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  • From: Lucky Pittman <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] grass in blueberries
  • Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 08:30:29 -0500

At 09:34 PM 10/19/2003 -0400, Ginda wrote:
Cleaned up the blueberry patch this weekend - wow was it overrun with grass. I've been pulling everything I could see in the spring and fall, and putting about 4 inches of shredded oak leaves on it each fall, but that doesn't seem to inhibit the grass at all. This fall I'm trying newspaper - at least three sheets deep, and then I'll put mulch in top of that, either shredded leaves, or peat moss, or a combination of them. (I have most of a bale of peat moss left over from when I first planted them, and maybe it's time to use it up.) I would have thought that the soil would be acid enough to inhibit grass by now, but I guess not. Has anyone had much luck keeping the grass down?

I've experienced the same problem. Not absolutely certain that I'm not bringing in massive amounts of crabgrass seed with some of the leaves I haul home from town to mulch with - a significant portion of them have been shredded & bagged, along with end-of-the-season grass clippings, which may contain seeds, as well.
My berries get a 4+ inch mulching of leaves in the fall - and again in early spring, if(and I usually do) I still have some bagged leaves lying around. You'd think that much mulch on a yearly basis would suppress weed/grass growth, but the crabgrass really comes on like gangbusters after the bearing season.
I'm also having some encroachment by Bermudagrass, which is going to necessitate some use of Roundup to keep it at bay.


Lucky Pittman
USDA Zone 6
Hopkinsville, KY





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