It gets 2-3 feet tall in summer and I’m trying to kill it before it spreads further. I have one large area covered with a tarp but there are other clumps popping up along my entire garden bed. 🙁
by 48151623-420
It gets 2-3 feet tall in summer and I’m trying to kill it before it spreads further. I have one large area covered with a tarp but there are other clumps popping up along my entire garden bed. 🙁
by 48151623-420
18 Comments
If you don’t know what it is how can you say it’s very invasive
It looks a lot like what popped up in my flower beds and yard from straw my husband had put down. Not sure tho. Mine has creeper roots that spread it everywhere pretty fast and any little bit left grows again.
Might be quackgrass, but hard to be sure without seeing a seedhead. Root system tracks, though.
https://preview.redd.it/08jmne22xrug1.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=8d2adc720655c516236caa85ee08f5f40d9ac4b1
ETA. Man, seems like big box stores get you every time. You avoid buying the fake natives, just get some soil, think you’re fine, but no…
is it quack grass? https://www.minnesotawildflowers.info/grass-sedge-rush/quackgrass
Use a hoe to clear it up. There should be much fewer shoots that come up in the future and you can hand pull them.
Another option is to till the weeds up with a hoe like previously and lay down a healthy amount of mulch. Use straw or pine needle mulch if this is a vegetable garden.
Sorry I realized I completely missed the question.
Looks similar to “Malay” grass I have in my garden in Thailand
Could be switch grass.
What I call wire-grass looks like that
Looks like reed canary grass to me, if so it is very invasive and should be removed.
Pic 1 has me thinking reed canary grass.
Likely from the straw you used.
you don’t need to identify it to kill it, unless I’m misunderstanding your post and you might want to keep it if it’s a native panicum or something
if you just want it gone regardless, at the very least get out there and mow on the shortest setting or weedwhack it down as soon as you can. digging it out would be preferable but lets be real, its a lot of work and you might not have time right now. but at least cut off the green leaves. what they’re doing right now is making food to make the whole plant stronger, and then the plant will use that strength to get bigger and send out runners, or however this type of grass propagates itself vegetatively.
cutting off the tops won’t kill it immediately. but the longer you leave it green and happy like this, the more work you’ll have cut out for you when you do have time to get out there with a shovel. if you cut it back frequently enough you have a good chance of killing it or at least weakening it severely so it isn’t spreading in the meantime. use a knife or scissors if you don’t own a mower. then when you have the time or energy, dig up whatever’s left. or use herbicides, but I feel like if you were cool with some chemical warfare, you would’ve done that already and not made a post needing help. you just gotta do something soon though, or you’ll really have your work cut out for you
+1 for quackgrass. I have it all over, been trying to eradicate it for two years now. Even with heavy sheet mulch it still finds a way. Just have to dig up every last rhizome.
More info here: [https://extension.umn.edu/weeds/quackgrass](https://extension.umn.edu/weeds/quackgrass)
If it is Reed Canary Grass (a couple pictures look REALLY similar to our infestation), know it’s a bitch to remove. We had luck with a very diligent program of:
* mowing then flame-weeding existing stands, followed by…
* sheet mulching with cardboard/paper and a ton of wood chips on top
* shading the whole area with new plantings (in our case, willow stakes)
* aggressively digging out any new sprouts under the plantings for the next ~2 years (look up “seed pressure”)
You can win, but you can’t let up for a moment. This stuff ITAH of the plant world.
EDIT: if it is quackgrass (not as familiar with that in our area), the same program outlined above can’t hurt for it, either.
My initial thought was RCG but whether it is or quack grass, I would consider it invasive. Use glyphosate (Round Up) to get rid of it. Make sure to wear gloves, closed toed shoes, and pants. And make sure to cover the whole plant, even a low percentage herbicide can effectively kill if you get good coverage.
dig it out with a fork, being careful not to break the roots, tease as much as you can out gently. once you have cleared it you will need to return regularly to get the last bits of roots that you missed. little and often, dont let it get as big as it did! good luck.
As others have said, either quackgrass or canary reed grass. I’ve lost a couple plants in my garden bed to this before I learned that it was a problem. The one good thing about this is that the blades grow tall early in the season so they’re easy to find right now.
I have this too. I thought it was Johnson grass but I could be wrong. There is also gama grass, switch grass and another that looks similar. Either way, it’s taking over one of my flower beds so I keep trying to dig it out.