Wiregrass Control Without Chemicals
Wiregrass or Bermudagrass (Cynodon dactylon) is a nuisance when it gets into your beds. It spreads by stolons and rhizomes and also sprouts from seeds—a triple threat! A native to warm places of Europe, Africa, Australia and much of Asia, it is actually planted intentionally as a lawn in hot and droughty southern California, because of its legendary toughness and ability to stay green in the heat of summer.
Wiregrass in the lawn. I personally don’t keep a perfect monoculture of lawn, so at my place I’m more focused on removing legacy English ivy when I see it sprouting up rather than worrying about wiregrass in the lawn. But for some people, it really bothers them to see it in the lawn. And I suppose the argument could be made that from the lawn it will eventually creep into the beds.
Mow 4” high. If you have a small amount in the lawn and you can remove it by hand before it turns into a big, creepy crawling thing with lots of runners and sidekicks, that’s great. But since it needs full sun to stay at its most vigorous and spreading, various sources recommend setting your mower blade a little higher—all the way to 4”— in an effort to shade it out. (This is also good practice for growing more drought-resilient lawn, in general). In shade, wiregrass still survives, but it is thinner, easier to pull out, and spreads more slowly.
Start over. If the wiregrass or bermudagrass has become the dominant plant in your lawn, or if this is an area where it is thriving but the regular lawn grass has not done well, consider starting over. Cover the area with cardboard, hose it down so that the cardboard is wet, and then cover with a good 3-4 inches of shredded hardwood mulch. After 3 or more months, you can check to see if the cardboard has disintegrated and the wiregrass is gone.
Now you get to make a choice: do you replant the lawn, or take the opportunity to put in some native plants? I bet you can guess what I would do… :-)
Putting in native plants could mean a lot of different things, not just another new mulched bed! Here are some ideas to get you started:
A short, mowable, native lawn alternative mix—These usually involve much less mowing. Some are walkable for light foot traffic and pets, some are not. Some work best in full sun, some will take or even prefer shade. Some are a slightly taller mix of tough plants that bloom, providing color and support for pollinators. (This is a big topic—If you are interested, hit reply to tell me, and I’ll bump it up on the list of classes to develop!)
You might replace that part of the lawn with a well-designed area of low-maintenance shrubs. They should be deeply mulched the first few years, or underplanted with a good, dense groundcover to keep the crabgrass from even THINKING there is enough sun to return… (Hint: use the coupon code below to get the mat-forming groundcover list from the Make It Easier" Class)
If it's sunny, consider a small meadow, perhas with a nice border and a path (psst--use some of the ideas for paths and borders from the “Make It Easier! Class).
Wiregrass in your beds. Preventing wiregrass in your beds is often a more urgent problem than when it’s in the lawn. Again, to defeat wiregrass in ways that are easier on the gardener, a number of tricks in the Make it Easier! class might help, including tools such as the scuffle hoe, digging knife, using certain types of borders, and planting from the list of the dense, mat-forming groundcovers that are mentioned in the class.
So I hope some of this feels helpful and do-able if you are suffering from a wiregrass invasion! Know that you have company—I’ll be out there when I return from my time away, using many of these techniques myself to reclaim my beds from this vigorous thug!
Happy Gardening!
--Chris