How To Deal With The Vicious Wheatgrass Weed

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Elegant villain - wheatgrass weed

This villain got me. To deal effectively with him, you need to know him by sight. We are talking about an interesting representative of the herbal kingdom - wheatgrass. It has a slender stem, gracefully curved long leaves, sometimes casually thrown back. Large expanses overgrown with wheatgrass, over which a free wind walks, are impressive.

It inhabits wheatgrass in meadows, fields, among bushes and even in forests. But the favorite place where luxurious specimens grow is, of course, our gardens.

It is unlikely that any of the farmers will remember him with a kind word. A weed is an aggressor, a conqueror of garden spaces, a sinister, and that's all. But in fact, he is just very actively fighting for his survival, using a completely modern method for this - forcing out other residents, in this case gardeners, from the inhabited areas.

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The main conquering activity goes underground: from each bush, strong white "laces" of horizontal rhizomes quickly crawl in all directions. Pulling on such a "lace", you can pull out meter-long pieces of rhizome from the loose soil. Since there are a lot of such rhizomes, long and short, and there are a lot of branches from them, the total length of the rhizome in one plant can reach 15 meters! The apical bud of the elongated rhizome takes a vertical position and gives rise to a new aerial shoot. Shoots of the following orders are formed from the lateral buds of the rhizome.

The bulk of rhizomes - about 90% - likes to be located at a depth of 5-12 cm. On well-cultivated soils, individual shoots can lie at a depth of 18 cm. Wheatgrass rhizomes are short-lived and live for 12-13 months.

Wheatgrass blooms in June-July. In August-September, up to 10-20 thousand seeds can ripen on one plant. They germinate in the same year, a couple of weeks after the fall. And non-germinated seeds remain viable for up to four years. The growth of rhizomes goes on until late autumn.

A dense network of rhizomes, having occupied the best nutrient layer in the soil, does not give any opportunity to grow in these places for other, more tasty and useful plants. The weakest and most "intelligent" plants move away from the wheatgrass. But there are those who are not inferior to him, forcing him to bypass them. Probably, many have noticed that wheatgrass tries to stay away from potatoes, tomatoes, garlic, parsley, celery.

Unfortunately, in most cases you have to fight this aggressor. Precisely to fight, because he does not give up and resists desperately. So, if you try to "weed" it, tearing the stems out of the ground, then on the rhizome remaining in the ground, all dormant buds immediately awaken, which would not have sprouted if the stem were intact. Buds grow especially actively and amicably on small pieces of rhizomes, much more actively than on large pieces or the whole plant. If you leave a couple of such pieces in it during soil cultivation, then soon the thickets of wheatgrass will turn green in this place.

On this ability to wake up the sleeping buds, we will deceive the wheatgrass: we will specially chop all the wheatgrass in the soil with a shovel into smaller pieces - a bale-bale to a depth of 15 cm. Then we will wait a couple of weeks until the pieces intensively germinate and gain strength. And we will deal with them in several ways.

Method 1. Spray the emerald thickets with a roundup solution - 10 ml per liter of water. (Oh, how cruel it is! This is not a struggle, but extermination). In ten days everything will perish. Although he is a sinister, it's still a pity.

Method 2. We will regularly, once every 7-10 days, mow the grown greens. Rhizomes, not receiving nutrition, will not grow, they will begin to deplete and by the end of the season they will cease to exist.

Method 3. Before the onset of winter, shallowly shovel the ground with thickets of wheatgrass, trying to lay it upside down. In winter, emaciated rhizomes will freeze. The pieces of rhizomes that survived in a small amount in spring can be removed with a pitchfork.

Method 4. Dig up the area with thickets so that the rhizomes are sealed as deep as possible into the ground. What will rise after that, and this will not be much, regularly chop off with a hoe until it dies.

The dead rhizomes left in the ground will become organic fertilizer after decomposition, because they contain a lot of organic matter. Many years ago, when developing a plot, I put wheatgrass rhizomes into a separate compost heap, sprinkling the layers with chicken droppings. The result is a very loose nutritious compost, despite the fact that wheatgrass rhizomes release something harmful to other plants during growth.

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Wheatgrass grown in bushes such as gooseberries is difficult to remove. Here you can recommend this method of getting rid of: to achieve depletion of the rhizome by regularly cutting off wheatgrass with scissors.

The literature recommends this method: lubricate the leaves and stems of wheatgrass with a brush or cotton swab dipped in a roundup solution (10 ml per 100 ml of water). However, my practice has shown that this method is unsafe for the surrounding plants: either roundup vapors act on them, or rain spray reflected from leaves with roundup. In any case, it is impossible to cut off wheatgrass growing in the bush, because it grows even faster. It's easier to watch closely so that he doesn't crawl into someone else's territory.

Wheatgrass is harmful on the site not only because of its predatory inclinations, but also because a wireworm likes to settle on it, with which it is even more difficult to fight, and there is more harm from it than from wheatgrass.

If the war with wheatgrass does not end in our favor, then we will try to get the maximum benefit from his presence. For example, the thickets of wheatgrass under the apple trees can be left as turf. You just need to regularly mow the greens, not letting them grow. Leave the cut greens right there in place - this will be fertilizer for the apple tree and at the same time mulch. It is especially good to mow with a lawn mower - it will turn out to be a pretty lawn for a while. And wheatgrass will gradually dry up by itself, because he cannot tolerate violence against his freedom-loving nature for a long time.

Wheatgrass rhizomes contain many useful things: 11% protein, 40% carbohydrates, fats, mucus, carotene, vitamin C, organic acids. After washing, they can be boiled and fed to livestock. Once I saw how gypsies cooked wheatgrass soup from greens. For myself.

Fresh young roots with a sweetish taste can be added to salads and soups. In Siberia, delicious nutritious bread is baked from flour made from dried wheatgrass rhizomes. During the blockade, we baked cakes from this flour, cooked porridge, jelly.

Those who wish can now try to make a casserole: wash 150 g of rhizomes, boil in salted water, grind with a blender, mix with a beaten egg, pour into a hot, oiled frying pan.