How to Get Rid of Bermuda Grass

Bermuda grass is one of the most feared perennial weeds around, even in the areas where it is considered a good lawn grass.  It greens up easily in summer with good watering, but it goes dormant for the colder half of the year in our climate, so in this area it is a weed.  It can travel up to 18 inches deep and easily travel under 6 feet of sidewalk to come up on the other side. 

 

Bermuda grass, traveling over 4 x 8 sand.

But its large, strong rhizomes (traveling storage roots) are also its greatest weakness.  They are fat and shiny, 1/8 to ¼ inch thick, easy to see and sort out from loosened soil.  Their feeder roots are thin and wiry, with no food storage.  

Dug Bermuda, showing its shiny rhizomes.

Like crabgrass, its annual, or considering it lives until frost, tender perennial, relative, they don’t re-grow from feeder roots.  We know they are related because they have the same seed stalk, with four arms and small seeds. Crabgrass grows in a clump; Bermuda grows out of the ground. Cut a crabgrass crown off its roots and it is gone; get all of the shiny Bermuda grass rhizomes out of the soil and it also is gone.  That is except for their seeds, which are small and easy to smother with mulch.

Bermuda grass with seed stalks

Mature crab grass; note the clumping growth and fat leaves.

While those rhizomes can travel deep, they don’t go any deeper than they need to travel, which is generally within a few inches of the surface. 

They can be dug and sorted out of the soil.  Push a shovel in the ground, and loosen the soil.  Pull on the grass stems.  Shake the soil off the roots, and put them in a bucket.  Get all the rhizomes out of that shovel-full; move the shovel back a few inches; loosen the soil; pull the roots.  Keep going until you get all of it.

It isn’t as easy as spraying Roundup (glyphosate salts).  But killing those fat roots with glyphosate takes all summer, and you will still have to dig the stubborn bits that insist on growing back.  They are too small to suck up enough glyphosate to kill the remainder, and those pieces may be resistant to glyphosate. 

But after killing a lawn with glyphosate, you will have thereby fertilized the ground for broadleaf plants and annual grass, not perennial grass, and lawn grass won’t grow well.  This is okay if you would rather weed a ground cover than mow.  

 Creeping Jenny, with 4 x 8 sand path

Creeping Jenny (Lysimachia) is a great soft green ground cover that doesn’t need mowing.  It travels in a mass over ground, about a foot per month, at which point it starts to root.  To stop its advance, keep pulling it as it moves into the area you don’t want it; it has soft stems that pull easily and don’t need cutting; it roots only about 2” deep.  It is water dependent, and will warn one that it is getting dry by getting dull and flattening to the ground; the next step is to brown out.  It can be brought back by watering, but not quickly.

8/31/13  Published in Yahoo Contributor Network.

Join Garden Grants Pass in free gardening classes at Greenwood and Schroeder Dog Parks; contact 

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener        541-955-9040      rycke@gardener.com

How to Control Insect Pests Naturally

The EPA just approved another systemic pesticide, saying that it is needed because the pests have become immune to previous poisons.  This is a losing game, as plant-eating pests can easily outbreed the poisons, while their predators and bees cannot.  Systemic pesticides, which are distributed into every part of the plant through its roots and stems, are particularly dangerous to bees, hummingbirds, and predatory insects, which rely on nectar for fuel.

The smallest pests are inherently the hardest to control in a conventional yard or farm, yet they can be easily managed in a naturally managed landscape that makes their predators comfortable and lets them breed. 

Such pests are not pestilential all the time; it is only when they infest and become a plague that they become a real problem.  If most plants that sprout in natural conditions were able to grow to maturity, they would be too small and crowded for the good of the rest of us.  Herbivorous “pests” thin most of the plants as they grow, the smallest and weakest ones first.

An infestation of any pest is a feast for any predator that eats it.  Given a chance to do their job, predators multiply as they feast, and the population of the pest crashes back to pre-infestation levels.  In a natural landscape, any infestation is a temporary affair.  When ladybugs and soldier beetles home in on aphids on roses, they don’t last long.

 

Ladybug adult, credit Little Miss Parasite, changeddesk.com

 Nearly mature ladybug larvae on my mature corn, with grey aphids, one week after ladybugs mated there.

A few days after the previous photo, the corn is cleaned of all but aphid trash.

Three things make insect predators comfortable: shelter; food; and water.  The shelter for many predators is leaf mulch; coarse bark works as well.  Adults and/or larvae crawl around under the mulch, eating whatever they can kill.  At night, many crawl out of hiding and stalk their prey on the plants.  Ground predators include soldier beetle larvae, ground beetles, ants, spiders, centipedes, and even earwigs, which eat fungus-infected leaves, not healthy plant tissue.

 Soldier beetle, credit www.marinrose.com.  Ground beetle, credit www.naturephoto-cz.com.

Since insects have little sugar or fat, their predators need an energy source like nectar, and many of them, like parasitic wasps and soldier beetles, prefer small flowers, the smaller the better.  Carrot flowers qualify, as do chickweed and purslane, chickweed in spring, purslane in summer.  Both of these low, spreading annuals are useful and edible, and don’t bother other plants much.  Deadhead your carrot flowers; they are likely to make half-wild seed that makes white, skinny roots.

Water is needed as well.  If you buy ladybugs or spider mite predators, it is important to water the tops of the plants so they can take a first drink.  Bees, wasps and birds mob sources of water in hot, dry weather.  Spider mites love dryness and shun humidity.  Sprinkler irrigation and misters are best for providing the water that your predators need, along with baths and fountains for birds.

Cobweb Spiders Camp

A tool every resident should have is a web duster, a broom on a pole with a puff head, to take out cobwebs inside and outside the house.  The “Webster” head can be found at Diamond, with a variety of poles, extendable and otherwise.  Mine has three sections and extends to 16 feet to get the eaves on the second story.

The cobweb spider is the homeless vagrant of the spider world.  Rather than build and repair a strong, long-term dwelling in a good location as does the classic orb weaver, it builds and camps in a small, quick, weak web anywhere it can find a surface to sling it, preferably out of the rain, but anywhere in dry weather, like now. 

As soon as its web gets dirty, visible, and therefore useless, it moves on and builds another nearby.  The dirty webs actually steer its prey into the invisible new web.  And they can make even a pretty shrub or house look neglected in short order.

I saw this effect on one of my most beautiful properties, when a mister showed up the cobwebs that had appeared on the ground cover overnight.  Approaching the door, I saw a piece of litter, a gas receipt, crumpled and thrown on the ground cover by someone who had actually been at her door.  Unconsciously, the person saw the cobwebs and threw his trash into the ugliness of the webs, despite the beauty of the rest of the property.  A few webs are all it takes to turn on the unconscious urge to litter.

Cobwebs are all over town, particularly infesting hedges and certain shrubs that they favor, like juniper and rosemary, but also every neglected inward corner of a building, particularly under the eaves.  


I’ve been petitioning door-to-door lately, and the cobwebs around the front doors make one shudder.  Your gardener or landscape maintenance man cannot visit often enough to clean these up; it is up to residents.  

The way to actually discourage these spiders is to sweep their webs before you see them, while they are still useful to the spider.  If you only sweep the visible webs, you aren’t even bothering the spiders.    

Sweep every corner where they might build, particularly where you see a spider but no web.  When you sweep them off a building, it pays to stick around for a minute or two while they start climbing right back up where they were, and sweep them down again.  This will often make them go somewhere else.

Another way to clean up cobwebs is with a hard jet of water; this is probably more effective than a web duster in shrubs, which are invaded only in dry weather, and where it is impossible to sweep all the webs.

         

7/24/2013.  To be published on Yahoo Voices. 

Join Garden Grants Pass in gardening classes at Greenwood and Schroeder Dog Parks.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener        541-955-9040      rycke@gardener.com