How to turn quack grass into garden?

We've moved to land in the Ozarks, an old abused cow pasture land like much else around here. There's a spot with pretty good soil, nice and open that we intend on gardening annuals in this Spring, but haven't had a chance to do preparations up there other than I opened up a little patch for Fall greens with a pickaxe. Lots of rocks here.
Problem is, it's a carpet of quack grass currently. Since it's green I've got the goats and chickens working on it, but it's going to take more to get this ready for a garden. I have no experience using a tiller and don't know that it's the time to start. Plus with all those rocks could be dangerous. I'm considering burning, but how do you burn green grass?
I've got a huge mulch pile, but this grass seems to spread easily in the mulch.
Does anyone have tips on how to go about making a garden out of quack grass?
Thank you!

Quack grass plus lots of rock sounds like a place for raised beds.  And you don't need a tiller for raised beds.

Just something to think about.

I have never had quack grass though I have read to smother it with cardboard.

You also might want to learn more about the "No-Till Method" of gardening.

To Till, or Not to Till, and WHY

And Dr. Bryant Redhawk's Soil Series is an interesting set of articles you might enjoy:

https://permies.com/wiki/redhawk-soil

I would tarp it until your sure its dead. Cardboard on a large area can be a bit time consuming so if you want to cardboard the area, roll back the tarp cardboard and plant into it as you go.

Its probably worth using the goats to weaken the plants before hand too but I can't comment on that really as I have never owned goats just know they eat almost anything!

Quack grass you say. If that's what I think it is, it's a pretty tough opponent. Is it a rather short grass that sort of hugs the ground and spreads with lot of rhizomes or runner type growth? While, like I said it's a tough opponent, on the other hand, a plant's strengths can sometimes be turned against it. Also, since you indicated you prepared a spot with a pickaxe I'll assume you don't mind doing a little bit of work.

From my experience with a grass as I described, assuming it is the same, I would not mow it or probably even let the animals eat it down. That just encourages it to grow even tighter to the ground and produce even more of those runner type roots which are very hard to pull out and which regrow from any little fragment. Tilling just breaks it up and spreads it.

I found that it is quite happy with mulch, grass clippings, leaves, compost or whatever you have.  As it happily grows up through the mulch, in all its glory, the roots deeper down in the harder packed soil die out. That is when its strength becomes weakness. Now those tough interconnected roots are in loose soil, yank on a clump of it and out it will come, intact, and with a bunch more attached as well. Throw it up on something off the ground to dry out or put it in a bucket of water to rot and use it for mulch or fertilizer.

It won't be gone overnight or even in a year or two, especially if it still undisturbed around the perimeter but after a while a (few years) it will be easily manageable.  

Hello all,
Thank you for your suggestions. I've considered the cardboard smothering as a long term approach. We are in sort of a bind trying to grow something there this season, but I believe it'll work.
I went to a garden class last week where the suggestion was the put down a layer of mulch 6-8" deep and that will fully smother anything beneath. Of course it's best to let that age a season before planting, so the amended advice was to push the mulch aside and make rows with compost for planting, equally deep. This is what I'm going to try this Spring. I've begun the mulching, and oh my goodness it's hard work on the back! Little by little I will cover the area.
I did notice the area I mulched last Fall just caused the grass to thrive, but it was only a couple inches deep layer of mulch. So hopefully with a greater depth it won't stand a chance.

Now to figure out burning the other field for a grain patch!

Hi Rachel, I experienced something very similar a few years ago.  I had an area that was thick with weeds lots of Bermuda grass, that sounds similar to the grass your dealing with.  I didn't have gardening in mind when I started. The weeds would get high, die, dry, and become a fire hazard in the summer.  I didn't do the cardboard, the area was to big.  It took at least 8", more like 12" of wood chips to suppress the weeds. It worked amazingly well.  That year I had a bunch of extra seedlings, and thought why not make use of the space.  I pulled the wood chips back in a cone shape, so the bottom connected with the soil,(which after a short time already seemed healthier) I filled it up with organic compost.  It was the best melon crop I ever had.  That's the good news.  I won't say the bad news, but the challenge is the wood chips have to be replaced every year.  I didn't do mine last year, and now I'm back to square one. I still think it's worth the work.
For my garden path I did put down cardboard, and 8" to 10" of wood chips. I didn't plant in the path.  2 years later I'm getting small patches of weeks.  
For me it's totally worth the work. It suppressed the weeds, improved the soil, reduced water needs, and looks nice.  It doesn't cost me anything but time, and work.
Good luck to you.

Phew, quackgrass. I know it well. It's a mighty tough opponent. If you keep after it you can control it, but you will never completely defeat it.

How big an area are we talking about?

Organic control is labour intensive. Tarping it for a season will weaken it. Loosening the soil is necessary to pull/dig out more of the roots and rhizomes.  

Mature, well-established quackgrass seems to have both upper and lower root structures. So, the initial digs take a lot of work.

If it was a larger area, I would look into having a tractor and tine cultivator come in to initially break things up. A rototiller is less desirable, since broken off rhizomes turn into new plants; but it would still reduce the manual labour.

I find that it is much easier to pull roots and rhizomes early in spring. It seems all the tiny root hairs die off when it goes dormant. Once they grow back, they act like barbs in the soil and the rhizome will break off easily, compounding the problem.

FWIW, young quackgrass is good quality grazing fodder. Don't let it go to seed if possible, since the seeds are persistent for 5 years or so. I collect and rot/burn seed heads in fall.

I don't know if pigs might be an option?

Jen Fulkerson wrote:Hi Rachel, I experienced something very similar a few years ago.  I had an area that was thick with weeds lots of Bermuda grass, that sounds similar to the grass your dealing with.  I didn't have gardening in mind when I started. The weeds would get high, die, dry, and become a fire hazard in the summer.  I didn't do the cardboard, the area was to big.  It took at least 8", more like 12" of wood chips to suppress the weeds. It worked amazingly well.  That year I had a bunch of extra seedlings, and thought why not make use of the space.  I pulled the wood chips back in a cone shape, so the bottom connected with the soil,(which after a short time already seemed healthier) I filled it up with organic compost.  It was the best melon crop I ever had.  That's the good news.  I won't say the bad news, but the challenge is the wood chips have to be replaced every year.  I didn't do mine last year, and now I'm back to square one. I still think it's worth the work.
For my garden path I did put down cardboard, and 8" to 10" of wood chips. I didn't plant in the path.  2 years later I'm getting small patches of weeks.  
For me it's totally worth the work. It suppressed the weeds, improved the soil, reduced water needs, and looks nice.  It doesn't cost me anything but time, and work.
Good luck to you.

Jen, do you think those weeds are surfacing from under the mulch or are they growing from seeds floating around?

Hi Douglas,
The area is roughly 50x30' but there are little trees and shrubs around it so can't get a tractor in. If we had an attachment for our riding lawn mower perhaps, but as don't.
The goats love this grass, especially as it stays mostly green through the winter. It's isolated to one area of the land (where previous owner fed hay to her donkey). The rest of the land is covered with lespideza! Ah! Which the goats also eat down.
Pigs would not be an option for us.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Phew, quackgrass. I know it well. It's a mighty tough opponent. If you keep after it you can control it, but you will never completely defeat it.

How big an area are we talking about?

Organic control is labour intensive. Tarping it for a season will weaken it. Loosening the soil is necessary to pull/dig out more of the roots and rhizomes.  

Mature, well-established quackgrass seems to have both upper and lower root structures. So, the initial digs take a lot of work.

If it was a larger area, I would look into having a tractor and tine cultivator come in to initially break things up. A rototiller is less desirable, since broken off rhizomes turn into new plants; but it would still reduce the manual labour.

I find that it is much easier to pull roots and rhizomes early in spring. It seems all the tiny root hairs die off when it goes dormant. Once they grow back, they act like barbs in the soil and the rhizome will break off easily, compounding the problem.

FWIW, young quackgrass is good quality grazing fodder. Don't let it go to seed if possible, since the seeds are persistent for 5 years or so. I collect and rot/burn seed heads in fall.

I don't know if pigs might be an option?

Rachel sad to say both.  The seeds that germinate in the wood chips make weeding easy and quite satisfying because you can easily pull the whole thing roots and all. The weeds that have grown from roots and made it through are hard to pull, and you never get every bit of root, at least with Bermuda grass.  Good luck.

Henry Jabel wrote:I would tarp it until your sure its dead.

Definitely this. Unless it is completely dead it will keep coming back and invading your beds. No matter how big an area you do, you will probably always be fighting it around the edges.

Silage tarps (the black and white film types that don't let any light through) work quite well if you leave them on for several months. I've found that 3 months covered in the spring or fall tends to be long enough to kill quack, and more like 2 months in the summer when it's really hot/dry.

I've found that cardboard or any other kind of leafy or woody mulch doesn't do anything to quack grass, it just grows right through it.

Pieces of steel roofing, wooden boards, and sheets of plywood can also work, but they sort of need to be down for a whole year, since they don't produces the heating effect that black tarps do.