Best weed killer for pernicious grass

Hi

hope everyone is well.

I have a nightmare grass variety weaving its way through tulip and other spring bulbs and taking over ! Can someone recommend a good weed killer that will get rid ? I’m on a budget .

also, will the weed killer affect the bulbs or new seedlings planted ?

thanks

 

Hi,

How big an area are you talking about ?

Generally would suggest hand pulling whatever the type of grass it is, as thats the safest way.

Using a Glyphosate weedkiller, eg Roundup, can be handpainted or sprayed onto the grass and any that touches the soil become inactive, so no harm to your bulbs.

However using it where you have seedlings you would have to be very careful !

 

It’s about 8 meteres. Not huge , but the problem is the grass has intricately woven its roots , blades and itself through the leaves of crocus, tulips, lilies, hyacinths, alliums , Muscari and anemones . So , when I pull it out I end up pulling out bulbs & leaves .
I brought this from Tesco today. Let me know what you think. Hope it’s okay as it cost a fiver ! That might as well be £500 when your out of work

 

It will kill every thing.
Hand weeding as Ricky suggests is the only way.
Personally I think you need to leave things for now then when all the bulbs die down completely dig every thing out and replant.

 

Pluck it out wherever you find it. I may be dull but at one point the growth will slow and you won't see it anymore. That's when you dump woodchips or anti-weed-fabric on it and let it die for sure. Bulbs can fight their way through loooots of wood chips but the grass will have a really hard time when it is already weakened.

Don't use chemical killers. Most of the time they do more harm than good.

 

It won't you know! There's no glyphosate in it, so if it's based on geranium oil, like the stuff they're selling over here, it's totally useless. If it's couch grass that Shaneoak is battling, then pulling the top growth off certainly won't get rid of it either. As for wood chip, or any other mulch
+1 for waiting 'til the bulbs' leaves have died down, then digging deeply, taking out as much root as humanly possible, possibly putting a physical barrier in the soil round the bed and replanting the bulbs.
Good luck for the work situation, @Shaneoak!

 

Right ok, never tried geranium oil, but any way what I mean is it won't just work on the weeds, it will affect the bulbs as well.
I've just read the box of Weedol I picked up a while back and it says it only kills annual weeds.
Sounds like that ain't much use then.

 

Seems Roundup is now in a transition moving away from a Gylphosate based one.
Looking online quiet a few places are only selling the 1ltr spray bottles in that new formulation but some of the larger bottles still seem to be Glyphosate.


The larger concentrate bottles are a lot dearer, perhaps try other places to see if they have some of the older stock of the spray bottles.
Also being sold of Ebay for £7.99 as the Gylphosate type, but you need to check with the seller.

Use a paint brush to apply it and so avoid it affecting the other plants.
Sounds a laborious job but at least it should get down and kill its roots.

Be interesting to see a picture of your problem .

 

Think I will be stocking up with some glyphosate.

 

Couch grass, it sounds like. It's an absolute @#*%!

Hand pulling is hard, but the only way unless you want to kill everything. My advice would be mulch with compost repeatedly over the year until the surface soil is really loose and friable. Then the couch roots pull out much more easily without snapping so much. Any piece of root (rhizome) left behind only grows again.

 

"over the years"?
I can't imagine anyone would want to wait that long.

@pete had the right idea. Don't use hard chemicals but wait for the bulbs to retract, then grab a pitchfork, loosen up the soil and pull everything out that sticks to it. After that you can put wood chips on top so you see whenever something claws its way out that doesn't belong there.

 

Over the gardening year – singular! Still, it's always a bit of fun to wilfully misquote.

Couch grass outcompetes everything in compacted soil; generally the more easily the soil breaks up, the less its roots can hold on. If the soil has a tendency to compact, like my own clay loam, then the addition of compost (humus) and lime (or gypsum) will alleviate the compaction and give you a better chance of pulling out the couch roots intact, including when using a fork.

Bark chips (properly prepared) break down gradually and also add to the humus.

 

Thanks for the replies . Ok, so, it’s in agreement that the weed killer I brought is useless and do more harm than good ? I’ll return it ,
I’ll take a picture of the grass later . Yes, I’ll have to do it manually.

 

Okay, so,this is the grass. It has these long bullet shaped white roots too, that weave through the soil far and wide entangled in the roots of other plants!

 

That looks a really thick infestation, must have been going on for a long time ?

Think it all depends on what plants you already have in there for summer ?

Hand weeding the safest, but a long job and might be best left until most of the bulbs have flowered so you can readily replant them if they come up with the grass roots.

Using Glyphosate now will be a diffucult job to avoid catching any of the bulbs foliage, rather than spraying, pour some into a container and use a 1/2" paint brush and apply to the crown of each grass, you do not have to cover all its surface for it to be effective.