permaculture

[Rain Tenaqiya <raincascadia@yahoo.com>]

I've mulched quack and other rhizomatous grasses successfully and 
unsuccessfully.  The main requirement is that you carefully observe and 
maintain the site for 2-3 years after treatment and densely plant the area 
with perennials that can establish quickly enough to keep the grass from 
re-colonizing.  If the patch is small, black plastic with no openings well 
overlapping the areas can work, but it has to stay on for a couple years 
since the roots have stored energy in them.  Otherwise, at least three sheets 
of cardboard, the larger the better (get them from an appliance store), 
overlapped at least 1.5 ft, covered with as thick a layer of organic matter 
as you can manage, planted with fast-growing and dense shade-producing plants 
(like comfrey, squash, etc.), preferably in multiple layers (a food forest!), 
should work, providing that you remove any grass that makes it through the 
mulch, at least monthly.  You want to exhaust all the energy stored in the 
roots, so the thicker the mulch,
 the better.  Letting grass get above the mulch for any period of time allows 
it to store more energy in its roots.
 
Digging out quackgrass is pretty much a waste of time except for small 
patches with weekly maintenance.  Same with use of chickens or other animals 
(although this can give you a slight edge in the race).
 
Have fun,
 
Rain
 
 
 
Message: 5
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 21:24:38 -0700
From: "Andy Fischer" <afischer@jeffnet.org>
Subject: [permaculture] sheet mulching Quackgrass
To: <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <NBEDLGMFHJIEBEEMDAOGAEOFCAAA.afischer@jeffnet.org>
Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="us-ascii"

Does anyone have experiences sheet mulching Quackgrass(Elytrigia 
repens)?
What does it take to get rid of some hefty patches of that plant?


                
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