Kitchen Garden Forum

Hi Hortiman'
If you use Roundup properly you will only have to use it once on any given piece of land. I have yet to check up on Glyphos but some of the preparations made with Salts of Glyphosate are for home gardeners and are considerable diluted from the original roundup but somehow the price does not reflect that! Really it is a case of getting value for money.
When I cleared my home plot over 30 years ago I used Pigs and they gorged and snouted out masses of Couch Grass but all they did was actually spread it.
I did not have the benefit of Roundup but I used, to my dismay, the weed killer of the day Paraquat which did a very good job. The Pork was magnificent but I wasted a year finding out that Pigs will clear land but they will not get rid of Couch Grass. They managed to do a magnificent job otherwise getting rid if roots and what they didn't eat was easily removed and burnt.
If you use your rotavator to clear CG then you will never be free of it.
JB.

As a lad I once ploughed a 10 Acre field constantly all summer to get rid of couch, no Roundup or anything similar then

Wonderful if you have got the time and absolutely nothing else to do with your time.
The idea is to grow something not simply plough all year. I bet there was plenty there the following year.
JB.

No, it worked it was a very dry summer & ended up like the sahara

Hi Gloworm,
Well I'm very happy for you but would you actually recomend the method?
JB.

No, of course now there are easier methods. We were wheelbarrow farmers then compared with todays industrial farming. You wouldn't believe how dairy farming has declined in Cheshire in the last 10 yrs, in my immediate locality 20 have gone out of business, sold their buildings for houses, & their land in bit pieces for town horse keepers. But one dairy farmer in particular has taken over most of the land either by purchase or renting, & is booming in an industrial way. Sad.

we used a spring tine harrow, covers the ground quicker than a plough, it pulls the cooch to the surface so the roots dry in the sun, repeat as soon as any green shows and you eventually exhaust the remaining roots.

definitely my favourite - does an afternoon's sowing in half an hour! then my Jalo wheeled hoe for turning the backache of hoing into forearm ache!

I once grew an acre of carrots using a combined row seeder with a hoe attachment, had to thin by hand though !

If you use your rotavator to clear CG then you will never be free of it.
JB.

Sorry, not true, I have done it

Hi Howard,
I regret that I'm afraid that I do not believe you.
Vastly reduced maybe but eradicated never!
JB.

Im inclined to agree with you Hortiman. I remember an old saying that goes ' one years seeds is seven years weeds!' which refers to the random emergience of our general weed population to survive droughts etc. keep weeding and removing and eventually the population will be under control

Thought this topic had been here recently.

viewtopic.php?t=3442

Without all the arguments about couch grass and weedkillers.

Alan

Hi Vegman,
What has seeds got to do with it? When you put a rotavator over Couch Grass you give yourself thousands of minute cuttings that will all grow.
The chances of subsequent rotavations clearing all of those cuttings is zilch. If you then do it again and again the answer is still zilch. For every cutting that you leave on the surface to dry out and die there are probably 10 times more underground growing away. There are always Couch Grass roots that are far below the depth of the rotavator blades that will keep coming back. It is for this reason that I do not believe it is possible to clear a bed in this manner.
JB.

What happened to favourite tools? I just wanted to say I LOVE my new swoe hoe. If you happen to be a female gardener of shortish stature it's a delight to use (I believe there are two shaft lengths available). The best bit is the maneouverability - most satisfying to be able to hoe in little tight places where a Dutch hoe might be risky. I haven't decapitated a single garlic plant this spring