Rick wrote:
Hi,

I'm a novice who prefers doing almost anything besides pulling weeds
and
grass out of my mulch beds. The weeds aren't so bad since they are
sporatic
and I can easily pull them. At this point I'm more worried about the
grass
that keeps encroaching into the mulch beds.

I've been in this house for about a year. I added about 3 inches of
hardwood
mulch in the spring and plan to do this every year. It looked OK until
about
a month ago. In various places the grass is now getting into it. I
don't
have any sort of border between the mulch and grass. Should I be
adding more
mulch over the course of the year? If I bury the grass with more mulch
will
that kill it? As you know grass is very hard to pull since the roots
are so
thick.

Walking thourgh my neighborhood I see some houses that look better
than mine
and some worse. Some of the mulch beds have a channel cut on the
border,
about 3 inches wide and 3 inches deep. This seems to stay clean. Any
idea on
how they do that? What are some other ways? Chemicals? Any advice is
greatly
appreciated by myself and my aching back.


There are a couple of approaches you can take. But at the very least,
get an edger.

A good landscaper with a really big edger is probably the best thing if
the lawn hasn't been edged in some time. If you want to change the
position of the edges, that would be a good time to do it, too. They can
put in a deep, v-shaped edge for you to start with.

I would then pull-back any existing mulch, and lay down newspaper a few
layers thick all long the edge, and in any other gaps or places where
the grass has been encroaching. Cover that with the old mulch, and any
new mulch to bring it up to two or three inches. Just mulch isn't going
to stop the grass.

Then with your new edger, refresh the professional's edge at least every
second mowing.

Other approaches involve installing edging. Either something that goes
down deep enough to stop the runners, or tall enough that you can change
your beds to raised beds with more soil and mulch than the grass can
grow up through. (I'd also put down newspaper before filling it up.

One thing that's being hawked on TV alot here is installing a permanent
edge: concrete curbing. They can say this looks good until the cows come
home, but it still looks like too much to me.

--
Warren H.

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