Nick Kitchener wrote:I've been working with quackgrass for 5 years and there is no sign of it going away. I can dig the stuff out by deep turning the grow beds but that only triggers the germination of a gazillion wild buckwheat seeds dormant in the soil, followed next spring by a fresh crop of quackgrass. And it destroys the soil structure.
If I sheet mulch I get about 1 growing season in before the quackgrass punches through an entire newspaper. If I deep mulch with hay it just keeps on coming.
For annual beds I really am at a loss about what to do about it. I'm coming to the conclusion that I will simply have to pull the stuff until one of us dies.
Quack grass is hard to deal with. The way I have handled it is to smother it for as long as it takes to die with heavy sheets of rubber (
pond liner) or cardboard or carpet or whatever wherever I want a garden to be, plus a foot or so extra all the way around. It can take a year or more, but I leave it until everything under it is completely dead. Then I fold in the sides of the smother-material about 6 inches and plant a border of comfrey all the way around, about 6 inches apart. Let the comfrey come up and get at least a few inches tall before you remove the smother-material. During that time, keep the quack grass pulled from between the comfrey. Once the comfrey is established, it
should make an area of protection around the
garden bed that will keep the quack from growing back in from the sides. After the comfrey is growing well, you can pull off the smother-material and plant the area immediately. If you used cardboard, you can just pile
compost or soil on it and plant right in it. I try to keep everything covered with wood chips from then on, but if you don't have wood chips, just try to keep some kind of mulch or something growing in it all the time. It worked really well for me.
My bindweed went away as my soil got better, so I can't really comment more on that.