Modest Success in Controlling Wiregrass

In my last blog post, 5 Principles of Soil Health: In the Garden, I mentioned some success in my ongoing battle with wiregrass. If you've read my blog for any length of time, you've likely heard me rant, whine, rage, complain about this problem. It's "real" name is Bermuda grass.

Cynodon dactylon. Indeterminate. Spreads by seed and stolen.

It's a popular lawn and pasture grass in my part of the country. It's ubiquitous—there's nowhere that it isn't—because it's heat and drought resistant, plus tolerates heavy traffic and mowing (or grazing). But it has a dark side: it's highly invasive and quickly becomes an extremely tenacious weed. It has a number of other names, but earned this nickname because it's tough as wire when you're trying to pull it out.

It's also impossible to get rid of. Even the "experts" admit that and at some point the southern gardener simply has to accept it as a fact of life and learn to live with it. It's the reason why we tilled for so long in the garden. Its roots choke out everything and become a compacted barrier to the soil. Dan would till and I'd rake out as much as I could before planting, in hopes of getting a harvest before the wiregrass took over.

All of that is to preface my "success," meaning I have by no means conquered wiregrass, I've merely managed to keep it at bay for the past year in some parts of my garden. Let me show you.

These are the swale beds I made last winter.

They were double dug to create swales in our clay subsoil, filled with organic matter of all sizes (tree limbs to twigs) layered with topsoil, woodchips, and compost. The goal was to not only improve the soil in the beds, but to catch and retain rainwater in the swales. (Details here.)

Between the beds I laid down cardboard and paper feedbags covered thickly with wood chips.

Walking aisle between two beds.

The miracle is, almost a year later, they haven't been taken over by wiregrass! I usually expect the wiregrass to regain control by late summer or early autumn.

So what's different here than in other parts of my garden? I know from years of experience that mulch alone will not keep wiregrass at bay.

Wiregrass happily growing up through a thick layer of woodchips.

Case in point - my asparagus bed. Actually, I gave up on asparagus several years ago. I kept having to relocate it because of wiregrass, and finally gave up. I covered the entire bed with a thick layer of woodchips and called it quits. But the asparagus was persistent and made a surprise showing this year. Trouble is, so did the wiregrass.

Asparagus on the left, competing with wiregrass &
blackberry vines. On the right, a walking aisle with
cardboard tucked under the border plus woodchips.

So what do these areas have in common? Firstly, there was a lot of trampling while double digging. Not much survived that. When the soil was dug and set aside, I removed all traces of wiregrass stems and stolens. Third, I didn't mulch the aisles with only leaves or chips; I put down a barrier - in my case cardboard and then a thick layer of mulch. These are the areas that have remained wiregrass free so far.

What I'm going to have to address for continued success is the main pathways down the length of the garden.

One of two large aisles. The black pipe is
for greywater drainage when we need it.

The main aisles get mowed but also can become overgrown quickly. The edges between these and the mulched aisles is where wiregrass reintroduces itself. It's those edges where the wiregrass sneaks back in.

Wiregrass creeping into a heavily mulched area between two beds.

I've got my winter's gardening project cut out for me. I hope to make two more swale beds, plus cover the main aisles with heavy cardboard and chip mulch. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate!

Is this a permanent solution? No! It will require diligent maintenance to stay on top of it. But after so many years of feeling like I'm fighting a losing battle, any reprieve is very welcome.

Modest Success in Controlling Wiregrass © Nov 2019

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Mulch Days

While I was on blog break last month, I was busy mulching the garden. Our summers can be  hot and dry, so it's imperative to preserve as much moisture in the soil as possible. We had quite a few rainy evenings toward the end of June, so with the soil moist, it was the perfect time to mulch.

Most years I seem to run out of mulch before I run out of garden. This summer, I made a commitment to myself to get the entire garden mulched. That has meant using whatever mulch materials I can get my hands on. Here's my rundown on mulching materials for the hot, muggy, no-tellin'-when-it's-gonna-rain South. I've listed a few things I avoid at the end of the post.

Dried Leaves

Dried leaves mulching corn.

Dried leaves are my old standby, mostly because we have a lot of them! They do make a good mulch, but they aren't perfect.

Pros:

• plentiful (if you have deciduous trees)
• a good way to recycle them
• decompose quickly (build soil quickly)
• not as ugly as a few other things

Cons:

• have to be raked and hauled (time consuming)
• usually full of acorns, pecans, etc (which sprout and grow)
• also usually full of sticks
• can harbor fire (and other biting) ants
• usually needs a 2nd layer later in the season
• doesn't deter wiregrass

Summary: Dried leaves have been my primary mulch for a long time. They are the traditional earth mulch and build beautiful soil in the forests! Because we have lots of trees, they are plentiful here and using the leaves as mulch is certainly better than stuffing them in plastic bags to be thrown away.

To simplify the two-part process of raking/hauling and mulching, we've taken to doing the raking in the fall and winter and storing them in our future laundry water recycling bed.

Convenient for leaf storage.

Paper Feed or Seed Bags

Paper feed bags mulching aisles between rows of okra.

I showed you how I was using these to mulch aisles in my "What's Growing in the Garden" post last month. Like everything else, they have their good points and bad.

Pros:

• excellent way to recycle them
• if plentiful, can cover an area quickly
• last the entire summer 
• smothers grasses 
• help conserve other mulches like wood chips if not plentiful

Cons:

• can blow away in a strong wind (have to be weighted)
• needs a covering layer of fine mulch
• not good for mulching small areas, such as between plants
• can be hard to find. Many feedbags are either plastic or plastic lined
• far from aesthetic!

Summary: I like these for mulching aisles. They go down first and then the plants are mulched with dried leaves or wood chips. The top layer of mulch helps hold them down and hide them.

Wood Chips

Wood chips mulching beans with feed bags in the aisles. They
are deepest around the plants, with a light layer over the bags.

If you've watched the Back To Eden video, then you may think wood chips are the perfect mulch. Maybe that's true in some parts of the country, but in other parts it has both good points and bad.

Pros:

• can be readily available for free
• slow to decompose
• attractive

Cons:

• if you can't find them for free, they are expensive to buy
• slow to decompose
• harbor fire ants and black widow spiders
• doesn't deter wiregrass

Summary: Wait a minute. Did I put "slow to decompose" under both pros and cons? Yes I did. I like that they last an entire gardening season (or longer), but if the soil must be worked at the end of the season they are in the way. I usually rake them into the aisles until I need to use them for mulch again. Wiregrass growing in wood chips is particularly annoying, and if it isn't removed it will continue to grow until it covers and consumes the wood chips. At the end of the season I rake them into a pile so I can pull the wiregrass. This is why I like first putting down a layer of feed bags or ...

Cardboard

Cardboard between rows of tomatoes

Pros:

• readily available (usually)
• slow to decompose
• can quickly cover a large area
• smothers grasses 
• earthworm friendly (used in compost worm beds) 
• help conserve other mulches like wood chips if not plentiful 

Cons

• have to remove tape, labels, and staples
• can't fit them around individual plants
• can blow away in a strong wind, must be weighted
• not aesthetic 
• needs a top layer of mulch to cover
• flaps can create slits for weeds to grow through

Summary: I really like cardboard for covering walkways or large areas, because cardboard smothers well and helps me conserve my other mulching materials. Large corrugated cardboard boxes works best. I don't use cardboard with glossy color pictures on the box. Most stores are willing to give it away, but sometimes they have contracts with a company that collects and hauls off their boxes.

Straw

Wheat straw mulching tomatoes.

I don't often use straw, because I don't have a free source for it. But I had some leftover after we used it as bedding when hauling goats. So it made its way into the garden as mulch.

Pros:

• easy to handle and work with
• quick to mulch with
• not usually free, but can be cheap

Cons:

• can contain seeds which introduce more weeds
• doesn't deter wiregrass
• price has been going up and can be expensive to buy from a garden center.

Summary: I first used straw for mulch when I had rabbits. In winter I'd stuff their hutches with straw, which would fall out the wire cage bottom along with their manure. What I learned, however, is that all the grain seed is rarely removed. I inadvertently introduced oat grass all over my garden and had a heck of a time getting rid of that!

Newspaper

I admit I haven't used newspaper in a long time, because I don't have a free source for it. Most of our newspaper is saved for fire starting.

Pros

• decomposes quickly
• good way to recycle it
• can be readily available for free

Cons

• must be sorted to remove glossy ads
• requires a lot to get a good thick layer 
• needs less fine mulch materials for a covering layer

Summary: Newspaper works best in a thick layer. A couple of sheets decompose quickly in moisture which means it doesn't keep weeds down for long.

Living Mulch

This photo of clover as living mulch was taken last year.

AKA ground cover, I call it living mulch if it's growing in garden beds and aisles.

Pros:

• builds the soil
• aesthetic 
• can be used as green manure after harvest

Cons:

• have to buy seed every year
• not always dense enough suppress weeds
• has to be timed properly so that ground cover and crop grow together and weed seeds don't get a head start and dominate 
• seasonal, i.e. grows either during warm or cool weather
• hard to maintain in perennial beds. For example, my chicory bed is mulched with violets, but I've had blackberry and honeysuckle vines coming up there.

Summary: I love the idea of living mulch but have had mixed success. If it grows densely, like in the above photo of my melon bed last year, then it works well. If the seed doesn't germinate well, then I only get a sparse covering which isn't much help as mulch. Timing is important too, and that's something I'm still learning. If the seed isn't planted at the right time it can either interfere with crop seed growth, or can be overtaken by weeds first. I think it's best use is with field crops where the area is too large to mulch, but I'm still negotiating a learning curve with that.

My biggest mulch mistake...

... was using landscape cloth. It was expensive to buy and time-consuming to put down. Then, even with a good thick layer of wood chips the wiregrass grew right on up through it. And if that wasn't bad enough, the wiregrass secured the cloth to the ground! It was impossible to remove. Dan finally put the tiller to it to chop it up, but four years later I'm still picking up bits of the stuff. You can read all about that fiasco in this post, but needless to say I do not recommend landscape cloth!

Plastic is another one I don't recommend. I know commercial organic growers use it, but it IMO it has more counts against than pluses to outweigh them.

• It's a petroleum product
• It doesn't decompose, it deteriorates
• Must be discarded when replaced (not good repurposing material)
• It doesn't breathe so when it heats up, I can only imagine that it kills every soil organism beneath it. 
• Rain can't penetrate it so
• can't renew soil moisture
• where does a gullywasher go when the ground can't absorb it???

So that's the rundown on my experience with mulch. Now it's your turn. What's your favorite way to mulch? Any lessons learned? Any tips for the rest of us?

Mulch Days © July 2018 by Leigh 

at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

Fall Garden 2017

I always feel like I'm behind the power curve when it comes to the fall garden. Our state cooperative extension says July and August are the months to plant fall crops, but July is too hot and August too busy with picking and preserving, so it seems that I'm usually doing my fall planting in September at the earliest. The garden has always been neglected during harvest months, however, so there is usually quite a bit of preliminary work to do before I can plant.

I started with my no-show Swiss chard bed. I tried several plantings of chard this summer, but without success. I used my broadfork to loosen the soil to pull out the wiregrass.

Broadfork for loosening soil for wiregrass removal.

I like using my broadfork for this, because it's quieter and less disruptive than the tiller. It doesn't go quite as deep as the running wiregrass roots, but I'm able to loosen and pull out a lot of it.

I planted sugar beets, lettuce, and radishes here.
The popcorn just behind it will be ready soon too.

Just above that (to the left in the above photo) are my sweet potatoes.

Sweet potato vines look good, don't they?
I'll harvest these some time next month.

And above that is our one raised bed where I grew multiplier onions last winter. As an experiment to try and kill the wiregrass, I covered it all summer with a tarp. This worked quite well and the soil didn't require much work.

Broccoli, Savoy cabbages, and collards.

The plants came from the feed store. I never can resist a pretty display of packaged garden plants. The sprinkler pipe is hooked up to one of our rainwater overflow tanks.

Dan added a 2nd, 300-gal rain tank to catch the
  overflow from our large rainwater catchment tank.

After the plants were in, I seeded the rest of the bed with white Dutch clover. The clover will be a living mulch this winter.

Early this spring I did my first experiment with clover in the garden as living mulch. You may recall that I put in a swale at the top of the garden on one side and pulled out three wheelbarrow loads of wiregrass in the process. I'd noticed that wire grass (Bermudagrass, actually) prefers full sun and doesn't grow well in other plants' shade. I wanted to see how well a living mulch would work to keep the wiregrass at bay.

Clover, wiregrass, and cushaw vines.

It worked fairly well, except that Bermuda is a warm weather grass while clover is a cool weather legume. When the clover went dormant for the summer, the wiregrass took advantage. The clover is coming back in patches now, but wiregrass dominates whatever area its in, so I don't expect the clover to push it back.

Cushaw winter squash.

In the midst of the clover and wiregrass are cushaw winter squash. They were planted late so I won't get as many as I'd like, but each one is large, and they are great keepers. I use cushaw instead of pumpkin for pumpkin pie and other pumpkin goodies.

I also cleaned out the hoop house. After I let last year's winter veggies go to seed for collecting, I did all my summer planting outside, so the hoop house has been neglected all summer. There was a lot of unwanted growth there that had to be pulled.

Still under shade cloth, but all tidied up! We talked about moving
the hoop house to the other side of the house closer to the kitchen,
but that will have to wait. Work on the barn takes priority.

That unwanted growth included wiregrass, of course. (And yes, I have watched Back To Eden and no, mulch does not deter wiregrass because it's indeterminate. I pulled out one runner that measured almost nine feet! That's why mulch doesn't deter it.)

I did make one exciting discovery in there. Do you remember that I planted garlic bulbils in one of the hoop house beds last year? Well, they made it!

Baby garlic plants, planted about a year ago.

They started well and then this poor little box became so overgrown with weeds that I gave up hope for the baby garlic plants. But even after a summer of neglect, they made it!

Speaking of garlic, I also turned one of this summer's green bean rows into a garlic bed. The green beans were where I made my double-dug swale rows, so little preparation was required there, except that they had sunken a bit so I added finished compost from the chicken-compost piles.

First garlic poking up.

The second double-dug row is for multiplier onions this year. I like the multiplier onions because they do so much better for me than globe onions. Plus, they reproduce themselves so I don't have to buy onion sets every year!

One last photo - this year's winter wheat.

We actually got this planted at the end of August, which was perfect! It's spotty but doing well.

I'm still harvesting okra, tomatoes, and an occasional cucumber. Still to plant: turnips, carrots, beets, parsnips, kale, mustard greens, and more salad greens. At least I've gotten quite a bit in before October. 👏 For me that's pretty good.

How about you? Are you working on your garden too?

Fall Garden 2017 © September 2017 by

Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

The Garden in Early May

Last month's abundant rain pretty much kept me out of the garden because the ground was too soft. With a stretch of nice days I've finally gotten a start on my spring planting. So far I've planted watermelon, okra, summer squash, green beans, and amaranth. I waited to plant my tomato seedlings because we got another heavy rain last Thursday. Being house-started, I was afraid they were still too tender to take such a beating.

Tomato seedlings, right before moving outdoors to harden off.

Since the newly planted spring garden still looks like bare ground, all I have to show you is the finishings-up of the winter garden. Once that's done, I'll have room to plant more.  So let's start with the hoop house.

It's a jungle in there!

Most of my salad greens are bolting, even with the shade cloth, so I'm just waiting to collect the seed. For example -

Bloomsdale spinach flowering.

Claytonia (Miner's lettuce) in bloom.

I also have arugula, corn salad, kale, mizuna, and lettuce that I want to save seed from. In particular, I want to make a note of the lettuce I planted last November, because even though it's starting to send up flower stalks, it hasn't turned bitter yet. Amazing!

Lollo Bionda lettuce peeking out from amongst chickweed.

It's surrounded by volunteer chickweed, which I allowed to grow because it's both culinary and medicinal. I use it for salad greens, to dry for herbal salves, to feed as fresh greens for the chickens and ducks, to chop up for the goats, and as a living mulch.

Another living mulch area has been my multiplier onion bed.

Multiplier onions with volunteer vetch.

Lots of volunteer vetch appeared, which I left because it's a nitrogen fixer, has pretty little purple flowers, keeps other things (that I don't want) from growing, and can be cut back, dried, and added to the goats' hay pile.

Here's another such bed.

Chicory, violets, and a few multiplier onions that I missed last year.

The violets make a beautiful living mulch. I do pull a few "weeds" from these beds, but also, I seem to have less problems with wire grass where there is a dense ground cover. This observation is why I planted clover in the area below my new swale. I cleared out three wheelbarrow loads of wire grass from that little plot and really don't want it coming back! Mulch doesn't deter it, but it tends to show up less where a thick ground cover shades the soil.

So far so good! Except for a bit too much henbit, the clover has come up very well with wire grass mostly around the edges of the clover plot. I turned it under in two places plant watermelons.

Here's one of them with four watermelon seedlings I started indoors.

I plant only one variety of melon every spring, but I change the varieties from year to year. That means our variety is annual, we aren't overrun with melons, and I don't have to worry about cross-pollination!

On the other side of the hoop house I have a row of Savoy cabbages.

Also some radishes blooming.

Purple plum radish flowers

I especially like this variety and want to save lots of seed.

So now I have to wait again for things to dry out a bit; then I can get back into the garden and finish planting.

Your turn. Anybody else getting their hands in the dirt?

The Garden in Early May © May 2017 by

Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

Garden Swales

Until last summer we hadn't had any trouble keeping the garden watered. Between regular rainfall, mulch, and rainwater irrigation as needed, we've done okay. Last summer though, was the hottest and driest we've had since we moved here. Daily temperatures averaged upper-90s to 100°F (37°C) from May through September. In July I took my soil's temperature; it was 94°F (34°C)! What can grow in that!

Photo taken last July to record soil temperature. The little
rain we got seemed to evaporate right out of the ground.

Once the rain tanks were empty, most of the garden went into survival mode and stopped producing. It was worrisome and I can't help but wonder if this summer will be the same. So my garden project this month has been to put in some swales.

I dug down to the clay subsoil, a ditch about knee deep and two
to three shovel-widths wide. It's as long as our garden beds, 16'.

I'm guessing most of you know what swales are; they are ditches dug along the contour of the land for the purpose of catching and holding rain runoff. I'm putting my first one at the top of the garden.

Filling with rotting logs, stalks, and corn cobs 

The next step was to fill it with material that would help retain moisture. I'm using old rotting logs previously used as garden terrace retainers, plus things which will get water logged easily but take too long in the compost pile: corn cobs and stalks from sunflowers, corn, and Jerusalem artichokes, bark from Dan's sawmill projects.

Pine bark and wood chip mulch on top

I topped it off with the wood chip mulch I've been raking up from last summer's bean and cantaloupe bed.

While raking up the mulch I extracted three wheelbarrow
loads of my beloved wiregrass. (I'm being facetious, folks!)

The soil which was removed becomes a berm which also helps with water retention. I removed as many wiregrass roots as I could, relocated the earthworms, replanted the dug up daffodil bulbs, and planted the whole thing with Dutch clover seed from the feed store.

Berm somewhat leveled.

Clover seed is beginning to sprout!

Our garden is three, 16-foot beds wide (plus walk paths) so I'm planning to get at least two more built, also at the top of the garden. We're also going to decrease the size of the kitchen and canning garden by at least half. Our first year here we planned out a 80-foot by 60-foot garden based on Dick Raymond's "Eat 'N Store Garden" from The Joy of Gardening. While that size garden worked well for Dick Raymond and his fancy-schmancy top-of-the-line Troybilt tiller, it hasn't worked well for us and our particular gardening challenges.

Don't get me wrong, we learned a lot from that book, but what I'm saying here is what I've been saying all along - there are no one-size-fits-all solutions to gardening and homesteading. We must adapt to our particular soil, landscape, climate, and weather patterns.

The challenge is new experiences that push the boundaries of "normal," such as our unusually hot and dry summer last year. Other year's we've gotten too much rain. We humans tend to plan for "typical," but it's the extremes that we really need to prepare for. Without the experience of it, however, who's to know how to prepare?

Anyway, no matter what the summer brings, my swales will certainly help.

Parting shot:

Daffodils!

Garden Swales © Feb. 2017 by Leigh

at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

What's Hoopening in the Garden

The hoop house is hoopening. Ha ha, pretty corny, I know. Dan thinks I don't have a corny bone in my body, but we just showed him, didn't we? 😉  Actually, he's right. I'm too analytical to be corny.

My fall garden should have been planted last August and September but with no rain and daily temperatures still hovering near 100°F (37.7°C) I didn't want to risk it. Once the rains in November softened the soil, I started working on soil preparation. Weather permitting, I've been working on the garden and pastures ever since. Growth is slower this time of year, but at least I've got seeds in the ground. A few things are starting to come up:

Garlic. I planted carrots here too, but they have yet to germinate.

Multiplier onions are beginning to come up too. I'm trying
them this winter because last summer was too hot and dry.

Also I have turnip and collard seed in the ground, but like the carrots they have yet to make a showing. Most of the action is in the hoop house. There isn't much to harvest at the moment, except for a few baby greens leaves for salad.

Kale with some volunteer chickweed.

Bloomsdale spinach

Claytonia (miners lettuce)

Radishes aren't ready to harvest yet but they're coming along.

I'm also getting Jerusalem artichokes from the artichoke bed.

I feed these to the goats and we like them lactofermented.

These weren't terribly prolific due to lack of rain last summer, but at least they survived.

More planting in the hoop house:

Garlic bulbils I collected last summer...

... are now baby garlic plants.

Weather permitting there is plenty to do.

This is last summer's green bean and cantaloupe bed.

It has a 6-inch layer of wood chips with wiregrass growing through.

Whenever I blog about my wiregrass problems, someone mentions the "Back To Eden" film in the comments. I always mulch as heavily as I can, but last summer was the first time I had enough wood chips to mulch large sections of the garden. Because wiregrass indeterminate (keeps on growing like a vine) it grows right up through thick mulch or into a raised bed and keeps on going. I've pulled strands of wiregrass that measure five feet and more. Every so many inches it sets down more roots and thus entrenches itself everywhere. It grows the same way underground and can strangle out anything else growing there.

A messy mass of wiregrass roots strangling this poor strawberry plant

Soil prep in those previously mulched areas involves raking the wood chips back and then digging out as much of the wiregrass as I'm able. It's got me thinking that the wood chips created more work instead of making things easier.

First section done. Wood chip mulch is raked back up against
the Jerusalem artichokes to be reused and the wiregrass dug out.

Why not just continue to add mulch? Because seeds need to come into contact with soil to grow. They won't grow in pure mulch. I already have about six inches of mulch down; the more I add the farther we are from the soil.

In the house we just finished the last of the tomatoes I picked before first freeze. I have a few peppers left which I'd better chop and pop into the freezer. Also, my lone hope sweet potato is coming along.

No leaves yet but it's growing roots.
And oops, I see it needs more water.

Seed catalogs are arriving daily, so I'll hit those during this bout of frigid, icy weather. Those catalogs, a cozy fire, and a cup of something warm to drink make a great combination.

So what gardening activity is going on in your part of the world?

What's Hoopening in the Garden © Jan 2017

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/