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Perhaps the gardener has no more unpleasant enemy than weeds. They are able to unbalance the most calm and wise person. It would seem that he had just weeded a bed on the site and for several days you can safely admire the fruit of your efforts, but then it rained, was distracted for a week, lo and behold – and there again a forest of grass, and from cultivated plants, as they say, only horns remained, yes legs. Wheatgrass weed is the clearest representative of these villains in plant form. For many years now, no matter how many ways they have been invented to deal with him, he is alive and healthy and is developing more and more new territories.
In fact, wheatgrass is just a plant, so of course you can deal with it, you just need to choose a certain strategy and follow it strictly. This article is devoted to how to get rid of couch grass creeping.
Full face and profile portrait
Before thinking about how to deal with wheatgrass, you need to get to know this plant better, because, despite all its obvious disadvantages for a gardener, it also has advantages. Wheatgrass provides excellent hay and nutritious green fodder for livestock and poultry. The plant has medicinal properties, because it is not in vain that cats and dogs often eat it when they are not feeling well. Therefore, before destroying the wheatgrass on your site completely and irrevocably, think maybe the plant can still be useful to you.
So, what does creeping wheatgrass look like? And it looks like the most common grass from the cereal family. It is a perennial plant, which must be taken into account when starting a fight with it. The main attraction of wheatgrass is the rhizome, which is able to branch and crawl (hence the specific name) over long distances. In the horizontal plane, the rhizome of one plant is quite capable of covering a surface area of three square meters. But it rarely penetrates into the depth of wheatgrass below 15-20 cm.
Couch grass, the photo of which you can see below, is able to propagate by seeds and rhizome segments, and so successfully that even a centimeter segment is enough for the plant to release a stem with a leaf.
Among the people, wheatgrass is called a pyrnik and a dog’s tooth for the ability, as it were, to pierce (pierce) the crops of cultivated plants, as well as a rye and a villager for its similarity with cultivated grain plants (wheat, rye).
In height, wheatgrass can reach 1,5 meters. In the close-up photo, you can see that its leaves sometimes acquire a bluish tint.
Since the plant belongs to the cereal family, its flower has the form of an upright ear.
Wheatgrass is truly a super hardy plant.
The plant easily tolerates any droughts and frosts, and its seeds begin to germinate already at temperatures of +2°С-+3°С. Of course, all these qualities taken together form the appearance of a malicious pest of gardens and orchards.
A crushing blow with chemistry
If you are puzzled over the problem of how to remove wheatgrass from the garden, then the use of herbicides will help you in any case. Herbicides, that is, chemical preparations that destroy plants, have been known for a long time, but only in recent years have those that are considered relatively safe appeared. They are divided into:
- herbicides of continuous action, which are better to treat large areas without planting cultivated plants;
- selective herbicides that are suitable for lawns or beds with already planted vegetables.
Among the drugs most actively used by gardeners, the following should be mentioned:
- Tornado;
- Roundup;
- Hurricane Forte;
- Ground;
- Agrokiller;
- Fusilad Forte.
When the active substance of such drugs enters the green part of the plant, it quickly spreads throughout the body, penetrates the roots, the synthesis of substances is disrupted and the wheatgrass dies. The disadvantage of these preparations is that they do not affect the seeds and their germination, therefore, after a single treatment, new plants often come out of the ground and quickly conquer their territory.
Hence the conclusion: herbicide treatment should be carried out at least twice.
It is believed that the half-life of harmful components after exposure to herbicides is 2-4 weeks. That is, after this period, the garden can be sown with the necessary plants or seedlings can be planted. Thus, it makes sense to carry out the processing procedure either in early spring or in autumn after harvesting. Gardeners who have used this method believe that it is very effective in order to destroy wheatgrass in the garden. That’s just the question of the complete harmlessness of herbicides remains open.
Organic Farming Methods
Organic farming and its methods are becoming more and more popular among summer residents and gardeners. And for good reason, because they make it possible, without violating the natural balance, it is quite possible to cope with problems that even chemical preparations are not always up to the task. If you do not want to use chemistry, but do not know how to get rid of a weed called creeping wheatgrass in another way, then organic farming will come to your rescue.
EM – drugs
Relatively recently, scientists have developed new drugs, which are accumulations of certain microorganisms. When treated with healthy plant tissues in small concentrations (as in the case of homeopathy), they are able not only to improve the development of plants, but also to protect them from diseases. On the other hand, if the concentration is increased by 10 times and the damaged plant tissues are treated with them, then the microorganisms, having got on fresh sections, start the fermentation mechanism, the roots lose their viability and the plants die. It is with the help of this mechanism that you can get rid of wheatgrass in the garden.
The most well-known EM drugs are:
- Shine;
- Baikal EM-1;
- EM molasses;
- Tamir;
- Renaissance;
- Humazate EM is universal.
The scheme for combating wheatgrass with the help of EM preparations is as follows: in the fall, after harvesting, it is necessary to prune all unnecessary plants, including creeping wheatgrass weed at soil level. On the same day, shed the entire beveled area with any of the EM preparations at a concentration increased by 10 times compared to the traditional one.
An additional consequence of such treatment will be that the microorganisms will stimulate the germination of wheatgrass seeds, which, having begun to grow, will quickly fall under the first frosts. If you repeat the same operation in early spring after the next shoots appear, then you can finally destroy those wheatgrass plants that did not die in the fall.
Soil mulching
To get rid of couch grass, it is only necessary to cover the areas where it has settled with any dark material: film, roofing material, non-woven material, or just cardboard. This method will not let you down if you put the shelters in early spring and keep them until the start of winter. The only problem is that in this way they fight with wheatgrass only in small areas. For a large area, it is difficult to find so much dark material for plant cover.
But in small areas it is hard to come to terms with the idea that this land will be turned off from circulation throughout the warm season. Therefore, this method works best for the destruction of wheatgrass in the aisles of beds with plants.
Siderates – lifeguards
Green manures are plants that, when sown and cut before flowering, improve the condition of the soil. Many of them, especially plants from the legume family, are able to enrich the soil with nutrients, while others help fight weeds by crowding them out.
Many gardeners escape from the invasion of wheatgrass by sowing areas where it began to grow especially actively with oats or rye. You can do this operation both in spring and in autumn after harvesting. Previously, the earth must be cultivated or dug up at least half a shovel, without even choosing the wheatgrass rhizomes.
Then sow rye or oats in ribbons with a distance of 15 cm between them. Somewhere in 5-6 weeks, when the plants reach 15 cm, they need to be cut, re-cultivated and, if weather conditions allow, the area is re-sown with rye or oats. If you repeat this procedure in general about three times, then the wheatgrass will be destroyed on your site forever.
Interestingly, wheatgrass also does not like some cultivated plants, such as peas, corn, beans, sunflowers. If the seeds of these plants are densely planted on a plowed field, then when they grow, they will be able to strangle its root system and creeping wheatgrass will be done away with.
Agricultural practices
These methods of weed control are probably known to all gardeners, however, they can be effective in small areas with a certain perseverance, patience and diligence.
- Digging with careful selection of wheatgrass roots. It is necessary to carry it out with the help of a pitchfork, since the shovel will only cut the rhizomes of plants, and it will be almost impossible to select them completely. Forks, on the other hand, usually do an excellent job of this task.
- Constant trimming of young couch grass plants at ground level. This method of dealing with wheatgrass is actually calculated on the fact that sooner or later no roots will survive and without supplying them with food due to the above-ground leafy parts of plants, they will die.
- Periodic chopping of plant roots with a cultivator. When using this method, it is important to remove young couch grass seedlings from the ground in time, until their roots have time to form a new powerful layer.
- Oddly enough, it sounds, but you can fight wheatgrass in the garden simply by ignoring it. In this case, cardboard is laid out directly on top of the plants, a variety of plant debris is placed on top, which is covered with a layer of fertile soil. The edges of an impromptu garden bed can be overlaid with stones or bricks and any garden plants can be planted there. Wheatgrass will not be able to survive under such a structure.
It was in the old days that the whole village usually fought with wheatgrass, but now, given the number of abandoned sites, we have to take measures ourselves to protect the borders from an uninvited guest. This is easy to do if you do not have a very large area by digging strips of slate or any plastic into the ground from the neighbors to a depth of 25-30 cm to protect against the rhizomes of the plant.
Folk methods
In terms of dealing with wheatgrass, all means are good, and you may be interested in some folk ways to get rid of this weed.
- Soda – using a strong soda solution for watering wheatgrass bushes, you can easily get rid of an annoying plant.
- Salt – is the cheapest of folk remedies that get rid of wheatgrass. If you sprinkle it on top of the plants, then after watering or rain, it will soak into the ground and significantly limit the growth of wheatgrass.
- Citric acid – if 3 tablespoons of the substance are dissolved in 1 liter of hot water and sprayed with the resulting solution of wheatgrass, then it will take a long time to recover.
- Vinegar – for spraying couch grass, it is better to take 15-20% vinegar, but 9% is also suitable for the destruction of the ground part of the plants. Unfortunately, it is difficult to destroy the root system of wheatgrass with vinegar; the remedy is good only for annual weeds.
- Ethyl alcohol – it may be difficult to find this drug in the country, however, if you dilute it in a ratio of 1:10 and cultivate the land, it guarantees the destruction of wheatgrass for the entire coming garden season.
- Boiling water or a blowtorch – both are effective mainly against the ground part of wheatgrass. Some time after the treatments, he is able to recover from the rhizomes again.
As you can see, it is quite possible to cope with wheatgrass, and the choice of means is quite wide. It is only necessary to remember that everything needs a measure.
