How thick of a layer did you put down out of interest?
Either hand plucking, poison, or next time lay it on mega thick
hamtrn
People forget that mulch will decompose over time. Other than manual picking? How much your budget and how elaborate you want it done? Easiest however, maybe Roundup.
RavinKhamen
That’s couch grass, mulch will not stop Couch even if you applied mulch 30 cm thick.
Couch is rhizomatous. Rhizomes grow deep underground, don’t need sunlight and will send shoots up to make for the surface which is what you’re seeing here.
You will need to kill the couch in the bed, then apply mulch, then ensure that couch never establishes itself in the garden bed again. The rhizomes might even pass under the bed edging from the lawn so a deeper root barrier might help there.
To kill off the couch you have a couple options.
1) Spray it with systemic herbicide (read: glyphosate). It’ll take several sprays where you’ll need to spray, it will all appear dead then a month or so later youll see new shoots appear from rhizomes that were not killed. Repeat this spray-wait-spray process until new shoots fail to appear and you know all the rhizomes are dead. You’ll see fewer and fewer emerge each time so you might only need to spot spray a couple here and there.
Contact herbicides like slasher will not kill the underground rhizomes only the foliage it makes contact with.
2) Dig up the soil and physically remove the couch. Rhizomes could be as deep as 20cm or possibly more. You will need to ensure you get every speck of rhizomes otherwise it’ll reshoot and spread again
3 Comments
How thick of a layer did you put down out of interest?
Either hand plucking, poison, or next time lay it on mega thick
People forget that mulch will decompose over time. Other than manual picking? How much your budget and how elaborate you want it done? Easiest however, maybe Roundup.
That’s couch grass, mulch will not stop Couch even if you applied mulch 30 cm thick.
Couch is rhizomatous. Rhizomes grow deep underground, don’t need sunlight and will send shoots up to make for the surface which is what you’re seeing here.
You will need to kill the couch in the bed, then apply mulch, then ensure that couch never establishes itself in the garden bed again. The rhizomes might even pass under the bed edging from the lawn so a deeper root barrier might help there.
To kill off the couch you have a couple options.
1) Spray it with systemic herbicide (read: glyphosate). It’ll take several sprays where you’ll need to spray, it will all appear dead then a month or so later youll see new shoots appear from rhizomes that were not killed. Repeat this spray-wait-spray process until new shoots fail to appear and you know all the rhizomes are dead. You’ll see fewer and fewer emerge each time so you might only need to spot spray a couple here and there.
Contact herbicides like slasher will not kill the underground rhizomes only the foliage it makes contact with.
2) Dig up the soil and physically remove the couch. Rhizomes could be as deep as 20cm or possibly more. You will need to ensure you get every speck of rhizomes otherwise it’ll reshoot and spread again