Weed Control With Cut Grass

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

The grass kills the weeds

Perhaps there is not a single summer resident or gardener who, in his practice, would not be faced with the need to master a new piece of land, completely overgrown with mighty grass, or with the desire to get rid of such malicious weeds as wheatgrass, willow, bindweed and others. However, often, even after applying all the known methods of domesticating the land and spending a lot of effort and money, success does not come immediately and not always.

Finding somehow a bald patch of bare earth, formed at the place where there was a hay head, I began to observe it. It was interesting: when and how will it grow? And then I decided to apply this method - removing the grass cover and malicious weeds with the help of cut grass. He acted according to the popular way: "wedge-wedge". I was mowing wild-growing grass at the planned planting site. Then from the same and any other grass he formed bunches, then turned into chopped grass - mulch. Before using it, I dried it slightly or dried it in the sun.

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I spent my first experiment more than five years ago with potatoes, the tubers of which I planted on micro-mounds of fresh soil and immediately covered them with mulch prepared in advance. At the same time, every time, as soon as the tops rose above the mulch, I again covered each bush with a new layer of grass. And this continued until the grass mulch pillow, each time settling, reached a height of 25-30 cm. After that, the potatoes grew for two weeks, as usual, and during the harvest in late July, August and September, it turned out that the mass tubers from a bush was equal to 1.2, 2.1 and 2.7 kg, respectively, that is, reached up to 11-12 kg / m2. Almost a record!

Periodic digging of tubers during the growing season of potatoes showed that in the zone of the grass mulch cushion, completely entangled with roots, moisture is well retained, temperature fluctuations are smoothed out, oxygen and the necessary nutrition are constantly available, and worms and microorganisms are intensively acting in the zone of sod and mulch, transforming turf and grass in fertilizer. By the time of the last digging, only the remnants of almost completely rotted material remained from the sod and mulching grass.

It should be noted that the agricultural method I applied did not require digging, loosening the soil, and irrigation and weeding were not required either. In addition, as it turned out after harvesting and leveling the remaining land and rotted grass residues, there was no turf under them. After further simple digging of this piece of land, it was already possible to successfully grow any garden crops on it in the future.

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I did the second experiment later. And it was caused by the need to combat weeds - wheatgrass, desolation and bindweed. This time I decided to tidy up a small bed with dimensions of 1.8x1.1 m, adjacent on three sides to the grassy edge of the neighbor's plot. It is from there that all these weeds have gone.

As before, I cut the grass from this bed. On one half of it, I again poured micro-hills of garden soil - there were four of them. It all took one bucket of good soil. And I planted sprouted potato tubers there. I covered the second half of the garden bed, as is recommended in the literature, with pieces of roofing material. To mulch the plantings, I again used exactly the same chopped grass as in the first experiment, and applied it six times in a month and a half, until the mounds acquired the same height as in the first case.

During this entire period, weeds did not appear on the garden bed, and the potatoes grew as usual. At the same time, the tops of the potatoes were always illuminated by the sun, and the weeds covered with mulch remained without light below, their development was suppressed because of this.

And again, after opening the bed, which I did by the time of harvesting the tubers, it turned out that only rotten or semi-rotten remnants remained from the lower part of the mulch and the upper half of the sod. About a month after harvesting the potatoes and aging under the roofing material of the second half of the garden, all the mulch and all the sod turned into compost. I quietly dug it up and planted winter garlic there.

Later it turned out that the harvest of garlic on that half of the garden, where potatoes used to grow, was one and a half times higher than the harvest obtained from another garden with roofing felt, where the garlic obviously did not have enough food. If we also take into account the potato yield up to 9 kg / m? from the first half of the bed, the suppression of wheatgrass, ditching and bindweed with mulch turned out to be a very effective and promising way to control malicious weeds. In addition, although they appeared later, but only on the half of the garden bed that was covered with roofing felt, and even then by chance, rarely and only along the edges.

And now let us imagine that for the same purposes, according to the available recommendations, for the beds, the usual means and agricultural techniques would be used. In the first case: the grass was mowed, all the sod was removed with a shovel, imported field land (up to 30 kg / m2) was introduced in its place, manure (up to 10 kg / m2) and mineral fertilizers (up to 70 g / m2) were introduced.

And also it would be necessary to still take up the selection of roots and rhizomes of malicious weeds. At the same time, on a plot of land measuring, for example, 200 m?, To be cultivated, it would be necessary to purchase, deliver and scatter up to 6 tons of soil, 2 tons of manure and 14 kg of mineral fertilizers, which costs a lot of money, and would also require huge manual labor.

In the second case, moreover, at least 50 liters of Roundup would be required for such an area. It would have to be sprayed, and then also wait until its effect ends. Moreover, both in one and in the second case, we would have no guarantees of complete success, since even a small surviving piece of weed can very quickly grow in breadth and re-fill the treated area. The use of a not very complicated agricultural technique - the suppression of grassy land and malicious weeds with mulch grass, requires little labor and costs free, except for your labor of regularly mowing the grass and introducing it to the garden bed. But the harvest, and quite high, can be harvested at the end of the first season.

In conclusion, I note that the method of cultivating the earth with the help of mulch allows gardeners to grow vegetables on a wide variety of problematic land, including those clogged with foreign inclusions (metal, stone, glass, etc.). In addition, if you add pine or spruce cones, or coniferous sawdust with bark to the mulch, then due to the presence of resin-gum and phytoncides in them, you can protect the planting from many pests. In case of a shortage of mulch, you can add chopped tops, shredded paper and other organic matter in a small dose.