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Brainstorm with me: barriers for bermudagrass

 
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I have a large area I'd like to plant a garden and a food forest. It's currently covered in bermudagrass. I have sheet mulched, solarized, tarped, and broadforked part of the area before, but the bermudagrass sneaks in through the edges and takes over when it's too hot for me to be out there fooling with it. Ugh!

To reclaim the planting area I plan to remove the top layer of bermudagrass with a spade, dump it far away, and pull up as many rhizomes as possible. A one-time dig. Then I'll sheet mulch a-fresh by covering the area with 2 layers of heavy cardboard and several inches of mulch.

What are some ways to keep the Bermudagrass at the border -- and halt it from waltzing back in, overground and under.

- cardboard + woodchips moat around the growing area

- several layers cardboard placed vertically 10 inches deep, like plastic edging. Worms and moisture will make short work of it though.

- same, cardboard vertical edging, but brush it with soybean oil or something waxy to dissuade the worms?

- cotton sheets, jeans and clothes buried as vertical edging.

- wool carpet - make a big moat; also as vertical edging.

- find a pyromaniac to torch-weed the area for me with one of those propane thingies

- spray with glyphosate or sethoxydim that the extension agents keep suggestion (yeah, not gonna)

- plant comfrey around the perimeter, or other plants that might stop bermudagrass with thick roots + shade

- plastic lawn edging (though the big box store stuff is way too shallow, the rhizomes will laugh as they jump over and swim under it); or vinyl siding. And I hate plastic or vinyl in the garden.

- concrete or stone/brick/mortar perimeter ($$)

- 10" cor-ten steel edging ($$$) dang I gotta start playing lotto

Suggestions / wacky ideas welcome.


 
pioneer
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A quick search suggests an herbicide that breaks down into nitrogen and phosphorus. I didn't click on the article but sounds to me like an overfertilzation burn. Perhaps solarize the again area and give the perimeter a  good nitrogen burn a couple times a year? Not exactly permaculture but....
 
pollinator
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 Burning it with a torch don't work, Mulching very deep helps for a little while.  I have used leftover bamboo flooring driven into the ground around and area, it had a tongue and groove. Been there 5 years, just have to keep it from growing over top.
  You will probably have to edge it with a shovel several times a year and remove the grass inside your grass free area.
    A lot of people complain about people having lawns..( a waste of money and resources). I would give mine up in a heartbeat. I don't fertilize it or water it. I drive on it, yet it is very green and thick and must be mowed weekly. Keeping it away from gardens and tree guilds is the hardest work I do.  I never planted it, it was there when I purchased the property, I thing it creeped in from the Okefenokee swamp after trees were cut out.
 
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I'm just starting gardening, and we have plenty of bermuda grass in our garden, so much that I am pretty certain that we can't pull it out, ever. We call it gramma grass here.
I would love to find another herb which is edible or useful to replace it (let the other herb fight against bermuda grass for us), but not many grasses are able to survive here.
So far I am just cutting the top leaves when they steal the sun for the crops and using them as mulch. Yes I know it just makes bermuda grass reproduce more, but it's already invaded, so I don't think a little more would matter.

If in the end my crops are reduced because of grass, I'd just accept it as part of the cost of not having used chemicals.
 
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I've tried cardboard & wood chips, cardboard placed vertically, and weed burning.

Cardboard doesn't help at all. The bermuda is strong enough to punch right through. And it spread like crazy underneath the mulch long before it ever sent up any visible green shoots.

Burning will get rid of the leaves, but the tendrils are tougher stuff - they stay green a long time under the flame. And even if you burn it to a crisp, the parts that are underground just send up more shoots within a few days.

It'll crawl right over bricks or concrete, even as wide as a driveway. I've seen it crawl many feet under a plastic tarp to reach the edge where it could find light. I've even seen it climb up under vinyl siding to peek out at the top of a wall.

I've just given up on the idea of eradicating it completely. I pull up what I can when I can, and I've been burning it in the hottest months (when it grows like crazy) just to try to keep it to a minimum. It seems to really like the bare mulch so this year I'm going to try seeding any bare parts of my wood chip mulch with clover (and anything else I can think of) to see if that will help keep it at bay. I'd much rather have a meadow than a lawn.

 
ben heidorn
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Whatever you decide to use it seems that keeping this plant in check is a constant effort.  Vinegar is listed as an organic method of killing it.  Sounds as if some test sections along perhaps 4 ft  areas to discover the best way to keep from spreading before going all in on one design.  Cardboard is mentioned as being ineffective but no mention of using coatings on it.


The best i could find sounds like everything you tried but sequenced a bit more to ensure results.  It still doesn't answer how to keep it from spreading back  in your case as it is part of the lawn.

https://underwoodgardens.com/slide-gardening-tips-and-tricksstopping-bermuda-grass-in-the-garden/  

Is it actually choking your plants? Might be best just to continue using it as mulch and ground cover. If you continue  building the soil it should become easier over time to pull it from undesirable locations. Also don't waste time trying to pull it when soil conditions aren't conducive to weeding.
 
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I have had *some* success with this, though it took me a couple of years.  There are a few things that I have learned that might be helpful.

Bermuda grass is impossible to pull from compacted or hard/dry soil.  It just breaks off at the ground level.  It is much easier to pull from wood chip mulch, and even easier from compost.  From the mulches, you can "easily" remove incredibly long ropes of root/rhizome.

In my soil at least (described below), the bermuda grass roots prefer to grow into the mulch than into the soil.  After a year mulched with wood chips, most of the roots migrated into the chips.  There may still be some down in the soil, but they seem to be small and weak.

I recommend against planting perennials your first year, since pulling the bermuda grass roots may disturb them.  If you have to dig the grass out of your beds the second season, you don't want your perennials to be in the way.

Once I established a bermuda grass-free zone, I seem to be able to control the edges with a shallow ditch, with mulch on both sides.  I consider the deep mulched area on the grass side of the ditch to be my future growing area.  Whenever I see rhizomes or roots try to cross the ditch, I can pull them back pretty relatively easily because of the deep mulch on the grass-side.


Basically, my process going forward will be to deep mulch an adjacent area and let the grass grow into it, using the ditch to keep it out of my garden.  Then, after a year, I can expand the garden area by either removing the remaining mulch (riddled with grass roots), or pulling all of the roots out of it, and moving the ditch out 4 feet.  Then mulch another 4 feet beyond that.

I have fairly compacted soil, and a shallow water table.  Humid subtropical, with a fair amount of rain.  I've not done any soil testing, so I don't know how the composition, but I suspect it is mostly clay.  It does not drain well.  I mention this because it might affect how deep the bermuda grass roots go.

 
pollinator
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It's hard to get rid of, but solarizing it or smothering it seems to work best.  I covered a large area with very heavy sheets of rubber for about 18 months until it was completely dead.  To keep it from re-entering the area, I planted a staggered, double row of comfrey around the entire area a couple feet into the "cleared zone".  Then I put rubber sheeting about 6 feet wide around the entire area outside the comfrey overlapping the cleared area and out a few feet into the uncleared area.  It worked pretty well, but it's time consuming.  Once you have a double row of comfrey well established, the grass doesn't seem to come back in through it.
 
ben heidorn
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I might have come up with something useful to try. I have an almost unlimited supply of kiln dried sawdust I have been looking for ideas on how to use. Someone mentioned that nothing will grow where it is placed for many years! Which I already knew of course, but never made the association to this task specifically.
 
pollinator
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I had a problem with Bermuda grass years ago in my lawn in Nevada.  I don't know where it came from, probably someone elses grass clipping blowing into my yard during a dust devil.  What I learned is it is about impossible to get rid of, even with grass poisons and vegetation killer, because the roots go down anywhere from 3 feet to 6 feet deep and then come back up whenever they want to reach for sunlight.  I don't remember if I ever solved the problem, but I am not asking the ex if it is still in the lawn.  I am sure it's there, I fought it for years.

I don't know if it will be possible to eradicate, but I wish you luck and hope some of these other suggestions work for you.  
 
ben heidorn
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Ok, here is the scheme I have devised based on the information at hand.

Step One mark out the area you wish to plant to other things, calculate the  Sq footage so that you can ensure that you have enough materials to complete the project. It would seem wise to add a 2ft buffer zone in all directions. Begin with solarizing the area with black plastic after mowing the area as short as possible. I would say 5-7 days would suffice.  The goal here is not to kill the grass yet but to start a cycle of stress that would weaken it. Remove the plastic and allow the root system to expend energy attempting to foliage the damaged tops. I would guess three days? Mow as short as possible and rake all organic material off collecting it to be composted in a sterilizing manner. Allow the foliage to to grow 2-3 days and solarize 5 days again.


At this point the roots will start wanting to recall all nutrients and enter a dormant phase. This is when we strike!

Phase 2 of this plan involves deep tilling and would be best served to plan around soil testing and coordinating any soil amendments necessary to create a growing environment that is easy to maintain for many years to come. This initially will be destructive to all soil biology. So inoculations will be necessary with EM's once the war moves toward the rebuilding process. You will need biochar, compost tea, compost, mulches of many varieties, and any soil ammendments indicated by testing. I would recommend  Dr RedHawk's Epic soil series before calculations are made on any quantities. It might also be wise to consider the hydrology of the land and coordinate any changes that can be used to reduce irrigation, such as buried logs, basins, swales, hugelish berm etc.

Awesome video I found on biochar.
https://youtu.be/DOEyIPVn2r0

The tilling  process should be done in the evening in order to minimize loss of microorganisms. Water the area to allow organisms to reestablish. Biochar, compost, and other amendments should be added during this tilling, compost tea will be later.

Continue irrigation of the plot maintaining a moisture level conducive to germination of any seeds and bringing dormant roots back to growing. At this time  if you have chickens either pen them in the area or encourage them with treats. This might not be necessary as chickens love freshly turned earth. I would use dried worms so as to not introduce unwanted seeds from feed. Hopefully the chickens will strip any fresh vegetation making a comeback. If not, or if no chickens are available then you will need to do the work yourself.  I would  rake the first few inches every other day and water to encourage growth of anything that is still dormant.  

At this point  it's time to construct any works in the area plant any trees and perennials  where they will be located, and begin a layer of fresh compost covered with mulch and cover crop.  Selection of a deep rooted nitrogen fixing cover  to prevent compaction while the area is getting reestablished is important. I see that you are a fan of comfrey, but I feel an annual would be best to cover the entire area for a chop and drop. Compost teas would be applied during this phase. Meanwhile close inspection and monitoring  for the offending grasses so they can be pulled before they get established in any areas. By carefully timing your weeding around weather events, i.e. the morning after a long wet period, you can ensure the ease of getting the entire root system of the plant with minimal effort.

The next thing to talk about would be engineering the barrier to  infiltration, which would be ongoing around the same time as the other earth works and plantings. But that idea still needs some hashing in my head and I need to figure out how to do some simple illustrations on my phone. I'm a bit to tired for that so to be continued.  The barriers should function as intended without the above steps but chances of success will be minimal and the ongoing labor of well established roots popping up all the time will require tons more effort and there will be an exponential chance of failure. Especially once the weather gets hot which favors the grass and hinders you being out there when most necessary.
 
ben heidorn
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One thing to remember is  that this is a brainstorming event, none of this is tested or experimented upon yet. Also would like to add that I'm mostly working with just reading material that I have taken in just over the winter, and I am by no means an expert on any of it. That being said I am quite open to criticism if  anything seems out of place. One thing that I realize after completely watching both parts of the video that I posted is that my understanding of EM was  off. I was was unaware that these were anaerobic organisms designed for a specific task.
 
ben heidorn
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I wasn't thinking that Bermuda was this far north for some reason,  but that is exactly what my sod is! I guess i can experiment with some ideas after all. I only planted two tomatoes last year and just put em in the ground ....they absolutely did not perform well.  So i would say Bermuda gotta go. I wonder if   there could be a bacteria that would inhibit the roots and be beneficial to others?

Made a quick sketch.  Hope its legible.
20210305_135807.jpg
[Thumbnail for 20210305_135807.jpg]
 
author & steward
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I live in an area where bermudagrass is popular for both lawn and pasture. It's just about the only warm season grass seed one can buy locally for these purposes and is promoted by our state cooperative extension service. I understand why, because our summers can be hot and dry, and bermuda is one of the few warm weather grasses that survives these conditions. What no one seems to want to acknowledge, unfortunately, is how invasive and tenacious it is. As a weed, it's referred to around here as wiregrass.

Wiregrass trying to sneak over the top of a bordered garden bed.

It grows so thickly that it not only chokes out whatever's growing there, but covers the soil with a dense mat so that it's nearly impossible to plant anything without first removing it by the roots (stolons). We tilled for many years in an effort to try and stay ahead of it. My husband would till and I would rake through the area and remove wheelbarrow's full of stolons. It was a yearly race before it came back again.

I finally had modest success after I started digging swale beds and filling them hugelkultur fashion. We borderd the beds and I laid down several layers of cardboard in the paths between, topping with about a 6-inch layer of wood chips.

Double-dug hugelkultur swale beds and aisles without wiregrass!

I say modest success, because eventually the stuff finds it's way back. Since it spreads by both indeterminate stolons and seed, it's impossible to keep out forever. But with this method it's more manageable than before, so that's a huge plus.

Edges are usually the point of re-infestation.

Eventually, it grows on up through the cardboard and mulch. But as has been already pointed out, it's usually easier to pull when it has a not of non-soil to grow through.

After about 2 years, it starts growing up through the cardboard and mulch again.

I have no idea if there is a permaculture solution to it. If there is, I haven't figure it out yet. But I have learned a few lessons:
- Accept I will never win the war. Accept that I cannot completely eliminate it.
- Focus instead on trying to win seasonal battles. My method above works for awhile, but eventually I need to remove the mulch, dig up what I can, and then put down a new wiregrass barrier layer.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've kind of made my peace with it. It takes some effort to stay ahead of it, but that's just a part of southern gardening.

 
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I think Leigh's right. Expecting full eradication of bermadugrass with anything short of completely obliterating the environment may not be good for one's sanity. It just boils down to a certain amount of work to keep it under control. Here is a pic I took of a local business's parking lot. The bermudagrass had been growing quite happily in solid gravel. It was then paved over with molten asphalt in the hottest part of summer.
20200728_112341.jpg
Bermudagrass in asphalt
Bermudagrass in asphalt
 
William Mulcher
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I really love this conversation, and all these ideas!  Leigh's experience, and edge pictures are very consistent with my experience.

Ben's edge control sketch may work, depending on how deep the roots go in your area, and how wide the sawdust filled trench is.  It looks to be about 2', which I would say is the minimum.  It would certainly be wonderfully easy to pull the grass roots out of the sawdust, but only if you know they are there.  If the roots go deep in your area, they might sneak through the sawdust undetected, and emerge within your beds.  My trenches are currently empty, so as the roots emerge from the lawn, they become visible, and I can pull them.  This however does require regular digging out, because gravity, and cannot really be used as a walkway.

As far as the competing plants on the border, the one thing that I have observed that naturally and consistently beats bermuda grass is deep shade.  I have a row of mature bradford pears (I know, I know) which cast deep shade and have virtually no grass (of any kind) under them.  I would suggest that the competing plants be dense, bushy plants at least 2' tall.

Perhaps this is part of the reason that comfrey has been said to work well.  If you do use comfrey in this way, I would be hesitant to chop it, as many people do.  Also, if it dies back in the winter, it would need to bush out again before it got hot and the bermuda grass came out of its dormancy.  I'm not familiar enough with comfrey to know.

I would guess that something like a dwarf holly may also work well.
 
Leigh Tate
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William Mulcher wrote:the one thing that I have observed that naturally and consistently beats bermuda grass is deep shade.  I have a row of mature bradford pears (I know, I know) which cast deep shade and have virtually no grass (of any kind) under them.


I concur. I have had less trouble with bermuda in my polyculture garden beds with tallish bushy plants such as tomatoes, peppers, and marigolds. I have a few areas that are thick with 4 o'clocks, and very little grows under these as well.
 
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What I did to Build my food forest without tilling first I based on my front yard where I had trouble growing grass:

1)Low sun
2)compacted clay soil
3)I was lazy about raking leaves.

In the areas along the chainlink fence bordering the side yard and back yard where leaves tended to pile up from wind, the soil was pretty good once I finally did rake the leaves away, it was dark, loose and weeds came in as soon as I cleared the compacted leaves and that's what inspired me to build my food forest right on top of lawn bermuda without tilling it at all.

What I did was collect strangers' leaves they had bagged and  left on the curbside for trash collectors

In Tulsa, OK we have an excellent mulch facility that accepts tree branches, the city or county set up after a big ice storm that wreaked havo on the trees, and they coty or county didn't want to fill the landfills up with that, so they built a mulch facility where residents (based on zipcode) can drop off unlimited amounts of tard waste for free(a portion of the water/sewer bill pays for the facility so residents get free access to the mulch facility)

They had a problem with leaves and grass clippings, the plastic trash bags made a mess, we herd to open without making a mess of plastic, and mowed products often have plastic and other inorganic materials in them shredded up by lawnmowers, so they don't accept that.

And you can'r get any of it there.

The bagged yard waste is BURNED at a "sustainable" plastic to energy incinerator(microplastic problem is coming fom those)

I poach them off the curb and use it to build soil(both leaves and grass clippings)

The candy wrappers, weeed whip cords etc if not immediately identifyable when I dump out these bags, eventually works its way to the top and is easy to find.

And you can often see if a bag of leaves or grass has trash mixed in before deciding to throw it in the back of my pickup.

So here's what I did:

6" leaves topped with 3" horse manure. Right on top of bemuda lawn.

Magnolia leaves are great because thet lay flat and Occultify(there's a term for removing light like occultification, solarization is when you put white or clear plastic and cook it, but I didn't want to cook it, just wanted to starve it of light, and let the grubs eat it.

The three inches of horse manure ensured full darkness, and the bacteria in the manure eventually DIGESTED the leaves.

So I had isopods, worms, cicada and junebug grubs in there from the getgo.

I have to mulch regularly to keep the bermuda from coming back in, and eventually I resorted to polymer landscaping fabric for borders.

But what I did with those is just unstake them once a year, and flip them back and then peel the bermuda tendrils out of it, stake it back down. Mulch on top.

A bit more next post.

I'm TRYING GARLIC now as a border plant.

Also I got free wood for my berms from the Tulsa Mulch facility. They separate the large hard woods for FREE FIREWOOD.

I used that to build my berms.

https://www.cityoftulsa.org/government/departments/streets-and-stormwater/mulch-site/

(I got the horse manure off of craigslist for free, most of it was already composted, but my sources dried up after I shared what I was doing and at the end of the day I ended up with some fresh that had hookworms in it that infected my dogs(I had to worm them)

LOL

More in a sec, GARLIC from SEED is my new border strategy.

(You need fresh garlic seed and cloves from home grown garlic.) So if you aren't growing garlic plant some soon.

I'll explain next post.

 
Simon Torsten
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Garlic.

It's evergreen. I tried some volunteer ground covers that I observed sequestering bermuda in the hot season, but they died out and were annuals, and the grass crept through in the cold season.

I had accidental garlic patches that worked better.

One year when I was planting cloves I got tired of poking holes on my berms to plant them, had too much, and I had leftovers laying around.

Then I was weeding a part of my lawn that had overgrown weeds and I was pulling them out by hand, and it left holes and I was drunk, so I was inspired.

Plunked the leftover garlic cloves in the holes where those weeds had rooted, and left a hole when I pulled them up.

THen I shook the root ball to cover them with dirt.

Pull a weed, plant a seed!

LOL

Burrp! Belch....LOL

Now I have garlic EVERYWHERE those easy to pull weeds used to live. (I don't know the specied of that "weed plant" but it was easy to pull when big because the stem was tough and it tended to have moist soil arround it and a small root ball. One of the questions I hope to answer by using this orum is what that weed was, but that's another thread(not cannabis)

I have to sharpen my lawnmower blade more than usual, but it Arranged itself into borders in places I wanted BERMUDA borders.

Another time I had too much garlic in places on my berms I wanted to plant other things, so I yanked a bunch of it, and piled iit under a shade tree. Both the seeds and the cloves rooted ther. How do I post pics?(Found it)

This year I'm planning to harvest all the garlic seeds and distribute it right on top of the bermuda in a 2-3 foot strip where I might have used landscaping fabric before.

Sorry I can't find the photos, will take some new ones tomorrow.

Bear with me.

I'm new to posting here.




 
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Chicken moats are popular around here for keeping rhizomous species from invading a garden. A chicken moat is two fences spaced about 6 feet apart, that totally enclose a garden. Enough chickens are kept in it to keep the area between the fences eaten down to bare dirt.
 
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I've had all sorts of weeds with rhizomes including grasses and bindweed, and I also found chickens to be the most thorough and easiest method of getting rid of them.  I used a moveable pen.  I let them completely decimate one spot, then moved to the next.  The moat idea above is great!  My setup wouldn't have let that work, though, so I had to deal with it one spot at a time.

In the meantime, I found I had to keep the areas that weren't being "chickenated" short, so they didn't seed or grow in strength.  I just mowed those areas.

The only plant this didn't work well for was buttercup, but it worked great for grasses and bindweed.
 
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I've been MIA so long I'm a little embarrassed to show up again.   But my mother has struggled with fighting grass in organic gardening for more than 30 years here and may have finally found a long lasting control.   Treat it like a miniature running bamboo by creating a miniature metal root barrier.   12 inch roofing flashing buried 8 inches deep blocks nearly all the underground runners while being high enough that you can easily keep above ground shoots trimmed before they grow in from the top.  I use rock borders to protect the top edge from bending over time.  The flashing also does a good job of containing the mulch that helps keep our soils soft enough to easily pull any grasses that are trying to spead by seed.  

She first tested a small area with 6 inch flashing buried flush and we couldn't keep ahead of the top growth.  Trying again with wider flashing was a marked improvement.   After trying it for a couple of years this year we have laid flashing around all of our beds adjacent to Bermuda grass lawn including almost tripling the main vegetable garden.  

We thoroughly dug up and weeded out as much of the grass as we could after building the barrier and then put down a 4 inch minimum of wood chips.  I recommend hand digging with something like a garden fork if you do this because it's easier to find all the roots if they aren't cut into little pieces. I am still going to need to check the beds frequently to find where stray bits of roots are resprouting.  Once those are finally exhausted (or dug out if the soil cooperates) we will be dealing with seedlings only.  Those are easy to hoe or pull up by the roots without having to dig up the whole bed.

In summary, bury wide roofing flashing vertically to 8 inches deep with some inches left above the soil the soil.  Eliminate the weeds inside the garden area and then stay on top of new seedlings. Use something hard to protect that raised edge as it can be both fragile and sharp.  


Considering how many decades it took my Mom (a very intelligent and creative woman) to come up with this system I feel it's a good note to reintroduce myself to this community.   Sorry for disappearing so completely without notice.  
 
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I know this is an older post, but I too fight with bermuda grass. I do have the advantage of 'only' being in zone 7 in northern VA, so it's not optimal environment but it's still bermuda grass....

While its taken me a couple years to accomplish because I didn't want to spend the money on it, I surround my garden, trees, and swales with comfrey. The roots block passage from below and the leaves shade out from above. Its not 100% effective, but it slows the grass down more than enough to easily handle the few bits that sprout in the garden. In addition to a great weed blocking boarder, you get all the amazing benefits of the comfrey!

The only problem with the comfrey is that you better like it where it is! Any roots left in the ground with sprout into a new plant. While that makes it amazing for propagating (I have about 50 plants from 10 original roots in 3 years!), it also makes it stubborn to get rid off and slightly invasive....I made the mistake the first time I took root cuttings and took them from the side facing my garden instead of my yard. ended up loosing about a foot of garden space along the one edge of the garden because of the new comfrey plants that sprouted from the remaining roots!
 
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A poultry tunnel may be a good alternative to the chicken mote, where available space is limited...
 
William Kellogg
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Adding a row of potatoes along the perimeter does a good job of blocking invasive weeds
 
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