RoundUp Has Never Looked So Tempting
6 Sep 2012
So this is one of the two raised beds that were in the yard when we moved in. I took this photo as it was starting to sprinkle outside so you can get an idea of the vibrant, healthy green of the damn bermuda and centipede grass that has swamped these beds. This one, incidentally, is the one that I cleared and sheet mulched with 2 layers of cardboard and many inches of rabbit manure and rabbit bedding. First the grass punched through the cardboard and then it just swamped the entire bed.
There is no “pulling out” this grass. It’s incredibly deep-rooted and tenacious and just crawls back from the edges. This entire corner of the yard is covered in grass. The crazy thing is that the grass has rooted through and crawled over a doubled layer of plastic landscape fabric that’s so old it tears like tissue paper when you try to pull it up. You can barely see it through the grass. The landscape fabric is completely covered by new soil and weeds now. It used to be a weed barrier around the edges of the raised beds but now it’s just a shredded mess that I don’t think will ever be able to be removed.
Seriously, weed killer has never looked so tempting but I’m considering that an absolute last resort. I’d really like to plant some vegetables in these beds this fall/winter. Obviously I have to pull up the boards from their current location, the grass just comes up underneath the edges. Would a deep tilling kill the grass? Ack! This forum says tilling will just spread it! What if I tilled multiple times? What about tilling and then sheet mulching? I know I’m going to have to install some sort of impenetrable barrier buried around the edges of the raised bed vegetable-growing area, other wise the bermuda grass is just going to creep back from the neighbor’s yard where it’s growing happily.
Suggestions are extremely welcome here, and I am not afraid of radical action! How have you gotten rid of bermuda or any other creeping weeds?
June 18, 2013 at 1:42 pm 
Sep 06, 2012 @ 10:43:37
Rake off the mulch and pour boiling water or burn it with a propane torch. Good luck!
Sep 07, 2012 @ 12:24:59
Thank you!
Sep 06, 2012 @ 11:03:18
This would NOT be a popular opinion, but roundup as a one time home owner strength will not repeat NOT ravish your soil. The sort you can get a Lowes has a very short ‘linger’ time. I’ve used it when clearing the soil over old turf (your problem exactly) After that it’s only maintenance. I’ve only used it once. And that was over 4 years ago.
After the grass was dead I just tilled it in and went on my merry way planting.
There will be grass incursions and I just treat it like regular weed pulling.
It will be interesting to see what the ‘cardboard’ people have to say.
My only issue was the cost.
Sep 07, 2012 @ 12:27:06
Since this stuff has already punched right through heavy-duty cardboard even with fresh rabbit manure underneath, I’m disinclined to try sheet mulching alone again. Some surprising people have been advocating roundup. Thank you for speaking up!
Sep 07, 2012 @ 21:08:28
And I know you wanted to get your fall/winter garden going too. If you go the “organic” route you probably shouldn’t bother until the early spring. YOIKS!
Hey,whatever you decide, I’m on your side.
F
Sep 06, 2012 @ 11:26:59
I live in the Tampa Bay area and often deal with the same grass. I also dealt with it when we lived in Gainesville for 12 years. I hate the stuff with a passion and I actually thought it followed me here by hiding seeds inside the lawn mower. ;)
The only way I’ve been able to remove it is with back breaking labor. Since yours is covering the cardboard, could you use a tiller or weed wacker to move the grass off the cardboard, and then discard the cardboard and attack the roots?
Here’s the way I remove the grass from the soil itself: Take a shovel and drive it into the ground as close as you can get to the grass. It’s almost impossible to drive the shovel through the root system itself, so you may need to sort of root around with the shovel and find a part of the soil where the grass “gives” and you can make headway toward the root balls. You won’t be digging it out now, not just yet.
Send the shovel down hard and then stand or jump on the ends of the shovel and push so that it goes deep into the soil,
and then get off the shovel and bend the handle backward to lift the dirt up. But don’t dig a hole or pull the grass out at that point.
Repeat the process of driving the shovel in all along the area you want to remove, rougly every eight inches apart or so. I actually don’t have a spacing formula, I just hack here and hack there, everywhere I can. That will help either loosen or break up the root system and when you’re done, it will make it much easier for you to then go back and begin alternately digging it out or yanking it out. It comes out much, much easier at that point! I throw it away, too. don’t compost it! I don’t trust it not to replicate! It’ll die in the landfill, you know. (all that weedy grass can just green up the landfill!)
It’s hard work, especially in this heat, but it allows you to go deep and get the root system.
When the sun is strong, I use one of those open canopy tents to cover the area where I’m working. I’ve even brought an extension cord and a fan outside to the area, too.
;)
The way I figure it, “Cross Fit” training is big right now as a way of working out. This workout just as good, better for the enviroment and gets your weeding done as well.
Here’s to big tomatoes! :)
Sep 10, 2012 @ 07:23:37
Would love to hear more answers on this–suggest you ask the Barefoot Gardeners yahoo group and the Facebook group you’ve posted on before (can’t remember the name right now).
Spraying with salt water solution I have not tried yet but heard it before as a solution to weeds.
Sep 11, 2012 @ 16:43:24
Hi Peg!
I received a huge number of responses to this post on the Grow Gainesville facebook group, the discussion is still going intermittently. When I have a chance to come back to it I’ll summarize everyone’s advice, there was lots of it!
Sep 10, 2012 @ 13:31:27
Just like you I was dismayed at all the grass & weeds that broke through the newspaper, weed barrier, & stones we went to all the trouble & expense to put in place when we laid in our raised beds. Granted, I’m not much of a weeder, but it seems we turned around one day & you almost couldn’t tell the difference between the yard & the raised beds. So I’m watching the comments here closely.
Sep 11, 2012 @ 16:45:05
As I said below, I’ve received many, many more responses on different facebook gardening groups. A surprising number of people advocated RoundUp as a way to clear pernicious grasses. I was surprised!
Sep 15, 2012 @ 09:00:57
my experience is that Round-up kills it on contact, and then the grass grows back thicker and stronger.
Oct 13, 2012 @ 14:29:09
Out here in the Pacific Northwest, we do battle with blackberry bushes and morning glory vines with the same sort of futility you’re facing with the Bermuda grass. Both of those are things that can only be controlled with lots of back breaking labor (and skin tearing in the case of the blackberries) or Roundup. This year, though, I used something called “Blackberry and Brush Block” from Greenergy Inc. It’s an acid spray that’s a good bit more acidic than plain old vinegar. I bet that might work for you. You basically put it in a pump sprayer, spray it, watch stuff die, (then maybe go overkill and till and/or spray more to make sure stuff’s good and dead), then amend the new pH of the soil with dissolved lime in your sprayer until it’s back to plantable, and you’re pretty much good to go. I’m also going the step of covering my fallow beds with thick black plastic over the winter months this year. I learned this trick from my parents back when I lived in Indiana. Putting the plastic on after you pull the last of your stuff and clear the ground in the autumn (my parents would also put straight, uncomposted cow or horse manure in their beds in the autumn and till it in) and then leaving it on until planting time in the spring does something that basically kills all the seeds left in the soil. My parents hypothesized that the ground temperature was too high. I swear, they wouldn’t even have to weed at all in the beds that had been plasticked for the whole year, and if they didn’t do it the next year, weeding still really wasn’t much of an issue. If you till in uncomposted manure on the beds in the fall, the plastic also makes sure that it perfectly composts over the plasticked months.
Oct 13, 2012 @ 19:44:43
That’s a great idea! Thank you!