Couch grass

[ideasguy]

Found this article today:
http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles1004/couchgrasscontrol.asp

Anybody tried this method of eliminating this thug?
It is my biggest single problem in the garden.

[Pixydish]

I don't think we have 'couch' grass here, but we have our share of invasive runners. A tip that might work if you are using chemical control around other plants that are desireable is to use a small paintbrush to brush the chemical onto only the plants you want to kill. This avoids overspray, although it is very time consuming.

[ideasguy]

You  are very fortunate not to have this. No doubt nature has provided  a suitable replacement in your region.

I dont use any weed killers on my garden.

Personally, I dig the couch grass up. My soil is very easy to dig, so I loosen the soil with a "junior" digging fork with 4 sharp 9ins prongs and tease as much of the roots out as I can. Its almost therapeudic to tease out those long runners.
Thinking about it, isnt it funny how you become attached to your tools? I love that old digging fork.

When a plant becomes too heavily invaded its time for division.

The RHS solution is good, if you are prepared to clear the bed of plants. It would take an awful lot of patience to treat the bed selectively, trying to paint weeds and not paint your precious plants.

[greenfinger]

There exists as we all know a weed that pushes good gardening people to the abyss of despair. Once upon a time I saw a poor woman nearly commit suicide because she had made the mistake to take a present of her friend in the form of a perennial invisibly cohabitated with a very young bindweed. BINDWEED!! It growed, twisted, intermingled with its whole environment and the woman took her spade and she spitted and spitted herself a lumbago in search of the end of the roots. To say it with the words of an illustrious gardener somewhere in Eire: she became attached to her tool, with that difference she didn't find it funny at all and her husband still less. A part of the garden began to get the aspect of Flanders Fields in WWI. It became an idée fixe for the poor woman, la pauvre femme. And digging, digging...
She has never reached the depth of 6 meters (18 ft). My mother has empirically established the fact on a building site: 6 meters root (vertical!) and no end in sight.
So when we get this love in our paradise, call in the bulldozers and the army.
Or plant a stick near the young plant, it will thankfully use it to make its climb in society, and when it has reached the peak you paint it nicely with a product based on glyphosate. It is bio-degradable.

[Pixydish]

Hmm. I posted a reply to George and it appears it did not come through. The mysteries of the internet.
Bindweed I know quite well, as well as glyphosate. Sadly, and innocently I assure you, when I first moved up here 20 years or so ago I was a totally novice gardener and thought that this horrible bindweed was a lovely flowering native vine. I introduced it to my yard, if you can believe it!!! It didn't take me long to learn how very, very wrong I was.
I understand the pain of the woman attached to her tool. My nemesis is english ivy. Well, also the himalayan blackberry and english holly. All of these are extremely invasive in this climate, not giving another thought to our very wet winters which scare other plants away. Our property was totally overgrown with these three when we moved in 5 years ago. I have used the paintbrush technique to great effect. Of course, these are not grasses with their many blades of leaves.
I wonder if one could expose the roots of a portion of couch grass, paint the glyphosate onto the roots, and thereby kill a large portion of the plant. Painstaking, but it might work.

[greenfinger]

It could be interesting to do the trial of rootpainting and see what happens. I thought it had to absorbed via the leaves of the weed, at least that's what I always read and how I used it until now. I suggest we start a new school for painters and take as example the one of Rubens. Or do we prefer the impressionists?

[Pixydish]

I've got a product called 'Roundup' that I use, which is biodegradable, but I'm not sure it's glyphosate based. It would be interesting to try it on roots during the active growth season to see what happens. I'm thinking I would relay my 'Impressions' to you.

[greenfinger]

Yes, that's the right one: Roundup. We can buy and use it here in Belgium too. Would it  be dangerous, ecologically or in another sense, Europ would aready have forbidden it. It's glyphosate based. Results are good.