This topic contains 10 replies, has 7 voices, and was last updated by Ness_PeakORG 11 years, 2 months ago.
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Hi Stew and welcome to the forum,
Yes it sometimes feels like I am repeating myself but…. as you know, every situation is different of soil, climate and weeds above all. Hence sometimes the advice is different and seems contradictory to other advice!
I have a similar predicament here with a large patch of couch, in fact I am not exactly sure how large without digging holes everywhere, but a lot of it is where my greenhouse is going!Usually I advise a year of black polythene or possibly Mypex (I have not used it and it lets a little light through, have others found it effective against thick couch grass?) to be sure that all the couch is starved of light for long enough that roots keep growing in the dark, until exhausting their reserves of food – which takes many months, if not a year or even more sometimes.
If you buy any kind of weed suppressing membrane, the cost can be high but they can be reused. If you plant through Mypex, just be sure to burn holes not cut them, to avoid shredding of fibres. Or use landscape fabric which you can cut through and is cheaper.
The point about cardboard is valid, it will stop couch shoots pushing upwards for a month or two but as it is moist and soft when buried, the barrier effect soon passes. It is more effective on top but that is not practical on windy sites of for growing many vegetables.
If your beds are to have wooden sides, one idea is to lay Mypex in strips where your paths will be, then place the wooden sides along its edges and fill the beds – which do not have Mypex under tham. You absolutely have to kill couch in paths as well as beds. Any couch growing through the bed’s contents needs continual pulling or trowelling out and should be mostly gone within a year. Or you could lay Mypex or fabric on the beds’ surface and plant through that, maybe keep one bed with no cover on top, for sowing carrots etc.
Your first year will be the most difficult but rewards are high once your soil is clean. Keep us posted with progress!
devon stew
my plot was over grown and a carpet of weeds including couch grass back in April 2010. I followed Charles` advice and had great success. I firstly covered my plot with cardboard then topped that with about 4/6″ of horse manure. I left this for about 3 months then covered the whole plot with a weed membrane and left it for another 6 months at least. By May 2011 I was growing in my raised beds. I had to weed a bit that yr but I was amazed how many weeds were gone id say 90%. the 1st years harvest was average but it has improved hugely over the last 2 growing seasons by adding council compost and more horse manure.
I found that the brambles came back a bit especially on the paths (which I topped up with more council compost). last year I weeded little and often and know Im virtually weed free bar seeds blowing in.
Im now happy with my plot and Im about to edge my raised beds this year. No dig is a great way to enjoy growing veg.
a huge thank-you to Charles
Hello
I was interested to read the comments on getting started on a large area of possible couch grass. I wondered if you had thought of using a tarpaulin which is a lot cheaper than Mypex. I had a large extremely over-grown allotment as mentioned on previous posts and found Mypex was going to be a bit expensive but discovered you can buy tarps which are cheaper. I managed to buy two in a deal online and covered the lower half with just tarps while I worked on the top half using the no dig method and manure. I ran out of steam to get more manure for the lower half.
After some months, I turned back part of the tarp and thought it had not worked as the grass was long but as i went to pull it, it just came off with no roots attached. I think it had outgrown itself under the tarp. There is no sign of re-growth. If you have the energy and enough manure to put on, covering with a tarp should work well.
Big D
hi,
the rhizomes themselves are not all that thick, they are as thin as grass stems. but they can make a thick mat of themselves immediately under the visible ‘grass’. (i.e. where the rhizomes are in the light they will sprout into grass, where they are in darkness they will be white and stringy.)
if you had only a bit of couch grass you might find some long, white, thin, rhizomes running horizontally but not a mat of the stuff.
but if you have none then i think you will be fine! other UK grasses just give up when covered using charles’ method
I agree with Ashleigh, it sounds like annual grasses, much quicker to die off under mulch.
It sounds like a meadow grass but even with couch there will be no problem. There seems to be so much information to take in, but its really quite simple as long as you follow some rules.
I would go with card first but not one layer which is overlapped by a few inches – but go with a few layers. Overlap the card of the first layer by 6 inches and then add another which overlaps the first one 50/50 and lay it so that it overlaps its neighbour by 6 inches.. add a third layer in the same way.
It seems like a lot of card but if you’re innovative you can get a lot of clean card very easily. We’ve made 75% of a large allotment by this way and have a very large pile of card in the garage still. Local technology parks are a great source of card, we’ve acquired all of ours by this way.
You have plenty of time and with 6 inches of rotted manure to cover the card – you’ll definitely be growing this year. Plan to grow from modules as your manure might still be a little ‘lumpy’. Spuds, beans, courgettes, marrows and salads will be easy crops in the first year. Our allotment was 5′ high with weeds, we cut it all by hand and were growing again in a month, salads, leeks and plenty of salad.
Try to skim off your paths and add card too if possible, you can do this in a couple of months time. Pull out the worst of the root from the layer that you’ve skimmed off and put it back over the card and expect to hand trowel out stubborn offenders frequently if necessary.
we’ve employed this on the worst offender of all – Horsetail and there is little getting through. Where there was no Horsetail, there was couch, buttercup and dandelions, that’s largely all gone too except for some ‘edges’
Good luck
Hi Everyone
I’m new here & thought I’d mention that I’ve used recycled silage sheets in the past for mulching a new allotment. I got it from my friends brother who is a dairy farmer, so was very happy to see it reused. We just layered it where there were any holes or breaks & left it for most of the summer. It was really effective for getting rid of the weeds – our main ones are mares tail, couch grass & bind weed, with a good sprinkling of creeping buttercup. The only downside I could think of could be that it’s not water permeable, unlike other materials. I didn’t find this much of a problem, possibly because we garden on quite a wet site – between the river & a flooded field for a large proportion of the last 18 months!!
Cheers
Vanessa
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