How can you all leave me to wander in the darkness? Doesn't ANYONE have any brilliant advice about getting rid of nutgrass? Isn't there some magic pill I could take that would solve my problem?

I spent an hour digging nutgrass on Friday night, another hour this morning, and then an hour and a half this evening. All in the same spots -- every time, I thought I had it all, but I swear I'd look back two minutes later and there was a new sprout in a place I had just cleared.

Should I just give up and have a garden of nutgrass? I can't even mulch that bed, because I have to keep digging up the mulch to get to the nutgrass that's coming through it!

-- Beth (garden@xeney.com), April 17, 1999

Answers

Don't give up -- there is hope! We have kept at it this year, pulling every blade of nutgrass every seven to 14 days and it seems to be working. We're seeing less and less come back. And given that it's been an extremely wet year, it is particularly encouraging to see that the nutgrass appears to be losing. In one tiny bed, we put down that weed-barrier material under the mulch and it's really doing the trick. But we just can't see realistically trying to put that all over our huge back bed. So we keep pulling and pulling. And it's only taken us three years of nutgrass war to get to this point.

-- Lisa (prine@cooperindustries.com), July 27, 1999.

I always wonder if you could drown it with some sort of ground cover or portulacas or something. But I've been too lazy to try so far.

-- gwen (gwenz@ev1.net), February 28, 2000.

I'm not going to get my hopes up or anything, but I have noticed that the nutgrass is not back in the west bed so far this year. It had already returned by this time last year, but so far, nary a sprout. There's some in other parts of the yard, the parts I haven't done anything with so far. (Remember that a year and a half ago, the yard was really nothing but nutgrass.)

You may rest assured that I'll keep you posted.

And Gwen, I've read that nutgrass won't thrive in shade -- it won't die, but it won't spread very well, either. And it's not a great competitor, meaning that a more aggressive plant can choke it out. I'm just going to plant every square inch of this yard until the nutgrass gives up and moves next door.

Hah. Why do I post my plans for dealing with nutgrass on this forum? They never succeed, and then I'm just embarrassed. I think maybe the nutgrass is reading this. It knows what I'm thinking.

-- Beth (beth@xeney.com), March 09, 2000.

Beth's Nutgrass, if you're reading this... GO TO HELL!

-- gwen (gwenz@ev1.net), March 09, 2000.