Aaron McCarty

Mike Turner...another permaculturalists living in SC? Does that mean you live in SC...or know others on this forum that do?

Funny you stated what you did about sweet potatoes. I did the same this year...just growing them, and the bed they grew in definitely choked out the bermuda...most of it, but I didn't realize this tactic as one to kill bermuda until you stated it. Guess I wasn't thinking about killing bermuda at the time.

Jeanine, are you in SC?!!! I thought I was the only one in this state that knew what permaculture is. You mean there are others? Where are they?

Leila, on a couple of the permaculture job's I've done I've had to contend with landscape fabric. It sucks, but it's no match for my mattock "axcalibur." It's always a couple of inches under great top soil all pointless like as well. I've considered using it out of desperation, and because my wife brought home three rolls of it. I might just experiment with it, maybe roll it out into an area of grass, weight it down, and leave it for a while to see what happens.

Apparently this is just about the crappiest condition one could attempt to grow growies in, compost, or just practice permaculture in general. I wish I had some help with this, as in people, in my community, that would be willing to help. It gets overwhelming trying to relearn the old agriculture, pre-petroleum, by yourself. Luckily (i guess) I'm only an hour and fifteen minutes by personal transport vehicle to Asheville NC, a beacon of permaculture in a society gone made with petroleum sugar. But this thread was about Bermuda grass....maybe I should start a new thread in the community section.

I found out on another thread that I started here that what I have is Bermuda grass, not crab grass. Crab grass doesn't hold a flame to Bermuda. It's a different battle entirely.

I suppose if the tree lives it will be one hell of a strong tree. This sort of reminds me of the difference between using transplants and sowing seed directly. The sown seed is always going to be a better producer if it makes it. Not a perfect correlation here, but I think there is something to it.

So let me get this straight. You can propagate apple trees by root cuttings?

yep, definitely bermuda is what I have. After a while I'll put gloves on because it starts tearing my hands up when I start with that evil grass. I swear the secret to immortality can be found in bermuda. Thanks for the explanation on the difference...I never knew that. Crab grass is benign compared to Bermuda.

I hope the cardboard works out for you. I'm still on the fence with it myself. I have some success and some failures. Only one true success actually. My humanure pile. When I started the pile I did so where an old compost pile had been. I left a couple inches of the old compost and covered it with a couple layers of cardboard and began with the humanure operation. That was around June. So far no Bermuda has infiltrated...so far. Another application of carboard sheet mulch was for a willow tree that I transplanted. Once I had the tree in the ground I put cardboard all around it in about a four foot radius. Crab grass began infiltrating this fall. It's those dang runners man. I had a runner go about five feet up behind the siding of my garage. Like I said, that grass is relentless.

I'm gonna try solarizing a few of my beds with clear plastic from now until spring, and I think I'll plant some cover crops come spring and start working on slowly beating it back. I know solarizing kills it to, but I think it's worth it if I'm going to make it my job to recover it. I don't know about Bermuda, but I know with bamboo you need a 26 inch deep rhizome barrier. I know that Bermuda that was under the willow tree sheet mulch was beneath three layers of card board and six inches of cypress mulch and it grew straight up and through it all.

I'd prefer not to use it either. Maybe I could just solarize large swathes and then boarder growing areas with green manures like clover, vetch, comfrey? On another thread here I fond after I posted this I came to the conclusion that I'd just focus on planting fruit trees and perennial next season and just let the trees choke out the grass. Plus I'm going to integrate some hugelkulture beds...but my plan is still up in the air. What I do know is that I've got to get rid of this grass somehow (pretty sure it's bermuda...but I've always called it crab grass, it's rhizomous and it sucks). I've got several compost piles that are ate up with it now as are my beds.

This last season was the first time I've tried growing here. It's compacted clay with grass and some hardy weeds growing. I tilled in horse poo with a walk behind tiller and planted. Annuals grew great but the grass slowly dominated. It's relentless. I'm not trying to fight crab grass which is why I'm willing to resort to land scape fabric...whatever works at this point. Plus I have a lot of it and my tiller is broken (it's old and I had to have it worked on 3 times last summer). So question is, if you're not going to till, and your not going to use landscape fabric, than how are you going to garden in grass short of digging it all out and losing all of that soil. Then you either have to find a way to make a lot of your own soil, or buy it, and you never know what you are going to get when you import soil/compost from elsewhere. It's a lot of catch 22's. I just want to grow food, not grass. I'd love to integrate goats, but that's not going to happen. I've got chickens, but after a full season this grass is still growing in parts of their run. I thought about digging infiltration swales around the beds and filling with mulch, but as I have said I've got a cypress mulch pile with this stuff thriving in it.

So I agree landscape fabric sucks, as does tilling, but both are better than nothing. I'll probably end up doing some combination of all of the above.

I think the term "ego" is often used wrongheadedly.

As has been pointed out here, in order to say anything (or type anything) you have to have an "ego." Right, that voice in your head that is dictating what you type is your ego. We all have it. You have to have an ego to communicate as an individual to other individuals.

There is such a thing as a healthy ego and likewise a dysfunctional ego. A healthy ego can listen to the opinions of others, contemplate the information, and regurgitate an opinion based on that contemplation. An unhealthy ego cannot do that. The unhealthy ego will simply not listen and then carry on with it's rigid program. A healthy ego can admit when it's wrong. A healthy ego cares about the well being of others.

I think the antidote to ego is humility. Contemplate what it means to be humble and you can figure out if your ego is out of control or not. The Dali Lama has an ego, and he would not say otherwise. He would also say that if you can't love yourself than you can't love anybody else. If you can't help yourself than you can't help anybody else. What could appear to be more egotistical than to commit yourself to meditation as a lifestyle as Buddhist monks do? You are involved with yourself and only yourself while sitting in meditation. Yet, it's also the most selfless act possible because it's done (properly at least) in an effort to eradicate suffering.

I think the disconnect here would be one of jargon. The term "ego" has many nuanced and subtle contexts. Simply put, usually if you are called "egotistical" it's because somebody thinks you are acting like an ass. This may or may not be true. I suppose it depends on the person flingin' the moniker. Maybe they are just insecure, or maybe you are an ass, or maybe it's some combination (most likely).

The bottom line is that we are all egotistical due to the fact that we must have an ego to communicate. It's just...are you actively participating in temperance and humility? If you aren't than there is room for you to be less egotistical. I think it's really a matter of unspoken communication. If you are an ass than people will see you as an ego, if you genuinely care about other people, than you're probably just fine...where egoic health is concerned.

So what is the deal with black plastic anyways? Clear plastic will allow the radiation through correct? I understand black plastic will get hotter. So is it just a choice between higher temperatures or more radiation?

Taylor, glad to hear that your solarized plot worked out after seeing that little bit of green grass coming back after you removed the plastic.

I'm dealing with the crab grass problem myself. It's even growing in a cypress mulch pile that was left over this summer. Cardboard sheet mulching was no obstacle for the grass, it just grew up through the cardboard. I think it's because of the amount of rain we got here this year in upstate SC. It accelerated the rate of decomposition of the cardboard allowing the grass to survive. So frustrating.

My garden beds were compacted clay soil with crab grass growing when I started. I tilled in horse poo with a weed eater "cultivator" attachment and planted my annuals in that. Worked great, all of my annuals grew well, but by the end of the season the beds were just covered in grass. I'm too lazy to weed, and anyways trying to fight crab grass by pulling is more hopeless than kicking water uphill. I think I've concluded, after reading this thread (amongst other threads on this forum) that I'm just going to concentrate on fruit trees and perennials and stop trying to grow annuals in beds. This next season I think I'll just plant annuals in a few hugel beds, and maybe some containers. I'm very interested in using my chickens to build soil via the rotational paddock method. I have a coop (10X10 chain link dog kennel) and a circular run (2X4's placed in the earth via phd and tamping with the green garden fencing zip tied to the 2X4's). Think I'm gonna move the coop in the spring and plant annuals in it's place on top of a couple of hugel beds.

I think the important growth here for me is getting out of the planting annuals in beds mentality. This is where permaculture has moved me forward. Planting annuals in beds is great...better than nothing, but it's not going to feed you when the trucks stop restocking the box store shelves.

I think that's what I like so much about the idea of just planting food producing trees and letting them kill the grass. Hugel doesn't care about grass either (although I can picture crab grass invading a hugel bed). That's the intelligence I love about permaculture. Work smarter not harder. It's all about energy conservation isn't it? Yet somehow permaculture helped me lose 50 pounds.

new to the forum. I'm sure this has been discussed ad naseum here, but I couldn't find it.

I've tried sheet mulching with cardboard to kill the bermuda to no avail. The roots outlive the cardboard and shoots emerge.

My plan now is to lay down clear plastic to solraize and surround the growing areas with landscape fabric with mulch on top. Is this the best way to beat back the onslaught of bermuda? Any better ideas? I can't grow anything without the crab grass moving in. It even attacks my compost piles. I have a pile of cypress mulch with grass growing in it. It's very frustrating.