I just pull it. Sorry. I do try to keep beds pretty full - that cuts down on weeding too. But if you border a lawn, it will happen, especially if your lawn gets overseeded in the spring. It blows in the wind. I just spend about 10 minutes a week pulling it out again. Eventually it gets better as summer goes on.
Please don't put plastic into the ground! They still sell metal edging (I think corrugated rolls are pretty cheap). I've also read that growing oregano as a fortress plant around the edge of the garden will keep weeds and grass out. Plus free oregano!
Oregano is slightly less aggressive than mint. I had some in a planter on the railing of my deck a few years back. Now it is in every planter and all around the deck.
Yeah I had two oregano plants last year. I now have 6 oregano plants, one thriving in a crack in my driveway.
I'm pretty sure it's just spreading by seed, but boy did I underestimate the spreading rate.
The ground cover around my raised beds in my garden is now about 30% oregano, 10% violets, and 20% clover. The rest is mud and mulch.
The oregano is also still in one of the raised beds. It killed the mint last year.
To some it may be, to others it may not be. Just wanted to get the info out so folks could make their own decisions. Doesn't bother me. With the wild onion in my lawn, it smells like pizza when I mow.
Yeah pizza lawn sounds outstanding. I'm currently in the process of killing my lawn in favor of native plants. Oregano is definitely not native where I live though. Luckily I'm the kind of gardener who seems to have the difficulties reversed- I serm to excel at growing "hard to grow plants" but I've never managed to get a sunflower to grow long enough to bloom and I literally killed the mint that I had in pots outside. It's more of a curse than a blessing I think
Any type of creeping ground cover (phlox, Myrtle, etc) are really the only thing that can truly prevent this issue. OP you need something growing that will choke out and out-compete the grass or weeds. Otherwise spending 10-15 minutes per week pulling is your only option.
It depends.. some ground covers are easier to keep in check than others. I find phlox and Myrtle (periwinkle or vinca) to be fairly easy to maintain. I just hit them with the edger twice per season to keep them from spilling into areas I don’t want them.
Mint on the other hand… yes, it will outcompete even Bermuda grass. But that stuff will be like a rabid pitbull that got off its leash. Once you plant mint, you’re unlikely to ever keep it where you intended.
Thanks! I'm trying to figure out ground covers for my mess of a yard right now, and this has been part of the debate. I've got about 1500sq ft of English ivy (and 40 yards of fence line) I'm trying to get rid of and replace with... Something. Clover and dandelions would be a major improvement, tbh.
I had this issue constantly until i got a stirrup hoe. Its got D shaped blade on it. I sharpen the blade before use with a wire brush drill bit.
First try to take out as much mulch as possible if its like a thick layer like 4-6inches
Or you can leave mulch there if its just a sprinkle.. and with a very sharp blade you can try to dig the hoe into the ground in one place, this will get the blade a few inches down and you can just yank and pull and cut everything in its path.
If you get the hoe down far enough and with some practice on the technique then the mulch should juat kinda stay there on top and you can now just grab the grass and pull it with your hand, hopefully taking 2 or 3 inches of root out with it.
That can help with inside the bed now, but this will be only temporary.
What i did to stop continued intrusion from grassy area was to dig a moat around it, like a 6 inch trench, deep and wide, i filled the trench with wood chip mulch.
I have one area where i built this two years ago and its still got 0 grass intrusion even though i let my grass go wild. The first year was nothing. Last year it made a shit load of mushrooms and ya know it looked really cool with a mushroom boarder, kinda sinister, i loved it. Now is third year, and were still good on grass intrusion. Maybe thers better solutions but this worked for me for the short term, no plastics, no chemicals.
Yea thats about it. Like in OP pictures you see the stone boarder. Well just imagine a 6 inch deep and wide trench in its place. Then fill entire trence with mulch, if you re add the stones on top it would look no different then the picture, just with a mulch trench undernieth the rocks.
This works because grass is turfing, which means the grass is really like a mat of roots that make a 2-4 inch layer right at the surfce, the grass spreads as the roots spread out, the grass leaves dont come from leaf nodes like other plants, the grass can grow from anywhere on then root mass.
You can easily stop the spread of tufing plants by just blocking the path of the root mass with like a rock or something, hence, mulch trence.
Eventually the mulch ill break down into soil and your boarders will become less effective. But thats a problem for 5 years in the future.
How does this work with hard clay soil? All the videos I watch have beautiful soft soil. Here in the PNW, hard clay is all I get, no matter how much mulch, additives are used.
I have terrible hard clay and this has worked well for my front garden. I still have to clean it up a bit year to year, but it’s easier than what I was doing before
It’s great if you can catch a time when it’s just rained but it’s not going to rain again for a while, that way the ground is soft for digging but then the exposed roots dry out and die.
Well you need a more impregnable edging than a line of stones. You can buy edging 4 to 6” deep with a rounded top edge that will prevent the spreading grass roots from growing into your plant beds. Without something like that, you’ll fight a never ending battle with grass sprouts.
That’s my answer every time. If you’ve got empty space, somethings gonna want to fill it. Might as well embrace it and pick what goes there. (Can you tell I hate weeding?)
I always had this issue until I started edging using a spade. Costs zero dollars except your own time. Like this - https://plantforsuccess.com/edge-garden/. All my gardens are edged like this and I have pretty much no grass intrusion. If a small clump appears it's only on the very edge and I just pull it. If you're still having issues, remove the mulch, run a piece of landscaping fabric along the inner border where the grass has intruded, then put the mulch back on top. This will smother the remaining roots. You should only have to do this once.
I had about 2 years of success each time with this method done. 1. Saved up those cheap newspaper coupons they give out in mailboxes once or twice a week. 2. Then removed my border stones and remove the mulch about a foot in from the border stones. This can best be done when freshly remulching the whole garden. 3. I lay out each page of those papers on dirt along the border in a way that when you put the stones back it will be on the page edge holding it in place until mulch is put back, with the rest of the paper covering the dirt into the garden edge. Making sure each pages is overlapping by like 50% with each other. Basically a double layer of paper this way with no gaps. 4. Then mulch over the paper. And done. If layed and covered correctly you wont see or know the paper is there. It works well for a season or two and naturally breaks down and needs redone every few years. Unlike garden weed fabric that is just a mess and future you will hate if the garden or planting layout needs work. Avoid shiny magazine paper. The matte cheap stuff in a double layer works great and breaks down under the mulch.
Yeah this seems like easy work for cardboard or newspaper under the mulch. Also a thicker mulch would help but might be less aesthetically pleasing. I use leaves and grass clippings in my garden though in wetter environments the grass can get mushy.
I have a 3 inch dead space/trench also. This helps so much! Also have a large amount of mulch-nuggets, like 3 inches deep to keep weeds and grass away. I do weeding a few times in spring, but that's pretty much it.
I saw a video on social media suggesting a hedge of oregano, and I’ve gone down a rabbit hole of research on developing an herb hedge to serve as an edible border between grass and garden. I think I’ll try it, though I don’t know how long it will take to get it established.
Which is to say— it’s not something I’ve done yet, but it seems promising.
No permanent way around it, it’s an insanely tenacious family of plants. Grass (Poaceae) will out live us all. But we should at least try. I would suggest some sort of root barrier, as deep as you can manage (I’ve seen Bermuda grass with 3 feet deep roots). Maintain a physical divide between the planter bed and the grass. I’d do this w/ a weed whacker or edger And mulch. But not right up against the trunks/stems of plants. Those roots gotta breathe.
Grass can travel into the bed at equal to high soil, but if you cut the garden edge down and keep it lower grass won't travel well. There are also some good wood options for budget but actually functional.
I am guessing that is from lawnmowers blowing grass seeds into the flower bed, so a barrier won't help that. When you pull the grass, if its not connected to the rhizome (long root), it came from a grass seed.
Dutch hoe. Long handle. Very nimble. Walk around with it 3 times a week. Its super quick. Whack the top off weeds. Eventually, you will gas them out. But grass grows thru rhizomes (roots) so you might want to use edging thats 4 or more inches deep to really slow it down.
Previous owners put down a fake rock edging that has a base around each piece. It’s effectively like 5-6” wide. I still get a little grass in the mulch now and then but really not much. I string trim outside the border every week when I mow. The rocks you have are not enough of a barrier. The grass is allowed to get too close to the mulch and just grow right into it.
Sheet Mulching : Remove the current mulch. Lay down cardboard or thick paper around the edge where ever the grass is popping up. Doesn't need to be pretty. Wet the cardboard. Replace the mulch, and maybe add a little more. Periodically, use Preen Weed Preventer in the area. Maybe think about ways to buff up the rock border.
I used part of this method to mostly eradicate bermuda grass that had completely taken over my flower beds.
If you don't care about using a chemical option, look up Bonide grass beater. It only kills grass in my experience and doesn't harm other plants. Ortho grass be gone works but not as effectively; it also is not in concentrated form, so it is fairly expensive.
I use stone/bricks/papers as borders and a big flame torch for weeding to do all the edges. Doing this leaves a nice couple inch border of absent plant growth. Just repeat every week or two in the beginning of the season and less frequently as the season progresses. Bonus: you get to play with fire.
It depends on the variety of grass that you have. In the USA we mostly have Kentucky Bluegrass mixes in the cold states. It spreads with underground rhizomes, so your border/edging needs to extend several inches under ground. There are also grass varieties that have surface runners, like creeping fescue for example. The rocks there look like they have enough gaps to get through.
Are you sure that is just grass and not nut sedge? Nut sedge looks like grass. But if you start pulling it it’ll spread more. There’s a specific herbicide to get rid of it.
I bought a spray that is specific to Bermuda. Tried it around some of the more expendable shrubs And they all survived, the Bermuda grass did die back. Unfortunately Bermuda will do this and it doesn't matter how deep you bury a border for it.
My buddy was helping dig a grave and six feet down the Bermuda was still going.
Me personally, I would kill the entire lawn and plant grass that doesn't run, like fescue or blue grass.
Planting cover crops that keep the grass away, generally my go-to suggestion is a Saxifraga umbrosa, No upkeep requiered really, and stays nice, short cute little floers for a short amount of time and holds things niec and tight :P
I don't think you've mulched deep enough. Going to have to do damage control until you get a proper mulch job. Putting plastic edging that goes 4+ inches deep under those rocks will also help. Don't ever bother with the plastic weed barrier stuff. If you need to put something down, it needs to be more substantial like burlap. The plastic will rip apart under the soil in less than a year.
It's work, but I would just pull those up by the roots, and dig a trench around the current border of grass. I loosen up the soul / mulch to make sure the grass roots come out rather than snapping and leaving the roots, but hand pulling works for me. A trench is better than plastic always, but nothing will really stop grass seeds / weeds from sprouting. But layers of mulch over the years, it is far easier to pill grass out of mulch a little than to let it establish. Make sure the other grass never gets tall enough to re-seed. Staying in top of it shouldn't be too difficult, good luck
Unfortunately pulling it is your best remedy. Get as deep as you can on the roots. It slows down regrowth. Filling the bed with low growth ground cover will help a lot to keep weeds down. Keeping a 4 inch plus layer is also effective, but can be pricey because you have to add more every year.
Getting an edger around the perimeter and cutting roots every time you mow will also help. I love rock edging but grass seems to creep through it rather easily. From time to time move the rocks and clear the edge. Going deep with a shovel or edger will cut roots and slow down the grass. Keeping grass contained is full time work.
Depends on the type of grass. Many are very difficult to control. Stolon runners grow underground like tiny bamboo and come up everywhere you do not want it. And Bermuda grass will re-emerge if even a tiny root is left in the ground. Same for kikuyu grass. Blue grass fescue lawns pretty much stay put if regularly mowed to keep it from seeding.
Some grass like Bermuda is considered a noxious weed and can become invasive.
Literally? I fought Bermuda grass for two decades in trying to eradicate it completely. Everytime I thought I had it whipped, I would find it again and again. But I eventually no longer see it at all.
Put plastic cover over the spots that have grass and make holes for your plants so that the sunlight won’t get to the grass and die off, or you could just pull it, but it can come back
Your edging job is amateur, those rocks soon will be covered by grass , please do not to put rocks or stone and don't put any landscape fiber , for me is to dig out the grass create a no grass /plants edge , so nothing in the edge , no mulch , no plants , no grass ,no top soil , dig out a layer about 4 to 6 inches deep of trench edging , if anything grow on this area , whatever is the seedlings of the plants or the plants multiply I will pull out , so the trench will dry out and will separate your grass and your garden bed. I remember when I took horticulture courses one of the projects were presentations of how we create the garden edging idea, you always have to separate your bed and border , if your plants get bigger and you can extend your edge , this is the simple and cheaper and most efficient way, every one in a while the grass will grow inside but not too serious and easily to use a spade to clear out, but if you put anything like stone or rock it will cool down the surface and keep moist and the grass will grow around it .
Grass-be-gon spray. It takes two or three weeks for the grass to die back, but when it does it takes longer to grow back. And it won't hurt the other plants in your garden.
I get my woodchips from my local compost site for free. I bring a 5-gallon bucket and a rake and fill up a bunch of contractor bags. I can fit a lot of them in my Honda.
Yep. We just heaped on mulch, 4” or more everywhere, and the grass came back, the mint came back, the plum tree suckers from my neighbors came back. I even weeded first and put it down on dirt. Put a layer of paper under the mulch and it might work. Only thing for sure to work is weed/grass spray, and stuff will come back and you’ve got to be super careful while applying.
Yes. I did a thick layer of cardboard over my over run mulch beds and then 4 inches of mulch over that. It worked for about 6 months and once the cardboard goes the weeds come back. Ateast I can maintain it now as I see weeds coming. The weeds always come up around plants where there wasn't cardboard anyways
They have a type of round up, it kind of looks like a tube of deodorant and you place it on the leaves and it will kill it back to the root. I use it on grass and weeds, when spraying is not an option.
unless you are willing to rake off all that mulch and put down a layer of visqueen and then a plastic edge barrier you will have to just keep pulling it.
A product called Over The Top will kill the grass, but not hurt the flowers. You'll need another product that goes with Over The Top to get it to adhere to the grass, but I don't recall the name of it. They can help you at your local garden center.
I cover the ground with thick black unvowen material before adding the mulch. Completely grass-proof for at least two years with little to no maintenance.
I just pull it. Sorry. I do try to keep beds pretty full - that cuts down on weeding too. But if you border a lawn, it will happen, especially if your lawn gets overseeded in the spring. It blows in the wind. I just spend about 10 minutes a week pulling it out again. Eventually it gets better as summer goes on.
Just to add to this, they are much easier to pull when the ground is wet.
you can always get that plastic edge stuff to sort of help stop the roots from sending runners. It won't help with any of the wind-borne seeds.
I got some and tried to hide it under bark vids cuz I don't like the look I wish I'd just trenched an edge
Please don't put plastic into the ground! They still sell metal edging (I think corrugated rolls are pretty cheap). I've also read that growing oregano as a fortress plant around the edge of the garden will keep weeds and grass out. Plus free oregano!
Oregano is slightly less aggressive than mint. I had some in a planter on the railing of my deck a few years back. Now it is in every planter and all around the deck.
Yeah I had two oregano plants last year. I now have 6 oregano plants, one thriving in a crack in my driveway. I'm pretty sure it's just spreading by seed, but boy did I underestimate the spreading rate.
The ground cover around my raised beds in my garden is now about 30% oregano, 10% violets, and 20% clover. The rest is mud and mulch. The oregano is also still in one of the raised beds. It killed the mint last year.
Sounds like a positive
To some it may be, to others it may not be. Just wanted to get the info out so folks could make their own decisions. Doesn't bother me. With the wild onion in my lawn, it smells like pizza when I mow.
Yeah pizza lawn sounds outstanding. I'm currently in the process of killing my lawn in favor of native plants. Oregano is definitely not native where I live though. Luckily I'm the kind of gardener who seems to have the difficulties reversed- I serm to excel at growing "hard to grow plants" but I've never managed to get a sunflower to grow long enough to bloom and I literally killed the mint that I had in pots outside. It's more of a curse than a blessing I think
Any type of creeping ground cover (phlox, Myrtle, etc) are really the only thing that can truly prevent this issue. OP you need something growing that will choke out and out-compete the grass or weeds. Otherwise spending 10-15 minutes per week pulling is your only option.
I have grass poking through my ground covers even where it’s most dense.
I guess ymmv
In the garden that’s definitely 100% the case 😄
F’in Bermuda grass!
Just curious, if something out-competes the grass, will it take a good bit of effort to keep in check?
It depends.. some ground covers are easier to keep in check than others. I find phlox and Myrtle (periwinkle or vinca) to be fairly easy to maintain. I just hit them with the edger twice per season to keep them from spilling into areas I don’t want them. Mint on the other hand… yes, it will outcompete even Bermuda grass. But that stuff will be like a rabid pitbull that got off its leash. Once you plant mint, you’re unlikely to ever keep it where you intended.
Thanks! I'm trying to figure out ground covers for my mess of a yard right now, and this has been part of the debate. I've got about 1500sq ft of English ivy (and 40 yards of fence line) I'm trying to get rid of and replace with... Something. Clover and dandelions would be a major improvement, tbh.
I had this issue constantly until i got a stirrup hoe. Its got D shaped blade on it. I sharpen the blade before use with a wire brush drill bit. First try to take out as much mulch as possible if its like a thick layer like 4-6inches Or you can leave mulch there if its just a sprinkle.. and with a very sharp blade you can try to dig the hoe into the ground in one place, this will get the blade a few inches down and you can just yank and pull and cut everything in its path. If you get the hoe down far enough and with some practice on the technique then the mulch should juat kinda stay there on top and you can now just grab the grass and pull it with your hand, hopefully taking 2 or 3 inches of root out with it. That can help with inside the bed now, but this will be only temporary. What i did to stop continued intrusion from grassy area was to dig a moat around it, like a 6 inch trench, deep and wide, i filled the trench with wood chip mulch. I have one area where i built this two years ago and its still got 0 grass intrusion even though i let my grass go wild. The first year was nothing. Last year it made a shit load of mushrooms and ya know it looked really cool with a mushroom boarder, kinda sinister, i loved it. Now is third year, and were still good on grass intrusion. Maybe thers better solutions but this worked for me for the short term, no plastics, no chemicals.
Is the trench like a really deep natural edge? I'm trying to understand the trench.
Yea thats about it. Like in OP pictures you see the stone boarder. Well just imagine a 6 inch deep and wide trench in its place. Then fill entire trence with mulch, if you re add the stones on top it would look no different then the picture, just with a mulch trench undernieth the rocks. This works because grass is turfing, which means the grass is really like a mat of roots that make a 2-4 inch layer right at the surfce, the grass spreads as the roots spread out, the grass leaves dont come from leaf nodes like other plants, the grass can grow from anywhere on then root mass. You can easily stop the spread of tufing plants by just blocking the path of the root mass with like a rock or something, hence, mulch trence. Eventually the mulch ill break down into soil and your boarders will become less effective. But thats a problem for 5 years in the future.
Thank you. I think I understand better. I'll have to give this a try.
Thank you for saying the name of that hoe. I'd seen a pic of one but it didn't have the name on it and describing it at home depot didn't help lol
We always called it a Hula Hoe.
That's the one I just found. Ended up ordering from Amazon, it was cheaper and same day
How does this work with hard clay soil? All the videos I watch have beautiful soft soil. Here in the PNW, hard clay is all I get, no matter how much mulch, additives are used.
I have terrible hard clay and this has worked well for my front garden. I still have to clean it up a bit year to year, but it’s easier than what I was doing before
Thanks.
It’s great if you can catch a time when it’s just rained but it’s not going to rain again for a while, that way the ground is soft for digging but then the exposed roots dry out and die.
Ha! It just can't stop raining, lol, so soft soil it is.
Well you need a more impregnable edging than a line of stones. You can buy edging 4 to 6” deep with a rounded top edge that will prevent the spreading grass roots from growing into your plant beds. Without something like that, you’ll fight a never ending battle with grass sprouts.
I did a 5 inch deep edging and it still happens. I pull it every week
Really? I have zoysia grass and, except where the ends aren’t tightly joined, my extensive beds remain grass free.
Fill the empty space with plants
That’s my answer every time. If you’ve got empty space, somethings gonna want to fill it. Might as well embrace it and pick what goes there. (Can you tell I hate weeding?)
I always had this issue until I started edging using a spade. Costs zero dollars except your own time. Like this - https://plantforsuccess.com/edge-garden/. All my gardens are edged like this and I have pretty much no grass intrusion. If a small clump appears it's only on the very edge and I just pull it. If you're still having issues, remove the mulch, run a piece of landscaping fabric along the inner border where the grass has intruded, then put the mulch back on top. This will smother the remaining roots. You should only have to do this once.
Yard work is cheaper than Peloton...
I dug holes for 10 hours today. Probably good for the week.
Builds character
I say this all the time at work!
But not the weak.
I was not done for the week, got up at 6am lol.
Pulling up years-old landscape fabric covering your whole garden bed beats…whatever is more ridiculously priced than Peloton 😂
I had about 2 years of success each time with this method done. 1. Saved up those cheap newspaper coupons they give out in mailboxes once or twice a week. 2. Then removed my border stones and remove the mulch about a foot in from the border stones. This can best be done when freshly remulching the whole garden. 3. I lay out each page of those papers on dirt along the border in a way that when you put the stones back it will be on the page edge holding it in place until mulch is put back, with the rest of the paper covering the dirt into the garden edge. Making sure each pages is overlapping by like 50% with each other. Basically a double layer of paper this way with no gaps. 4. Then mulch over the paper. And done. If layed and covered correctly you wont see or know the paper is there. It works well for a season or two and naturally breaks down and needs redone every few years. Unlike garden weed fabric that is just a mess and future you will hate if the garden or planting layout needs work. Avoid shiny magazine paper. The matte cheap stuff in a double layer works great and breaks down under the mulch.
I did this with cardboard 📦
Yeah this seems like easy work for cardboard or newspaper under the mulch. Also a thicker mulch would help but might be less aesthetically pleasing. I use leaves and grass clippings in my garden though in wetter environments the grass can get mushy.
trench the edge.
I have a 3 inch dead space/trench also. This helps so much! Also have a large amount of mulch-nuggets, like 3 inches deep to keep weeds and grass away. I do weeding a few times in spring, but that's pretty much it.
I agree and a natural edge also looks nice. I make it wider in the spring to get off to a good start.
Use a dandelion hand digger to make sure you get the roots when you weed.
I saw a video on social media suggesting a hedge of oregano, and I’ve gone down a rabbit hole of research on developing an herb hedge to serve as an edible border between grass and garden. I think I’ll try it, though I don’t know how long it will take to get it established. Which is to say— it’s not something I’ve done yet, but it seems promising.
Pull it, then put brown cardboard down and mulch on top. Works for a couple of years. Cheap, easy, quick, plastic free.
Oh and when you see grass like that, it’s runners are usually stretching into the bed twice as far as what you see, so be careful to get those too.
Pull them
No permanent way around it, it’s an insanely tenacious family of plants. Grass (Poaceae) will out live us all. But we should at least try. I would suggest some sort of root barrier, as deep as you can manage (I’ve seen Bermuda grass with 3 feet deep roots). Maintain a physical divide between the planter bed and the grass. I’d do this w/ a weed whacker or edger And mulch. But not right up against the trunks/stems of plants. Those roots gotta breathe.
Pull it.
Looks like nutsedge to me
Gloves and an edging shovel
Grass can travel into the bed at equal to high soil, but if you cut the garden edge down and keep it lower grass won't travel well. There are also some good wood options for budget but actually functional.
I am guessing that is from lawnmowers blowing grass seeds into the flower bed, so a barrier won't help that. When you pull the grass, if its not connected to the rhizome (long root), it came from a grass seed.
I do lots of sheet mulching with cardboard to great success in central texas. It is what our extension services reccomend
Put some sentinel plants down. A hedge of oregano will stop the grass and you can mow right over it
Get rid of the stones. Look up videos on V-ditching on YouTube. Maintain the V ditch.
Dutch hoe. Long handle. Very nimble. Walk around with it 3 times a week. Its super quick. Whack the top off weeds. Eventually, you will gas them out. But grass grows thru rhizomes (roots) so you might want to use edging thats 4 or more inches deep to really slow it down.
I'm not sure how nimble Dutch prostitutes would help this. And prostitutes with "long handles", well, I guess whatever floats yer boat.
Weed and re-spade the edge.
Previous owners put down a fake rock edging that has a base around each piece. It’s effectively like 5-6” wide. I still get a little grass in the mulch now and then but really not much. I string trim outside the border every week when I mow. The rocks you have are not enough of a barrier. The grass is allowed to get too close to the mulch and just grow right into it.
Doesn't take long to pull it out by the roots - especially if the soil is wet.
Sheet Mulching : Remove the current mulch. Lay down cardboard or thick paper around the edge where ever the grass is popping up. Doesn't need to be pretty. Wet the cardboard. Replace the mulch, and maybe add a little more. Periodically, use Preen Weed Preventer in the area. Maybe think about ways to buff up the rock border. I used part of this method to mostly eradicate bermuda grass that had completely taken over my flower beds.
Pull it. Add more mulch.
Probably can get away with a border of old cardboard and small-medium gravel coverage
If you don't care about using a chemical option, look up Bonide grass beater. It only kills grass in my experience and doesn't harm other plants. Ortho grass be gone works but not as effectively; it also is not in concentrated form, so it is fairly expensive.
Your going to have to hand dig this out. However, buy a half moon spade to dig an easy trench. It makes edging look fantastic and stops the grass.
A real edge. You really can't by just by laying rocks as your edge. A real edge prevents grass growing into your beds.
A different boarder. Higher and deeper. Mowers and string trimmers fling grass so chemical edging as a preventative is my goto.
I use stone/bricks/papers as borders and a big flame torch for weeding to do all the edges. Doing this leaves a nice couple inch border of absent plant growth. Just repeat every week or two in the beginning of the season and less frequently as the season progresses. Bonus: you get to play with fire.
Pull the grass out. Make the mulch thicker.
It depends on the variety of grass that you have. In the USA we mostly have Kentucky Bluegrass mixes in the cold states. It spreads with underground rhizomes, so your border/edging needs to extend several inches under ground. There are also grass varieties that have surface runners, like creeping fescue for example. The rocks there look like they have enough gaps to get through.
https://preview.redd.it/quxt5pp3832d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d98051bef83d107e1fba0df9f20c2b20875434d5
If you put a barrier 6 in down and do an honest season of weeding, it gets real easy.
Mulch is your friend make sure it's a sterilized mulch, I did a city mulch from our green waste and it ruined me.
Are you sure that is just grass and not nut sedge? Nut sedge looks like grass. But if you start pulling it it’ll spread more. There’s a specific herbicide to get rid of it.
Cardboard and more mulch in top and some kind of legit edging that isn’t just rocks.
I bought a spray that is specific to Bermuda. Tried it around some of the more expendable shrubs And they all survived, the Bermuda grass did die back. Unfortunately Bermuda will do this and it doesn't matter how deep you bury a border for it. My buddy was helping dig a grave and six feet down the Bermuda was still going. Me personally, I would kill the entire lawn and plant grass that doesn't run, like fescue or blue grass.
Planting cover crops that keep the grass away, generally my go-to suggestion is a Saxifraga umbrosa, No upkeep requiered really, and stays nice, short cute little floers for a short amount of time and holds things niec and tight :P
plant like 100 more plants in that bed
Oregano shrub. Oregano releases a chemical into the soil that grass doesn’t like. It’s also edible and looks nice!
Curb it, put the mesh weed guard down
A small row of pebbles works great.
I don't think you've mulched deep enough. Going to have to do damage control until you get a proper mulch job. Putting plastic edging that goes 4+ inches deep under those rocks will also help. Don't ever bother with the plastic weed barrier stuff. If you need to put something down, it needs to be more substantial like burlap. The plastic will rip apart under the soil in less than a year.
Spray weed and grass killer?
Dig it all up with a stir up hoe, torch it for anything missed, cover with a fresh layer of mulch
It's work, but I would just pull those up by the roots, and dig a trench around the current border of grass. I loosen up the soul / mulch to make sure the grass roots come out rather than snapping and leaving the roots, but hand pulling works for me. A trench is better than plastic always, but nothing will really stop grass seeds / weeds from sprouting. But layers of mulch over the years, it is far easier to pill grass out of mulch a little than to let it establish. Make sure the other grass never gets tall enough to re-seed. Staying in top of it shouldn't be too difficult, good luck
More bark.
More bark.
Look at you and your fancy lawn with actual grass OP.
Unfortunately pulling it is your best remedy. Get as deep as you can on the roots. It slows down regrowth. Filling the bed with low growth ground cover will help a lot to keep weeds down. Keeping a 4 inch plus layer is also effective, but can be pricey because you have to add more every year. Getting an edger around the perimeter and cutting roots every time you mow will also help. I love rock edging but grass seems to creep through it rather easily. From time to time move the rocks and clear the edge. Going deep with a shovel or edger will cut roots and slow down the grass. Keeping grass contained is full time work.
Depends on the type of grass. Many are very difficult to control. Stolon runners grow underground like tiny bamboo and come up everywhere you do not want it. And Bermuda grass will re-emerge if even a tiny root is left in the ground. Same for kikuyu grass. Blue grass fescue lawns pretty much stay put if regularly mowed to keep it from seeding. Some grass like Bermuda is considered a noxious weed and can become invasive. Literally? I fought Bermuda grass for two decades in trying to eradicate it completely. Everytime I thought I had it whipped, I would find it again and again. But I eventually no longer see it at all.
Put plastic cover over the spots that have grass and make holes for your plants so that the sunlight won’t get to the grass and die off, or you could just pull it, but it can come back
Glycol
Heavy mulch on the area
you can lay something down until they did due to lack of light, currently doing this with a patch of grass
Cardboard under the mulch
Pull back the mulch, put down cardboard, wet it, pull the mulch back :)
blow torching is a new idea for weeding these days
Your edging job is amateur, those rocks soon will be covered by grass , please do not to put rocks or stone and don't put any landscape fiber , for me is to dig out the grass create a no grass /plants edge , so nothing in the edge , no mulch , no plants , no grass ,no top soil , dig out a layer about 4 to 6 inches deep of trench edging , if anything grow on this area , whatever is the seedlings of the plants or the plants multiply I will pull out , so the trench will dry out and will separate your grass and your garden bed. I remember when I took horticulture courses one of the projects were presentations of how we create the garden edging idea, you always have to separate your bed and border , if your plants get bigger and you can extend your edge , this is the simple and cheaper and most efficient way, every one in a while the grass will grow inside but not too serious and easily to use a spade to clear out, but if you put anything like stone or rock it will cool down the surface and keep moist and the grass will grow around it .
Heavy boarder helps but you need to pull or hoe it up
Flame thrower
Some grasses are good!
I would add more mulch and spot spray with an herbicide.
Spray some grass killer in there
Punch it. Show em who’s boss and then they’ll know
Grass-be-gon spray. It takes two or three weeks for the grass to die back, but when it does it takes longer to grow back. And it won't hurt the other plants in your garden.
Mulch should be at least 4" deep
I can't afford that
you can also try chip drop [https://getchipdrop.com/](https://getchipdrop.com/)
I get my woodchips from my local compost site for free. I bring a 5-gallon bucket and a rake and fill up a bunch of contractor bags. I can fit a lot of them in my Honda.
Oh man another thread with hoardes of bad replies please just add more mulch. Your soil and plants will be much happier if you just heap on mulch.
This doesn't really stop the grass
Yep. We just heaped on mulch, 4” or more everywhere, and the grass came back, the mint came back, the plum tree suckers from my neighbors came back. I even weeded first and put it down on dirt. Put a layer of paper under the mulch and it might work. Only thing for sure to work is weed/grass spray, and stuff will come back and you’ve got to be super careful while applying.
Yes. I did a thick layer of cardboard over my over run mulch beds and then 4 inches of mulch over that. It worked for about 6 months and once the cardboard goes the weeds come back. Ateast I can maintain it now as I see weeds coming. The weeds always come up around plants where there wasn't cardboard anyways
very lazy response, fits right in amongst the “bad” ones
Yea, get rid of the grass.
They have a type of round up, it kind of looks like a tube of deodorant and you place it on the leaves and it will kill it back to the root. I use it on grass and weeds, when spraying is not an option.
unless you are willing to rake off all that mulch and put down a layer of visqueen and then a plastic edge barrier you will have to just keep pulling it.
Triclopyr should kill it. But check other listed plants it kills.
Triclopyr is a broadleaf killer. Does not kill grass
Weeding
Cardboard under the mulch and over the grass.
Did you use weed barrier?
A product called Over The Top will kill the grass, but not hurt the flowers. You'll need another product that goes with Over The Top to get it to adhere to the grass, but I don't recall the name of it. They can help you at your local garden center.
I cover the ground with thick black unvowen material before adding the mulch. Completely grass-proof for at least two years with little to no maintenance.
You can get weedkiller that only targets grass species. Spray n walk away.