Kitchen Garden Forum

I don't often get depressed when agitating my vegetable patch, but today I did. I was clearing some ground on which to site a compost bin to house my burgeoning collection of leaves. This involves turning over the ground and, with each flipped over sod, having to get down and pull out twitch (couch) roots. Progress was painfully slow. I then looked behind me and saw acres of the damn stuff, all of which will have to be cleared using a fork. (Or is it still possible to kill the stuff with weedkiller?) I then looked right to the back of the plot, where I have spend about 10 hours hacking down brambles (which went up a treat last night when I set fire to them). Although I know I will have to prise out the bramble roots prior to planting, at least you don't get quite so many of them to the square foot as you do with twitch roots. I would therefore rather dig out brambles than twitch. What's your preference?

Dear Barry, brambles have got to be the easiest to get rid of, it's just the amount you can get cleared in a couple of hours, that gives you that feel good factor.
With twitch or bindweed, you can spend hours bending down picking the stuff out, and it doesn't look any different to the eye, even if you know you have done a good job.
And by the way my allotment was far worse than yours when i took it over.

Brambles any day

My system would be to cut all the tops off then wait until growth reappears next spring and use weedkiller such as glyphosate on everything. You will know within two weeks if a further application is necessary. If you choose to meticulously clear part for early sowings next year but be aware that there is certain to be a crop of annual weeds and maybe other perennials will appear then,so be prepared for a lot of time to be spent hand weeding to reveal the emerging crop. If you can raise plants rather than sow directly it is easier to manage the inital stage.
In my last garden I could never entirely eliminate either twitch or bindweed and I could not afford to miss cropping for a season while I cleaned it.
Allan

Allan wrote:My system would be to cut all the tops off then wait until growth reappears next spring and use weedkiller such as glyphosate on everything. You will know within two weeks if a further application is necessary.

Interesting one Allan. I have had a persistent patch of (couch?) grass on my allotment, that I've put off dealing with over the Autumn. In the end, I applied Glyphosphate and it all went yellow & dry. I assumed the Glyphosphate would penetrate the entire plant, preventing further growth next year.

I congratulated myself and a few weeks later, went to remove the dry tops & dig the soil over. However it was very tough to clear and there were of course loads of roots in the soil.

I recently inspected the cleared patch and saw grass seedlings sprouting up everywhere! Is the trick really to do it in the Spring? Or to trim first then nuke the emerging sprouts? I've been reluctant to use any weedkiller on the plot and wanted to avoid it near the main growing season.


Colin

Sooner have the brambles..but I didn't

I have to agree with Allan....my second plot was couch grass infested and two doses of Glyphosate sorted it out ..

That was two years ago and I haven't had to resort to such drastic measures again.

Brambles any day, the roots are not as tough as you might think.

Couch generally succumbs to two or three glyphosate applications, rotovating deals with the remaining roots, couch does not seem to like frequent rotovation.