Any idea's on how to keep Creeping red fescue out of my rose and flower gardens? It seems to grow over under and around anything in its path excpet concretre walls 4 feet tall and 4 feet deep. I am getting tired of pulling it.
Roundup. put it on a sponge and dab it on with a rubber glove until you get it under control in the tight spots..spray it on in the open areas.
Another way to put roundup on selectively is to use a spray bottle of water with a little dishwashing detergent in it to spray on the leaves. This acts as an adjuvant to "wet" the entire surface. Then you can use an eyedropper to put roundup on the leaves you don't want. One drop will disperse all over that leaf because of the detergent's action. This also allows you to safely use much harsher herbicides.
Steveo wrote:
I have been using that new round up sprayer that you pull a handle to charge it. It has a foam spray setting on it that works good BUT you can't seem to stop it from coming in
NO matter how much I dig, chop, pull round up or put weed block in as a barrier, the fescue just keeps creeping over. I easily spend 3 hours a weekend pulling grass in my gardens which total maybe 150-200 sq ft.
Keep your beds edged, and if that doesn't work well, then install a root barrier like you would for bamboo. Ornamec (active ingredient fluziflop p-butyl) can be sprayed safely around the roses to kill the grass that has made it into the beds. It may take a couple of applications, but it works on even bermuda, aka, devil grass.
I thought I was installing a root barrier when I dug a 1 foot deep trench around the bed, lined it with weed block from Home Depot, back filled it with dirt, folded it over into the garden on top of the dirt, and laid native rocks to hold it in place. The creeping red fescue seems to grow right across and through the barrier. I can get the stuff on top, but the stuff that grows through the weed block is what's killing me. It grows a good distance befopre coming up, and it does not stop coming!
I believe it was Easy gardener weed block that Home depot had at the time.
Better Living through ROUNDUP. You have to leave the plant for a couple of weeks for the chemical to get to the root and kill it at the root.
Better living through 3" of bark mulch. Only the most hearty of plants can push up through 3" (final depth) of bark.
Better living through PREEN. Use a preemergent OUTSIDE of your shrub's drip line. THis will prevent germination.
I love roundup.
KB
GF loves RoundUp, but I find it is very hard to control. A cardboard shield is a minimum if you want to save your existing good plants.
Preen has been very helpful.
Bark mulch: 3" or more is needed ($$$$). That's because it works by cutting off the light to the weeds sprouting. But even hemlock/pine mix is running $29 per yard here in the Boston area. And that assumes that the supplier gives you a full yard. If you trust my measurments, they give you half measure. But they say, "We use a 1 yd scoop on the machine. So you got what you ordered."
For our rose garden, cocoa hulls have been very satisfactory. They keep the weeds down and don't decay from year to year. Expensive, yes. Smell, yummy!
I seem to have the same problem, though not with fescue. Pueblo CO is wet this year, and I have variety of grasses and other unwanted stuff in my rose garden. Considering that I work and go to school, I do not have the luxury of time to spend hours on end weeding between the roses. My question is: what do you think about combination of double the weed blocking fabric with about 2" of bark mulch on top of it? Will that do the weeds in? Would there be a danger to roses because of the possibility of overheating?
I have soaker hoses buried around the rose plants, they seem to do pretty good job watering without spraying on the plants. Would soaker hoses be a problem under the weed blocking fabric + 2" of mulch?
Thanks for any input on the subject - Maggie's Mom.
I used to follow the landscape fabric religion. But GF convinced me that plain old newspaper works as well. It's a lot cheaper and less bark mulch is needed. In fact newspaper (4 or 5 pages) doesn't allow any light through and weeds don't seem to come up through it. Now I'm thinking about how hard it will be to install it over the existing fabric.
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