dig it up? Yeah, right. Every tiny little piece that you miss will grow back. I had professionals try to dig it out of the rose beds around the house, and they informed me that they couldn't get it all, because it was happily living in and under the foundation. Even if I wanted to kill all the roses and throw down some toxic mess to kill it all, there were enough hiding places under there for some to survive.

Bermuda will grow through almost anything. Even concrete and asphalt, as my driveway and walks were testament to. Don't ever try to compost bermuda grass. <shudder> I don't care how hot your compost pile gets. Just don't.

If you want to garden where bermuda has infested, I only have one suggestion. Here it is:

Around trees and shrubs you will need a barrier, and you will need to trim and dig constantly. For other garden plants, build raised beds. Put an impenetrable bottom and sides on your bed. Something that the bermuda will not be able to eventually force it's way through. Perhaps titanium. Something that will not rot and allow entrance. Expect poor drainage. If water can get out, bermuda can get in. And it will. Maybe not for a year or two, but you don't want to be building those beds every single year, do you? The beds will have to be filled with soil from somewhere bermuda has never been.

When I moved to the far north (for someone from so cal,) the first thing I asked when looking at the decrepit acres of grass I finally ended up on was: "Does Bermuda grow here?" The answer was "no," so I bought the place.

[OnionPatch]

8. This sounds pretty much like what I've been learning about it.

This stuff is EVIL!! I guess I'll be fighting it as long as I live here, then. Sigh. I'll be sure to check for it if we ever move. Thanks for the tip. :)

[Gato Moteado]

7. i had to deal with that garbage and it's not easy......

bermuda grass is like republicans. annoying, noxious, aggressive and disgusting.

anyway, here's how i dealt with mine.

tried the chemicals, they didn't work. don't waste your time.

first dig up every inch of your garden by hand and pull every inch of rhyzome you find. this is a bitch if you have heavy clay soil but its the only way to get that crap out.

next lay down layers of wet newspaper sheets (four or five sheets thick) over every inch of the garden beds around all your plants and after the newspaper layer dries and becomes a nice paper mache coating over the soil, mulch heavily with a coarse cypress mulch. i mean heavily....4 to 6 inches of mulch minimum.

next replace your lawn with either st augustine or zoysia. if your lawn is currently bermuda, dig it up as best you can. lay the sod on top and plant as much shady stuff as you can over your lawn areas. the one thing bermuda hates is shade.

eventually a thick st augustine or zoysia lawn will crowd out the bermuda if you keep the lawn cut at a high level as opposed to scalping it or cutting it very short. and st auggy and zoysia are well behaved and easy to keep out of the beds.

from time to time you will see the bermuda shoot up in your beds...trust me its impossible to eradicate it totally unless you shade out your whole yard. but, if your mulch layer is thick and loose, the bermuda runners pull out easily.

[OnionPatch]

9. I think I'll try getting the zoysia.

The whole lawn isn't Bermuda, at least not yet. There is about a 30x10 foot area that's pretty thick with it and it's up against the garden. I guess I'll try mulching and weeding it out of the garden. Raised beds are pretty much out of the question, as I grow way too much to confine to raised beds.

Ok, so I guess there isn't a magic solution, then. :shrug: :(

Thanks for the advice. Oh, and you're right....Bermuda grass *is* like Republicans. :D