[julietmaria]

last summer on my newly taken over allotment I covered various patches of grass, weeds etc with cardboard, fresh horse manure and then the heavy duty weed suppressant material - the one that lets rain through but is thick.  It is pretty well pegged down. 

I was planning on growing some courgettes, cucumbers, pumpkins, squash, sweetcorn through holes in the plastic this year and then was going to start on the no dig regime in the autumn whereby I remove the weed suppressant material,  I cover with a couple of inches of compost or well rotted manure and grow into that next year.  However on peeking beneath the black weed membrane there seems to be quite a few couch grass plants taking hold and looking nice and green??   I thought this was supposed to kill them?  Any ideas?  Do you think it will be dead after another 6 months of covering or am  I doing something wrong?


 

[Azazello]

To cut a long story short, the only reliable way I've found of dealing with couch grass is to dig it up. You could also kill it with Roundup and then dig it up.

Once you've dug it up, do your best to keep on top of it, as it will come back, sooner or later!

It's an occupational hazard of allotment gardening!

[TheWhiteRabbit]

I've got couch growing under paving slabs...it's tenacious stuff indeed! I hate it 

[Headgardener22]

Did you dig it out first? Horse manure, etc. will have fed it nicely and encouraged it. I made my couch grass situation worse one year when I added a load of well rotted cow manure which I found was infested with the stuff but only after I'd buried it one spit down.

The solutions to couch grass seem to be dig it out by hand or weed kill it. I choose the former because when I took over my allotment it had been weedkilled and rotavated to the point where there was a hard pan 9 inches down, no worms and no goodness in the soil. Four years of compost and digging have returned the soil to some sort of structure with loads of worms but I have to dig out the couch grass all the time.

Better than the gym I say.

[compostqueen]

The black woven sheet mulch does work but it's a long term thing so you have to be patient

Hoiking out couch and then sizzling it on the bonfire is very satisfying 

[Weston grower]

When you take on an allotment one of the first things you need is a tattoo on your forehead that reads 'You have to dig out couchgrass'.  Remember to have it written back to front so that when you look in the mirror it reminds you!! 

Seriously - I've seen lots of new allotmenteers try all sorts of ways of dealing with couch. They want a quick/easy fix so that they can get on with the enjoyable stuff. Its a first and hard lesson they learn. There are some things that you either have to put a lot of effort into or alternatively wait a long time. I dug my couch out - too many barrow loads to count. I still get the odd bit but I'm on top of it. 

Happy digging, WG

[pigguns]

I had a whole plot full when I took it on in April last year- due to speed I dug out the couch only where I planted through the black plastic (cut a big cross and dig about with a trowel) and filled the pit left with compost before putting the courg/sweetcorns or pumpkins in, it worked fine. 

[Salmo]

However on peeking beneath the black weed membrane there seems to be quite a few couch grass plants taking hold and looking nice and green?? 

If there are green leaves on the couch there must be light getting through the cover.

I have been to my shed and held a piece of woven membrane with blue lines over my face. I could see through it.

Probably you need to use good old fashioned thick black polythene sheet.

[beesrus]

Needs to be dug out. There's no easy fix unless one goes down the chemical route. I dug out all mine including the shaken top grass over the first 12 months, whilst growing veg on the cleared areas, and composted it in a separate covered pile. It took two and a half years for it to break down and all that was left was a couple of buckets of big couch roots and the odd dock root that were burnt. Makes fantastic fertile compost. No dig needs a good weeding first.

[gobs]

All these things with the underground runners tend to run to the other end of the supressant and shoot up there.

[compostqueen]

They do indeed, the bu**ers      They have evolved to survive 

[julietmaria]

Thanks for all the replies.  It looks like I am in for the long haul then.    I will try and plant some squashes, courgettes, sweetcorn and pumpkins in holes through the weed supressant in a couple of the beds I have covered,  and then in the autumn when I have some more time pull off the black plastic pull out or glyphosate the couch grass that is there and then start again with the cardboard and manure/compost and weed suppressant material and hopefully that might work.   And maybe the others, I will either just leave as they are and see if time will help to kill it  - or if I have time - weed out couch and start again with cardboard/compost etc.   

[compostqueen]

I had a huge plot so I could afford to have swathes of it covered over for a long period of time. I found it great for getting rid of bramble and rampant rasps which had populated the entire plot, which had been abandoned for donkeys years.  They soon gave up the ghost and just came out with no effort at all. It takes a while and you just have to be patient.  If you have plenty more plot you can get started on that and leave the piece under black to do its thing.  You will always have couch somewhere but it rears its ugly head and you can either hoik it out, following it back as far as possible and getting it out, or glyphos it while it's growing strongly

I still keep using weed suppressant and have had another patch covered up for an age, where I want to establish an asparagus bed. The soil underneath woven black sheet mulch will be kept in good condition as it allows rain water through, so the soil underneath will be friable when you do come to use it