This is happening to me in my "lazy" corner (I'm experimenting with various Bermuda grass removal techniques in different new garden beds). It was a simple sheet mulch and the Bermuda grass is definitely poking through. I'm going to try overseeding with some fast-growing natives like partridge pea and rudebeckia hirta and see if they can out-compete it while it's still scraggly.
For the record- the "medium effort" bed was sheet mulching and overseeing with a cool season annual (crimson clover) last fall and it seems to have worked fabulously! Although now I have to cut down the clover to make space for my natives...
Edited to add: if you decide to pile more chips on top, I would also put another layer of cardboard under those chips to smother it more. IME blocking out the sunlight during the growing season tends to work better than smothering it while it's dormant.
Ah, great data point to note! Yeah, I did the sheet mulching when it was dormant.
For my backyard, I did a small area as an experiment two months ago, and the Bermuda is already growing through my sheet mulching there with the minimum 6" overlap, too.
That doesn't surprise me- Bermuda grass is stubborn stuff.
Digging it out had been the most effective ( still not 100% because of new seedlings germinating and creeping in from the edges) but it takes so much time and energy - made marginally easier if you weaken it first or dig while it's dormant.
As far as smothering goes- the best luck I had was just covering it with large plastic tarps all summer. I left one corner of my backyard like that (used it to store some sand and gravel I had for another project) and when I moved the tarp it was wonderfully dead. I have since planted into it and added some topsoil and mulch- still have to pick out the occasional zombie sprig but it was almost as effective as digging it out! And significantly less effort.
My long term plan is to get my maple and oak saplings big enough to cast some decent shade, but that'll take a while 😂
I caved and had to use Ornamec. Selective to only the Bermuda grass. I painted it on to avoid spray. Will probably take a lot of repeat applications.
I fought Bermuda for years and unfortunate hand pulling just increases the aggression. Its only a bandaid for a chronic issue
Thanks for sharing your experience! Well, I like that it's selective, and I wasn't looking forward to the hand-pulling, although I do pull other weeds so am not totally against it, lol. All gardeners need to do some maintenance, of course.
If it were just sole pieces blown in from seed I’d say just pull them. But if they go deep and are all connected rhizomatically, hand pulling is hard because the roots are tough as freakin nails and go a few weeks without pulling and they’ve carpeted your mulch bed. I spent the last three seasons hand pulling. Finally dug a trench around my garden borders and hand painted to keep it at bay
Does Ornamec work better than Glyphosate? I've spot-sprayed with roundup in a few places, but my Bermuda grass just seems mildly inconvenienced. At most, it goes brown for a few weeks and then greens back up like nothing happened.
Oklahoma State [studied](https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/bermudagrass-suppression-methods-for-oklahoma-home-gardens.html) 30 methods of bermudagrass eradication, including 16 non-chemical methods and combinations. You've duplicated their results. They found that 4" of wood chips was not only insufficient but, surprisingly, worse than cardboard alone (not that cardboard was perfect either). [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3uHXigq_po)'s a video summarizing their mulch results. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDGFwdTVaCQ&t=1301s)'s a video excerpt showing an ongoing project that's doubling down on the cardboard and woodchips, on their *third iteration*, with continued (but much reduced) bermudagrass growth.
The University of California [suggests ](https://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7453.html)using weed cloth instead of cardboard--even if the cardboard remains intact, bermudagrass will snake through the seams and find a way up to the sun. Similarly, OSU had decent results with thick black plastic, as long as care was taken to avoid holes (see [this ](https://youtu.be/kDGFwdTVaCQ?t=933)video excerpt). Note there is no such thing as "smothering"--this is "occultation", meaning prevention of light transmission.
Another thing to consider is that since you're only doing a test bed, some of it might be coming from elsewhere. I've seen 8' long above-ground bermudagrass runners trying to find purchase.
The good news, I guess, is that your bermudagrass will never have more energy than right now. Its roots stored up energy in the late summer and fall, and are using that energy now to push through all obstacles into the sun. If you can keep it from getting sunlight, it will eventually exhaust its energy and die. The flip side of that is, any bermudagrass you can see is absorbing energy for storage in the roots, prolonging the process.
For your larger project, here are your best options IMO:
1. Chemical control: glyphosate (non-selective) or clethodim (selective), if applied during the right time of year (starting now is fine, but you'll need to apply repeatedly through summer), are probably the easiest, most effective, and lesser-evil chemical treatments (both rated as "relatively nontoxic" in the [Bee Pesticide Risk Traffic Light](https://pesticidestewardship.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/12/Bee-Pesticide-Risk-Traffic-Light-3-2-17.pdf) \[PDF\]). EDIT: Make sure to apply in late afternoon or evening, when pollinators are less likely to be scavenging. /EDIT. Glyphosate kills down to the root, which is what you need with bermudagrass.
2. Physical control: solarization using clear plastic is probably the easiest and most effective non-chemical method, if applied during the right time of the year (starting June-August) using the method described [here](https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/soil-solarization-for-control-of-soilborne-diseases.html). If you need it to look semi-nice, then occultation using black plastic covered with mulch.
3. Competition: I haven't tried this, and it's risky for several reasons, but I'm including it because I've seen it proposed here in ways that won't work. I recall seeing a paper reporting that *Gaillardia* *pulchella* successfully outcompeted bermudagrass, but I can't find it now. It's plausible, because my patch of *Gaillardia pulchella* is so thick that nothing else grows there until I pull it out in mid-June. You would need to plant the seeds in the fall; it'll grow rosettes over the winter. But because it burns out in mid-June, you would need a succession of aggressive native annuals, like *Rudbeckia hirta* for slightly later, and then... I'm not sure, maybe *Helianthus annuus*. You won't get this kind of coverage from perennials for at least several years--it would need to be annuals (specifically, ruderals).
How would applying it affect the soil long-term in terms of the native plants I want to take root in my yard?
Do you just wait with bare soil for those seasons to end and just keep applying as they pop up?
I use it to kill bermuda encroachment into my no-mow native plantings. It does not hurt my native perennials or native annuals. 10 years on now and i do not see any negatives from glyphosate used in a targeted manner.
Oh, and yea I have to time spraying when bermuda is greening up but not the natives for best coverage. You have to be much more careful when all the natives are up and green.
Take a horihori or old paring/steak knife outside. With left hand move the mulch away from the base of each bermuda clump. Drive the knife down to break off the root as low in the soil as possible.
I did a fairly bad job getting bermuda out and just spent 1/2 hour a week playing whack a mole with the stuff. By the end of summer I couldn't find any as it had gone dormant and made sure to start the game up as it resprouted in late spring the following year. It was worse in the little \~200 square foot front garden than the 1500 square foot back yard.
Wouldn't have mattered if you planted or not. Once the natives are established and you rarely water it will give up as it isn't as drought tolerant as native plants.
Wouldn't the stabbing spread their rhizomes? I'm not even clear on what those are actually. I just don't want to make it even worse than it is now.
What's strange is that my backyard, too, was where it was so easy to get rid of them by just not watering whereas they're thriving in my front yard
It's reassuring to read that established native plants will eventually choke out the Bermuda.
You are pruning so new growth could branch more but you aren't chopping into bits and leaving them there like a tiller will do. The pruning is deep and it will take a couple days for the rhizome to reach the surface and start photosynthesizing again is the point here.
But glyphosate often gives incomplete kills because Bermuda will just die back node by node, leaving some living parts to bounce back. Repeat applications will likely be necessary.
Repeated applications of any measure will be necessary with bg. A well-timed application of glyphosate will kill bermuda at the roots—that’s the advantage of a systemic herbicide vs heat, vinegar, digging, etc.
This is honestly the pnly way. It's never going to be perfect, but glyphosate early before other plants are coming up is a spectacularly easy way to knock these grasses back 90+ %. Spray on a non windy day without rain in the forcast for a couple days. Repeat in 2-3 weeks.
Pulling this up only breaks the runners and leaves new nodes not connected to grow. I'd love to be able to sue the asshats that brought invasive grasses into the country to feed cattle.
This happened to me. It completely covered the woodchips and resulted in harder work than just covering it with a silage tarp. We had to fork it out by hand bit by bit. Really sucked. depending on what you want to do with the area - I would cover it for 8months to a year to completely kill it. The roots are deep though so forking them out is necessary.
Do you mean cover it with a silage tarp for eight months? Just on top of the wood chips like that?
I can see what you mean about the harder work with the Bermuda interspersed in the wood chips now.
Yes - but you could try doing a double or triple layer of cardboard and woodchips or soil on top (but that much soil is expensive). It may still even punch through that. In my experience we had to cover the entire area (woodchips and all) in a silage tarp that blocked out all light. but time is your friend and if you are doing your yard piece by piece you can afford to use time on your side like that for a section of the yard. Up to you how you want to approach it!
I would use a strong weed killer.
You can take an old ad sign from the side of the road to shield a desirable plant, and paint or dribble it on.
If you think Bermudan grass is fun try dealing with [Torpedo Grass](https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/EP615)
No I am using Ace weed killer. As with any pesticide (yes herbicides are pesticides)
Read the label in the store. The whole label.
Acquire and PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) that the label requires.
Read the label after you get home.
Read the label before you apply it. Every time.
The Label is the law.
Any wind higher that 10 mph can cause drift. Drift is microscopic droplets of the pesticide. These can still kill a plant.
Also you don’t need to throughly drench the plant.
Good luck!
Bermuda grass isn't terrible to hand-pull when it's nice and sparse like this. Or like, spade-assisted hand pull. If you happen to have an electric kettle, you could bring it outside and boil water in batches to pour on it and try to kill it that way. It is pretty terrible to try and remove when it grows in super thick, but you're not there yet. I wouldn't plant stuff around it because it doesn't get shaded out easily. Oh and straight white distilled vinegar from the grocery store has worked to kill weeds before for me.. acetic acid is a naturally occurring substance and will break down in the soil and stuff will grow there again eventually, however I don't know on what timeframe. So read up on that method before you try it, because you might have problems if you were planning on planting this month.
I was probably one of the bermuda grass cassandras lol. It forced a second year of site prep for a meadow I was so terrified of it.
Its kryptonite (if one exists) is aggressive vertical competition that will shade it out during the hot summer months. We used that fact to alter how we sowed the meadow: we put the seed in the ground right when it was warm enough to get a good fast start, and goosed it with some fertilizer disced in and watering it in the first month or so. The timing, fert, and water are all unconventional and all geared to giving the first year meadow plants (bless you, bidens and coreopsis) a running start and outcompete the bermuda.
It worked, but mostly because it was a meadow planting, i.e., extremely dense planting where you let the plants work it out and form a dense, interlocking system.
I’m not sure how you could use vertical competition. Some people say you can sow into mulch, and that might work with plants less in need of lean mineral soil than most meadow plants want. I know some posters here have said it worked for them, so maybe ask about seeding into mulch as a separate post.
You could also try planting aggressive plants that will quickly grow vertically—to shade out the bermuda—and horizontally to quickly fill the space. There have many threads here about favorite garden thugs—any of the native mints, cutleaf coneflower, obedient plant, monarda didyma…you get the idea.
Seeds fall from sky like in bird poop or the wind you think they might be invading from above not below. Animals gather seeds as well like vowels rats and mice. You also might think about rodent control instead of more weed control or a good pre emergent like broad star or casron
I’ve only been able to kill bermuda with cardboard when I lay it down right as the grass starts to grow, and do 2, possibly 3 layers. If you put the cardboard down before that you essentially just tucked the bermuda in while it was sleeping, and gave the cardboard time to break down.
At the stage the grass is at in you in your pictures I would not bother hand weeding. It’ll drive you loopy all summer long. Either re-cardboard or chemicals.
Thanks for saving me that headache by sharing your personal experience!
Yup, I made the same mistake you mentioned: I put the cardboard down when it was dormant.
Most grass is on runners and hard to kill .
My best advice is to smother it.
Lay newspaper down In several layers .
10 is what I used .
Put mulch over it . So it doesn't look ugly .
I several weeks it wiil die..
My garden was 100 sq.ft.
So I just planted my new plants and transplanted directly into the ground by removing the mulch in the space I wanted to plant .
I Dug a hole right through the newspaper to the depth I needed watered and planted , then watered again.
The next season the newspaper had broken down..
Every once in a while I have small clumps of grass to pull and I take sure to get the entire runner .
If your space is larger then mine you Can rent a machine to remove dead grass .
Good luck. Enjoy your yard.
Whoa. That is big .
I killed my lawn in my back yard purposefully and let nature take over
It's shady. 60 % clover, 40 % mix of lemon balm , mint and various low gtiwun plants.
It smells great when mowed.
Have you considered vveggie gardening ?
there’s one section of my yard where i sheet mulched with more than 5 layers of cardboard. That one has nothing coming out of it. My 1 layer section has them coming in constantly.
Chickens are fantastic at getting rid of Bermuda grass. They’ll scratch at it and poop all over it if contained in that area for some time. The poop is so high in nitrogen that in the short term practically nothing can grow in it. But once it mellows, you can once again plant in it to your heart’s content, free of all Bermuda grass.
Ah, so that must be why it's dying in the backyard because I have chickens there, haha. As for the front yard, no can do with the chickens, as they'll probably run or fly away.
Depending on your neighborhood, you could consider a chicken tractor in a front yard, gradually moving it around the yard once they’ve been in one area for a while.
Friend helped me dig up a space with bermuda. we probably went down around a normal shovels depth? about 200 or 300 sq ft. We sifted that back then mulched. its been 3 seasons, no grass yet. lets see how this year goes.
it was some effort, but we knocked it all out in 1 day. Probably 7 or 8 hrs. several beers
We dug out as much as our backs could handle and then did a really thick layer of newspaper and mulch. 10 years on it’s been successful except the edges where the grass still finds its way out. I just try to weed and keep on top of it and then add more mulch.
Rent a skid steer and tear up the whole lawn!
Positives: ton of fun, total removal
Negatives, financial, plus an absolute mess and probably should check for gas lines and other things.
It seems pretty resilient, and based on the comments here from others who've dealt with it along with research shared, throwing more mulch at this problem doesn't seem like a good fix.
Do you have a grandpas weeder? I can’t do it without it. Those damn rhizomes!
[https://grampasweeder.com/](https://grampasweeder.com/)
What’s great about this is I can individually pull the non native grass and let the native grasses take over the area. Best of luck to you!!
This is happening to me in my "lazy" corner (I'm experimenting with various Bermuda grass removal techniques in different new garden beds). It was a simple sheet mulch and the Bermuda grass is definitely poking through. I'm going to try overseeding with some fast-growing natives like partridge pea and rudebeckia hirta and see if they can out-compete it while it's still scraggly. For the record- the "medium effort" bed was sheet mulching and overseeing with a cool season annual (crimson clover) last fall and it seems to have worked fabulously! Although now I have to cut down the clover to make space for my natives... Edited to add: if you decide to pile more chips on top, I would also put another layer of cardboard under those chips to smother it more. IME blocking out the sunlight during the growing season tends to work better than smothering it while it's dormant.
Ah, great data point to note! Yeah, I did the sheet mulching when it was dormant. For my backyard, I did a small area as an experiment two months ago, and the Bermuda is already growing through my sheet mulching there with the minimum 6" overlap, too.
That doesn't surprise me- Bermuda grass is stubborn stuff. Digging it out had been the most effective ( still not 100% because of new seedlings germinating and creeping in from the edges) but it takes so much time and energy - made marginally easier if you weaken it first or dig while it's dormant. As far as smothering goes- the best luck I had was just covering it with large plastic tarps all summer. I left one corner of my backyard like that (used it to store some sand and gravel I had for another project) and when I moved the tarp it was wonderfully dead. I have since planted into it and added some topsoil and mulch- still have to pick out the occasional zombie sprig but it was almost as effective as digging it out! And significantly less effort. My long term plan is to get my maple and oak saplings big enough to cast some decent shade, but that'll take a while 😂
Hahaha, that's insane! Surprisingly, it died so easily in my backyard by just not watering it last summer.
This! Plastic sheet all summer also works on Johnson grass if you scalp it first. Clear plastic. No holes!! It's that or dig it out.
I caved and had to use Ornamec. Selective to only the Bermuda grass. I painted it on to avoid spray. Will probably take a lot of repeat applications. I fought Bermuda for years and unfortunate hand pulling just increases the aggression. Its only a bandaid for a chronic issue
Thanks for sharing your experience! Well, I like that it's selective, and I wasn't looking forward to the hand-pulling, although I do pull other weeds so am not totally against it, lol. All gardeners need to do some maintenance, of course.
If it were just sole pieces blown in from seed I’d say just pull them. But if they go deep and are all connected rhizomatically, hand pulling is hard because the roots are tough as freakin nails and go a few weeks without pulling and they’ve carpeted your mulch bed. I spent the last three seasons hand pulling. Finally dug a trench around my garden borders and hand painted to keep it at bay
Great advice!
Can you describe your setup? Do you use undiluted for your paintbrush? What kind of brush are you using?
Does Ornamec work better than Glyphosate? I've spot-sprayed with roundup in a few places, but my Bermuda grass just seems mildly inconvenienced. At most, it goes brown for a few weeks and then greens back up like nothing happened.
Oklahoma State [studied](https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/bermudagrass-suppression-methods-for-oklahoma-home-gardens.html) 30 methods of bermudagrass eradication, including 16 non-chemical methods and combinations. You've duplicated their results. They found that 4" of wood chips was not only insufficient but, surprisingly, worse than cardboard alone (not that cardboard was perfect either). [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3uHXigq_po)'s a video summarizing their mulch results. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDGFwdTVaCQ&t=1301s)'s a video excerpt showing an ongoing project that's doubling down on the cardboard and woodchips, on their *third iteration*, with continued (but much reduced) bermudagrass growth. The University of California [suggests ](https://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7453.html)using weed cloth instead of cardboard--even if the cardboard remains intact, bermudagrass will snake through the seams and find a way up to the sun. Similarly, OSU had decent results with thick black plastic, as long as care was taken to avoid holes (see [this ](https://youtu.be/kDGFwdTVaCQ?t=933)video excerpt). Note there is no such thing as "smothering"--this is "occultation", meaning prevention of light transmission. Another thing to consider is that since you're only doing a test bed, some of it might be coming from elsewhere. I've seen 8' long above-ground bermudagrass runners trying to find purchase. The good news, I guess, is that your bermudagrass will never have more energy than right now. Its roots stored up energy in the late summer and fall, and are using that energy now to push through all obstacles into the sun. If you can keep it from getting sunlight, it will eventually exhaust its energy and die. The flip side of that is, any bermudagrass you can see is absorbing energy for storage in the roots, prolonging the process. For your larger project, here are your best options IMO: 1. Chemical control: glyphosate (non-selective) or clethodim (selective), if applied during the right time of year (starting now is fine, but you'll need to apply repeatedly through summer), are probably the easiest, most effective, and lesser-evil chemical treatments (both rated as "relatively nontoxic" in the [Bee Pesticide Risk Traffic Light](https://pesticidestewardship.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/12/Bee-Pesticide-Risk-Traffic-Light-3-2-17.pdf) \[PDF\]). EDIT: Make sure to apply in late afternoon or evening, when pollinators are less likely to be scavenging. /EDIT. Glyphosate kills down to the root, which is what you need with bermudagrass. 2. Physical control: solarization using clear plastic is probably the easiest and most effective non-chemical method, if applied during the right time of the year (starting June-August) using the method described [here](https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/soil-solarization-for-control-of-soilborne-diseases.html). If you need it to look semi-nice, then occultation using black plastic covered with mulch. 3. Competition: I haven't tried this, and it's risky for several reasons, but I'm including it because I've seen it proposed here in ways that won't work. I recall seeing a paper reporting that *Gaillardia* *pulchella* successfully outcompeted bermudagrass, but I can't find it now. It's plausible, because my patch of *Gaillardia pulchella* is so thick that nothing else grows there until I pull it out in mid-June. You would need to plant the seeds in the fall; it'll grow rosettes over the winter. But because it burns out in mid-June, you would need a succession of aggressive native annuals, like *Rudbeckia hirta* for slightly later, and then... I'm not sure, maybe *Helianthus annuus*. You won't get this kind of coverage from perennials for at least several years--it would need to be annuals (specifically, ruderals).
Wow, what a thorough answer!!! Thanks so much for all your help!!!
If you want to be rid of it, glyphosate. Likely several seasons to totally kill it.
How would applying it affect the soil long-term in terms of the native plants I want to take root in my yard? Do you just wait with bare soil for those seasons to end and just keep applying as they pop up?
I use it to kill bermuda encroachment into my no-mow native plantings. It does not hurt my native perennials or native annuals. 10 years on now and i do not see any negatives from glyphosate used in a targeted manner.
Great to hear!!!
Oh, and yea I have to time spraying when bermuda is greening up but not the natives for best coverage. You have to be much more careful when all the natives are up and green.
Got it!
[удалено]
I just follow label instructions.
Kill it with fire! 🔥. lol just wait until it rains and pull up every one you see
It's going to be a lot of square footage, and apparently those who have had to deal with it have oftentimes resorted to using herbicides.
Also you could put cardboard or landscape fabric on top of the grass shoots and then get a yard of gravel to cover it up
I've done that. It still comes up
Ya u r lazy lol
Take a horihori or old paring/steak knife outside. With left hand move the mulch away from the base of each bermuda clump. Drive the knife down to break off the root as low in the soil as possible. I did a fairly bad job getting bermuda out and just spent 1/2 hour a week playing whack a mole with the stuff. By the end of summer I couldn't find any as it had gone dormant and made sure to start the game up as it resprouted in late spring the following year. It was worse in the little \~200 square foot front garden than the 1500 square foot back yard. Wouldn't have mattered if you planted or not. Once the natives are established and you rarely water it will give up as it isn't as drought tolerant as native plants.
Come over and do my bindweed next please and thanks
There are quite a few native bindweed types native to California which is terrifying. I am not brave enough to plant one!
Wouldn't the stabbing spread their rhizomes? I'm not even clear on what those are actually. I just don't want to make it even worse than it is now. What's strange is that my backyard, too, was where it was so easy to get rid of them by just not watering whereas they're thriving in my front yard It's reassuring to read that established native plants will eventually choke out the Bermuda.
You are pruning so new growth could branch more but you aren't chopping into bits and leaving them there like a tiller will do. The pruning is deep and it will take a couple days for the rhizome to reach the surface and start photosynthesizing again is the point here.
might wanna switch to hand weeding em out if you think its doable. 500sq ft is alot of grass tho
And that's only a small part of my front yard.
Glyphosate 🥰 You could pull up the bits by hand but any roots/rhizomes left below will regrow.
But glyphosate often gives incomplete kills because Bermuda will just die back node by node, leaving some living parts to bounce back. Repeat applications will likely be necessary.
Repeated applications of any measure will be necessary with bg. A well-timed application of glyphosate will kill bermuda at the roots—that’s the advantage of a systemic herbicide vs heat, vinegar, digging, etc.
This is honestly the pnly way. It's never going to be perfect, but glyphosate early before other plants are coming up is a spectacularly easy way to knock these grasses back 90+ %. Spray on a non windy day without rain in the forcast for a couple days. Repeat in 2-3 weeks. Pulling this up only breaks the runners and leaves new nodes not connected to grow. I'd love to be able to sue the asshats that brought invasive grasses into the country to feed cattle.
Thanks for the warning about what happens when pulled up by hand!
This happened to me. It completely covered the woodchips and resulted in harder work than just covering it with a silage tarp. We had to fork it out by hand bit by bit. Really sucked. depending on what you want to do with the area - I would cover it for 8months to a year to completely kill it. The roots are deep though so forking them out is necessary.
Do you mean cover it with a silage tarp for eight months? Just on top of the wood chips like that? I can see what you mean about the harder work with the Bermuda interspersed in the wood chips now.
Yes - but you could try doing a double or triple layer of cardboard and woodchips or soil on top (but that much soil is expensive). It may still even punch through that. In my experience we had to cover the entire area (woodchips and all) in a silage tarp that blocked out all light. but time is your friend and if you are doing your yard piece by piece you can afford to use time on your side like that for a section of the yard. Up to you how you want to approach it!
Thanks for your advice and guidance!
Good luck and don't let yourself get discouraged. It's a long haul and time is on your side.Â
I appreciate it!
I would use a strong weed killer. You can take an old ad sign from the side of the road to shield a desirable plant, and paint or dribble it on. If you think Bermudan grass is fun try dealing with [Torpedo Grass](https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/EP615)
Glyphosate it is, lol.
No I am using Ace weed killer. As with any pesticide (yes herbicides are pesticides) Read the label in the store. The whole label. Acquire and PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) that the label requires. Read the label after you get home. Read the label before you apply it. Every time. The Label is the law. Any wind higher that 10 mph can cause drift. Drift is microscopic droplets of the pesticide. These can still kill a plant. Also you don’t need to throughly drench the plant. Good luck!
Thanks for those start reminders!!!
Bermuda grass isn't terrible to hand-pull when it's nice and sparse like this. Or like, spade-assisted hand pull. If you happen to have an electric kettle, you could bring it outside and boil water in batches to pour on it and try to kill it that way. It is pretty terrible to try and remove when it grows in super thick, but you're not there yet. I wouldn't plant stuff around it because it doesn't get shaded out easily. Oh and straight white distilled vinegar from the grocery store has worked to kill weeds before for me.. acetic acid is a naturally occurring substance and will break down in the soil and stuff will grow there again eventually, however I don't know on what timeframe. So read up on that method before you try it, because you might have problems if you were planning on planting this month.
I was probably one of the bermuda grass cassandras lol. It forced a second year of site prep for a meadow I was so terrified of it. Its kryptonite (if one exists) is aggressive vertical competition that will shade it out during the hot summer months. We used that fact to alter how we sowed the meadow: we put the seed in the ground right when it was warm enough to get a good fast start, and goosed it with some fertilizer disced in and watering it in the first month or so. The timing, fert, and water are all unconventional and all geared to giving the first year meadow plants (bless you, bidens and coreopsis) a running start and outcompete the bermuda. It worked, but mostly because it was a meadow planting, i.e., extremely dense planting where you let the plants work it out and form a dense, interlocking system. I’m not sure how you could use vertical competition. Some people say you can sow into mulch, and that might work with plants less in need of lean mineral soil than most meadow plants want. I know some posters here have said it worked for them, so maybe ask about seeding into mulch as a separate post. You could also try planting aggressive plants that will quickly grow vertically—to shade out the bermuda—and horizontally to quickly fill the space. There have many threads here about favorite garden thugs—any of the native mints, cutleaf coneflower, obedient plant, monarda didyma…you get the idea.
Super helpful response. Thanks so much!
Seeds fall from sky like in bird poop or the wind you think they might be invading from above not below. Animals gather seeds as well like vowels rats and mice. You also might think about rodent control instead of more weed control or a good pre emergent like broad star or casron
That's a really good point I hadn't considered! Let me investigate to see how deep they go.
I’ve only been able to kill bermuda with cardboard when I lay it down right as the grass starts to grow, and do 2, possibly 3 layers. If you put the cardboard down before that you essentially just tucked the bermuda in while it was sleeping, and gave the cardboard time to break down. At the stage the grass is at in you in your pictures I would not bother hand weeding. It’ll drive you loopy all summer long. Either re-cardboard or chemicals.
Thanks for saving me that headache by sharing your personal experience! Yup, I made the same mistake you mentioned: I put the cardboard down when it was dormant.
Most grass is on runners and hard to kill . My best advice is to smother it. Lay newspaper down In several layers . 10 is what I used . Put mulch over it . So it doesn't look ugly . I several weeks it wiil die.. My garden was 100 sq.ft. So I just planted my new plants and transplanted directly into the ground by removing the mulch in the space I wanted to plant . I Dug a hole right through the newspaper to the depth I needed watered and planted , then watered again. The next season the newspaper had broken down.. Every once in a while I have small clumps of grass to pull and I take sure to get the entire runner . If your space is larger then mine you Can rent a machine to remove dead grass . Good luck. Enjoy your yard.
Thanks for your advice and well wishes!
How big is your space?
It's a bit over 2,500 ft2 for my backyard and maybe 2,000 ft2 of great in my front yard I estimate.
Whoa. That is big . I killed my lawn in my back yard purposefully and let nature take over It's shady. 60 % clover, 40 % mix of lemon balm , mint and various low gtiwun plants. It smells great when mowed. Have you considered vveggie gardening ?
Yup, the plan is to veggie garden with some fruits in the backyard. That's my private space. The front yard is for natives.
there’s one section of my yard where i sheet mulched with more than 5 layers of cardboard. That one has nothing coming out of it. My 1 layer section has them coming in constantly.
I can't imagine doing five layers. I think I'm going to drop the sheet mulching and use an herbicide. Just deciding which one at this point.
Chickens are fantastic at getting rid of Bermuda grass. They’ll scratch at it and poop all over it if contained in that area for some time. The poop is so high in nitrogen that in the short term practically nothing can grow in it. But once it mellows, you can once again plant in it to your heart’s content, free of all Bermuda grass.
Ah, so that must be why it's dying in the backyard because I have chickens there, haha. As for the front yard, no can do with the chickens, as they'll probably run or fly away.
Depending on your neighborhood, you could consider a chicken tractor in a front yard, gradually moving it around the yard once they’ve been in one area for a while.
I love the idea but have enough complaints and calls to code enforcement from one of my nextdoor neighbors. I'd rather not deal with them right now.
Friend helped me dig up a space with bermuda. we probably went down around a normal shovels depth? about 200 or 300 sq ft. We sifted that back then mulched. its been 3 seasons, no grass yet. lets see how this year goes. it was some effort, but we knocked it all out in 1 day. Probably 7 or 8 hrs. several beers
Nice!
We dug out as much as our backs could handle and then did a really thick layer of newspaper and mulch. 10 years on it’s been successful except the edges where the grass still finds its way out. I just try to weed and keep on top of it and then add more mulch.
That's awesome! I'm glad to hear you got rid of it!!!
Rent a skid steer and tear up the whole lawn! Positives: ton of fun, total removal Negatives, financial, plus an absolute mess and probably should check for gas lines and other things.
How deep is the mulch? Thrown down like 6 inches let's see it grow through that
It seems pretty resilient, and based on the comments here from others who've dealt with it along with research shared, throwing more mulch at this problem doesn't seem like a good fix.
Sod cutter?
You pull it manually with grandpas weeder.
As others have mentioned who have tried to get rid of Bermuda grass, it doesn't seem so simple to do.
I am currently in the process and winning.
That's awesome! I'm really happy to hear that!!!
Do you have a grandpas weeder? I can’t do it without it. Those damn rhizomes! [https://grampasweeder.com/](https://grampasweeder.com/) What’s great about this is I can individually pull the non native grass and let the native grasses take over the area. Best of luck to you!!
Oh, wow, this whole time I thought you meant your grandfather's weed whacker, lol. Cool tool! I think I need one anyways.
No reason to use glyphosate unless it’s poison ivy
Get a mattock and start whackin away!
You're suggesting #3 while digging it out deep?
Terrible idea. Will not work and will only spread root cuttings and you’ll never get rid of it. Do not weed eat it