How To Get Rid Of Gnarly Weeds (Without Spraying) 🚫 🌾

When I first created this corn and bean bed, I made a pretty big mistake and that's not accounting for the vigor of Bermudagrass. Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening, where it's my goal to help you grow a greener thumb and hopefully grow a browner thumb when it comes to dealing with Bermudagrass, which is a pretty gnarly weed here in Southern California. It's actually grown as a turf grass in a lot of areas. But for me, I don't want it. And I'm going to show you my strategy for getting rid of it. It's a multi-pronged strategy. This is one of the gnarliest weeds you'll deal with. So hopefully this helps. And if you have suggestions, of course, drop them down in the comments. But for now cultivate that Like button for dead Bermudagrass and let's get into the video. Just so we know what we're dealing with here, let's brush away this mulch and see if we can dig up a little bit of this Bermudagrass right here to look at the anatomy. Cause it really is a spectacular plant from the perspective of its resilience. So mulch is away. We can see that's where it's coming out of. That's where this whole piece is coming out of. But first of all, just doing this, that's really not going to do much. The reason why is because it's going to grow right back out of here. And also it can propagate itself in a couple other ways. But I'm going to try to get down here and dig this out to show you what's going on. This can go down pretty deep, but just for now, let's see if we can get out a tiny chunk of it at the very least, just so you can get a bit of a sense of how it operates. Cause it really is a gnarly weed. Okay. So you've got your roots, you've got your rhizome. So it's propagating via rhizome, number one, underground, creeping along. Unbeknownst to you, you have no idea it's doing that. It's going to propagate via stolon, which is basically just these things running out. Each of these points has the ability to create more. So already, you're already kind of screwed because that's two very powerful ways to propagate. And it can propagate via seed, which is more rare, but three different ways to propagate. Very difficult to deal with. Now that we know how Bermuda propagates, it makes sense to not till, right? Which is what I did in this bed over here, unbeknownst to me just wasn't really paying attention. So I tilled it. And what does that do? That chops up all of the Bermuda into a ton of different chunks and basically makes it a lot easier to propagate. Spreads those chunks into newly tilled loose soil. Easy for it to establish itself. And then what do you do after you till? Generally you plant in a bed and water it in. So you've just basically also planted a ton of Bermuda. So do not till. But now that gets to the question of what to do. So check this out right here. This is a big old pile of Bermuda. But what you can see is it's actually starting to produce seed, which is really the ultimate bane. So when you see patches that actually have the seeds start to come up, you really have to get these out of the ground ASAP. I'm using tarp because I know there's seeds on this plant right now. So I want to put it on the tarp, not spread it out into other areas of the garden. This is not going to solve the problem in the longterm. It's going to take off the propagation ability of this massive clump. And then later on we can discuss some strategies to slow it down. Cause you're really never going to get rid of it completely and you can slow it down. So I'm coming through with a shovel, just kicking and pulling up and then tossing this over there. So it's in a somewhat contained area. After you're done scraping away, what you can see still is of course these rhizomes are still in here. So I try to come through and just pick out whatever I can. Of course, it's not going to stop it completely. This is phase one. You're basically deleting all of the top growth of the plant saying, Hey, try again. I'm going to make you work a little harder to take over my yard. So you just come through, clear a, don't, don't hit yourself with a wood chip, but clear a path and get the rest of it out of here and move on to a different patch. So if you can't cut it out, the roots are too deep. If it propagates in too many ways, what is an approach that you can take to deal with a weed like that? And the answer really is to make it give up on itself. I'm sitting on a massive pile of mulch. It's maybe 40 yards worth of mulch all from my neighbor's trees right over there that got cut down. That's why the sun is blasting me in the face. It's why the garden is actually getting some sun right now. So I'm thankful for that. And I'm also thankful for this. Because what it does is it prevents any weed from seeing the sun. The problem is you have to lay it on pretty thick. This is my preferred approach. Now with persnickety weeds, you can take a black tarp, a silage tarp, and cover that area. But if you want to, and if you have access to it, I think laying down a very heavy coat of mulch is one of your best options. And I'm going to show you why by looking at what's going on underneath. This is just bare dirt that's been uncovered. And you can see weeds have come all across this area. Over there, just right over there is about two feet worth of mulch. And I'm going to show you the difference between this and this. This has been sitting here for about three months or so, just to give you a sense of the timeline. So I'm going to get some of this away. But you can see, I mean, there's just crazy amounts of weeds right there. That's not Bermuda, but this will work also for Bermuda. So just look at the difference. I mean, you've got wet soil, covered soil. It's stayed protected. It's more or less completely bare. It looks like some weeds have started to come up. I can see tiny little bits here, but nothing that can't be solved with just a quick little surface scrape. And I'm good to go. And honestly, this soil is actually somewhat workable. This is a flathead shovel. It's not the best example, but I can work this soil. And this soil over here, I really can't get in too much of at all. So I can just prepare this for planting and these weeds would have been completely covering this area. But with about two feet worth of mulch, you can see I got a nice layer here. I've protected this soil and honestly, I don't see a whole lot of weed pressure at all. So you might be saying, okay, Kevin, it's cool that I can throw some mulch down two feet worth over three months and I get that result. Or I can throw a tarp down and solarize it a little bit and just cover it up. But what if I actually want to plant something in an area that is currently just run over with weeds? Well, you can do something very similar to what I did with the snow dig bed that I did with my friend Charles Dowding back last year. So actually you can see that there's Bermuda trying to get in. But what I did here is a simple sheet mulch. So I cleared the area out of all the wood chips because this was just mulched over. And then I used a stirrup hoe to just scrape off that top layer of weeds. Then I laid down some cardboard, wet the cardboard down, put in my soil mixture, put in my plants of course. And then I just formed up the bed with this simple little, I don't know, fence post type of wood. It was a cheap wood. It was like $5 that I got it at the big box store. And what's interesting is, again, you can see the weeds trying to creep in. But if I peel this back, there is a little bit of a barrier. Now what's interesting, and I'm going to show you this in just a second, is they're still trying to get in. Look, they're trying to get in, but it's a lot easier to manage them. But take a look. So take a look. Like I said, this used to be right here. You can see crazy Bermuda, trying to get in, trying to beat down the gates. But what we have is these little weak rhizomes that are trying to make their way in. So it's still, still tries. Yeah. And again, it's very, very gnarly weed. But this is very easy to come in and pick out. They're very weak because they've been smothered. And they're really just trying to survive as much as they humanly can. So again, is this a foolproof method? No, but it stops it from getting in at least long enough that the next time I change these crops out, I can just do another weeding. With these weeds, they can be really discouraging in the garden because they'll just take over a completely new plot or a bed that you've put in. And it just is very demoralizing because they disrupt everything that you're actually trying to grow. And so what I try to do is use natural resources to combat the weeds. And if you're wondering where to get that many wood chips, I recommend calling local arborists and just saying, Hey, look, I'm a gardener in the area and I really need some wood chips. If you have any loads that you can drop off, I'd be more than happy to take them. There's also a service called Chip Drop, but it's a little more random as to when you get them. So you might wake up one day with your morning coffee out in the garden, and then boom, you have 20 yards worth of chips and logs sitting on your driveway. It's happened to me a few times. It's always a nice surprise, but it's also five hours worth of work that I just signed myself up for. So I hope this was helpful. If you have any tips that work really well for you for Bermudagrass or any other crazy weed, drop them down in the comments. And until next time, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.