The war against quackgrass

We recently received some much-needed spring rainfall, so we decided to hit our fruit garden for some weeding. The moist soil makes the dreaded task of pulling weeds a lot easier. Sherry tackled our strawberry patch and Chris headed to the raspberry patch.

Actually, we have two raspberry patches. One is the established patch and the other is a new patch we started last year from some transplants. The second patch was started below our vegetable garden in what used to be cow pasture.

The problem is it "got away" from us last year and there was a thick mat of quackgrass growing between the rows. It was already a foot high.

Unfortunately, Chris did not do his research before deciding that some mechanical help was the way to take out the quackgrass. The University of Minnesota Extension in a pamphlet called "Controlling Quackgrass in Gardens" says, in bold print: "Never use a rototiller where quackgrass is growing." Why? Because it amounts to propagating thousands of new plants from the chopped-up rhizomes."

Rhizomes are what makes quackgrass such a nasty and invasive weed. Once a quackgrass plant goes to seed, it produces about 25 seeds which remain viable for up to five years in the soil, according to the UM extension.

Each plant then develops rhizomes with a node every inch or so. Each node is capable of producing a plant. And a plant is capable of producing 300 feet of rhizomes.

That is really scary. The only thing that multiplies faster than quackgrass is the promises of politicians during an election year. The unfortunate thing is you can count on quackgrass.

Our only options now are to use a herbicide, which would also take out the raspberries (and we strive to be chemical-free in our gardens), pull each plant up by hand and make sure we get each rhizome, heavily mulch (although rhizomes will push up through asphalt pavement they are so tough) or give up.

We're not ready to give up just yet. Perhaps there's some marketing opportunity here and we can find some value in selling quackgrass rhizomes. Perhaps we can offer any guests from Northern Africa some free rhizomes to take home to plant. There's lots of room to green things up in the Sahara Dessert, don't you think?

(University of Minnesota Extension photo)