Black Plastic Termination

I am new to this forum.  Thanks for being here!  I live in a suburban home in Tennessee, not on a farm.  I have a 1/2 yard of Bermuda grass to kill (will replace with clover).  When you use the black plastic method, what is revealed when you remove the tarp at the end of the "cooking" stage?  I assume you have a lot of dead grass.  Does that detritus need to be removed, or possibly tilled before seeding the clover?

Thank you for your kind suggestions.

Welcome to the forum.

I am not a black plastic person or a cooking stage person so I cant help there.

I do like the smother method though for most runner type grasses that is a challenge.

Please let us know how this worked out for you.

Hi Kathy. Bermuda grass is one of the toughest godawful things to get rid of. I did manage to clear a town lot in Tucson of the vile stuff and it only took me 20 years (actually, I probably got 90% of it gone in one or two and then it was just being vigilant around the edges). Can you believe that back in the '60s people there used to water the stuff to make it grow on purpose?

I'll share one tip that will supercharge your powers: Use clear plastic instead of black. Clear lets the sunlight pass through and heats up the soil even more, and this makes the kill quicker and more effective. Ideally, you put the plastic down right after a good rain in summertime, and turn the lawn into a giant pressure cooker.

Either way, what's left at the end is a lot of dead thatch. As long as it's not full of seed heads, it's basically mulch and good organic material to help give your new clover crop a head start. Good luck!

Good advice Phil,the pressure cooker analogy works very well here,you will have some steamed veggies soon after! The black plastic deprives the plants from light and they will die eventually but it takes time.More sturdy deep rooted plants survive a very long time.

Shookeli Riggs wrote: More sturdy deep rooted plants survive a very long time.

And that's Bermuda grass in a nutshell. I've found runners growing happily under concrete and coming up on the other side of a driveway....