Todd wrote:
....
I have a lot of grass to kill in my garden over the
winter. How big a pile of leaves would I need
to use? Do I water them down to keep them from
blowing away? Will it kill the seeds too?

different species of grasses have different
abilities and reserves for surviving being
smothered. generally, those with larger roots
and stolons will be tougher to smother and may
take several years.

a few months through a winter when the plant
may be somewhat dormant anyways is unlikely to
accomplish much for the tougher sorts.

if you have fairly thin rooted grasses and
smaller plants then you may be able to smother
them, but i think it does take longer than a
few months. depends upon moisture, temps, worms,
pill bugs, fungi, etc.

it will not "kill" grass seeds, but it may
prevent them from sprouting long enough that
they can rot and/or be eaten by other critters.

i use overlapping chunks of cardboard or other
compostable papers and then pile the leaves on top.
wetting them down does keep them more in place,
but here i started with fairly wet leaves anyways
and the rains came. i don't care if they move
around anyways. about a foot thick.

getting rid of the grasses can be either
raked or dug up in chunks.

for an established garden i'll dig a fairly
deep hole and put the chunks of grasses and
roots down in the bottom (turning them root
side up). if there are a lot of seeds on the
surface i'll scrape them into the hole too and
then bury that all deeply enough that it is
hard for anything to regrow or sprout. absolutely
no need for weed killers or chemicals to prevent
seeds from sprouting.

mulch over the area will help prevent any stray
seeds from having an easy time growing, and those
that do sprout and grow will often be easier to
remove because they are growing in the mulch and
not in the dirt underneath if you can catch them
early enough.

do not use leaves sucked up by lawnmowers as
they often include weed seeds too. if you do have
this sort of material available you can hot compost
it to help reduce the seed count, but some species
are able to even survive that too... i don't hot
compost anything here at the moment. the worm
bins get things i harvest after i dry them out
completely and they don't regrow from that treatment
ever.


songbird