Bermuda grass: an update

My war against the bermuda grass is proceeding nicely. As mentioned in a previous post, I solarized the yard late this summer, and since then things have been under control. A few spears of grass pop through the mulch each day, but I pull those out, and everything is good.

Well, we got some nice rain here in Austin a few weeks ago, and the advantage shifted to the bermuda grass. A ton of it popped up in some localized areas. The interesting thing is that it popped up in the areas that were not well solarized. The worst area, seen below, was hard to cover with plastic, because there was a dying red oak tree (you can see the stump) there. It makes me feel good that the areas with good solarizing did not experience a return of bermuda.

There are simply too many blades of grass to pull every one.

Time for solarizing round two. I'm using a black plastic this time, because it's what I happen to have in the shed. This should wipe out my biggest problem area.

The borders of my garden are also vulnerable to bermuda grass. The bermuda grass is really dense right up next to my garden, and so I'm seeing that it can easily spread into the my mulched garden area. That's not my land, so I'm not going to try and solarize that.

My solution is to define the border of the garden with rocks. Now it makes weeding a much simpler task. If I see bermuda on my side of the rocks, I'm pulling it. Building my rock border is going to take some time, because my rock supply (left over from previous owners of the house) is dwindling. Luckily my friend Bob has a ranch in Blanco, so I can slowly rebuild by supply with rocks I find when I visit out there.

My new rock border between my garden and the neighbor's small strip of abundant bermuda grass (I don't knock them for having the bermuda. Not everyone wants to wage a war on it like I do).