Sadly, the blowtorch won't work either, unless you do it once a week. I've been fighting this stuff in many gardens for many years, and the only "one go" method I've found that works is just removing the soil down to a shovel's depth, and replacing the soil. You can reduce it's competitiveness against lawn grasses using aeration and a mineral soil conditioner, but you need to be careful about the "plugs" from the aerator, because you can end up spreading it even more.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cyperus esculentis

thanks organic Johnny,

maybe I'll go with my other option, a concrete slab, painted green.

-Ethan

lol... sorry, I wish I could be more helpful :/. On the other hand, nutsedge feels better under bare feet than concrete, and if it *really* bothers you, getting the soil replaced by a contractor would much cheaper than making a concrete slab youself :).

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:136941}}

And pulling it - unless you are REALLY careful, dig it thoroughly and check carefully for the nuts, and who is or does? - leaves the "nuts" behind to make more! It's one of the more aggravating weeds I know! Persistance helps a little - I have less of it in the beds I have been the most diligent about, but it's still there, after 4-6 years of weeding. Vinegar only gets the leaves, so it comes back. Along with redroot pig weed, curly dock and a few others, it's close to the top of my hate list. Wire grass is the top one, and the others change daily.

g'day ethan,

we get good control over nut grass by making sure we get rid of it before making a garden bed and that is thick newspaper and mulch on top you may be able to do this in your situation??

if not when we get nut grass appearing we snip the leaves off of each growth one at a time and paint it with neat glypho' you need to be diligent but this system is very effective and it does not spread a lot of chemical around.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: len's garden page

Nut Grass/Yellow Nut Sedge grow in poor, moist soils. They are easily dispatched when the drainage of those soil is improved.

Here is a link that might be useful: Nut Sedge

I like your other option organic Johnny, except the roaches and nutsedge will be left behind.

I must have some tough sedge, I live in a dry environment, and it is even growing in my cacti garden. Imagine pulling weeds with leather gloves and a pair of hemostats.

The only place it is not growing is where the bermuda grass dominates it, that might be my answer, I can handle bermuda grass. I'll try the newspaper idea where I have space.

thank you all,
-Ethan

"I must have some tough sedge, I live in a dry environment, "

same here red sea, it doesnt seem to care, it grows like nothing else even without water.

I agree with gardenlen about the newspaper approach. I had a whole garden bed that was just a thick blanket of nutgrass, there was no way pulling it out was going to work so I smothered the bed in a thick layer of newspaper. For the next few months though I kept on top of it and anything that broke through the barrier I pulled it out right away because all it needs is a foothold and it will just take off again, so you have to do the follow up and not let even one shoot start up again because it multiplies so quickly.

If that is growing in an arid environment it is not nut sedge but is something else. All sedges are plants that grow in soils that are poorly drained and moist, that is their habitat. There are other plants that look kind of similar that grow in more arid environments.

No, it's nut sedge, it's a California problem, and bermuda grass won't choke it either... I have just weeded it by hand for years... slowly, it's going away, but it had gone to seed for years before I came, I suppose I will be weeding it for years more.

My mother got rid of it by daily weeding. You really do need to soften the soil first. I would mulch heavily (several inches) and a month or two later, dig deep to get the nuts. If you don't have soft soil, the thread that connects the nuts together will break and you must keep digging.

The only things I know of to kill it aren't organic. Sedges are nasty, nasty things, even in conventional production.

Nutgrass is proof that Satan is into Biotechnology!

I have, each time I have rebuilt my garden (like many beginners, I made it too big for me to properly care for), I sift the soil thru a 1/2" grate (I think it was a milk carton carrier). As my health declines and I get older, the garden shrinks in size. I'm down to 200 sq. ft. now.
After at least 3 siftings, the nutgrass is greatly reduced. But I still get some; dig down and find the "nuts". In the very loose soil, it is not difficult. Unfortuately, sometimes I disturb good plant roots.
The nuts (know thine enemy) get thrown, with a flair, in the trash.
Bradford

kmmsr -
don't believe everything you read on the internet. i have a bad yellow nut sedge problem in my main garden where the soil is like chocolate cake. in the most recent testing, all soil values were "beyond optimum" and you can plunge the 12" blade of a poacher's spade to the hilt anywhere with no effort at all.

compaction and poor nutrient levels are NOT the problem, nor is drainage an issue. this garden is terraced down a slope with a series of slightly raised beds. the main thing encouraging the dread nut sedge seems to be moisture -- because here i do irrigate, soaking the soil once every 4-5 days if summer rains fail.

also, i have tried newspaper, cardboard and permeable landscape fabric to try to smother nut sedge. none have been effective -- the stuff grows under and lifts up even the "guaranteed for 10 years" landscape fabric. i have about given up on organic solutions and am prepared to try chemical warfare.

As noted above, nutgrass grows on all soils. But it has an advantage over other plants where the soil is compacted. If it is eradicated, on compacted soils it will re-establish from seed. So the first move is to amend the soil to get deep aeration and increase the depth of root zone.

The one place you won't find nuthrass is in a shady forest environment. Shade is the sure way to control nutgrass. I know of two ways to use shade to get the upper hand.

If you place plastic, mulch, or some other barrier tight on the ground the nutgrass will poke right through it. Even heavy pool liners can leak from nutgrass penetration. You have to get the cover up off the ground. Then the wind comes along and tears away the cover. The best way to do it is to make a row cover like you would use to protect plants from frost, only use a cover that blocks light rather than clear plastic. Keep the cover in place for an entire season. Make sure you soak the ground twice a month or the nutgrass will go dorment and return next year.

The other way is to shade with plants. If you have done a good job of amending the soil as described above, you can now crowd your plants together to get total shade. Select plants that produce heavy foliage above one foot in height. My favorite is beans. Instead of row planting, go to block planting as used in square ft gardening. Beans can be done with 5 inch spacing both directions. The yield will suffer but the shade will be total. Continued use of a high nitrogen fetilizer will help to keep the foliage in good condition. As soon as the plants wither and start to let in sunlight you should replant or use the row covers.

Two years of the above will eraticate nutgrass. Or you can do one year followed by diligent removal of the weakened sprouts the following year.

Here is a link that might be useful: a simple row cover

g'day elke,

we get good control with newspaper almost total control but we don't skimp on the nespaper where nut grass is involved we use around 30 or 40 pages thick and over lap about 2"s, all i can say is it works for us.

nut grass will come through a crack in the bottom of a swimming pool, so any plastic covers including those so called weed mats are nothing to it, we tried a couple weed mats for the first time and after months later we are still cutting and treating the nut grass growth with neat glypho'.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: len's garden page

Nutsedge is said to be the number one weed in the world. The only way to get rid of it is constant weeding/digging. If you do not let it collect any sun light eventually it will depleat its reserves and die. Covering it is unlikely to work, nutsedge will drill through heavy plastic and landscape fabrics. It will also grow through potatoes etc which is annoying.

here is some info from: http://www.lib.k-state.edu/wildflower/yellownutgrass.html

Also called yellow nutsedge and chufa flatsedge. "Nut" refers to tuber-like thickenings or nutlets on the rhizomes.
Found in cultivated fields, ditches, lawns, wet prairies, waste areas, and along stream and lake edges; moist soils.
Occurs throughout Kansas but is encountered more frequently in the east three quarters.

Introduced from Eurasia.
Yellow nut grass can be a problem weed. It grows aggressively via rhizomes, making it difficult to control.
Native Americans and pioneers used the tuber-like thickenings on the roots as a food source. Indians in the Southwest chewed the roots to treat coughs and applied the chewed roots to snakebites.
Ducks, wild turkeys, deer, and muskrats eat the tuber-like nutlets.

I'm on my way to get some SedgeHammer® from Galveston, hopefully it will take care of my problems. Haven't tried vinegar yet.

You are wasting time pulling it, it only forces them to produce more rhizomes and then you are just compounding your problems. They also spread by seed so at least pull those off and burn them. You are best off using a screen and removing the nuts but be careful, broken ones are just as easy to grow as whole ones.

The plant prefers acid, neutral and basic (alkaline) soils. It cannot grow in the shade. It requires moist or wet soil.

Hmmm, must be all those people at Michigan State, Purdue, Ohio State, Cornell, Iowa State, and many others have no idea what they are talking about.

well,

a little over a month later, here are my results.
I used newspaper for a test around my young bananas. My hope was to let the young plants mature and eventually produce shade, and maybe some bananas.

I am also a homebrewer of beer which is a nice additive to your fert regime. I had a batch go sour, so I used it in a 50/50 mix with water to soak the news paper. I layed the soaked newspaper around the young banana plants and covered the paper with compost. I used a fairly thick layer of paper and compost, I also walk on the mounds to compress the weeds growing underneath.

This morning I saw my first weed poking through the peripheral of one of the mounds. I'll pull the weeds at first, before it gets too bad, more paper and compost. This weekend, I'll do this to the vegetable garden.

Thanks all for the tips and the commiseration.

Use molasses that you can get at a livestock feed store. Dilute just enough to get thru a pump sprayer. Apply at least once a week. It works best in dry hot weather. Keep applying, may take up to six weeks to kill it. It's cheap and organic.

Woodite has made a suggestion which we all should test...molasses. Worth a try. I use a linoleum knife to weed nut grass, other types of deep rooted weeds and general weeding close to other plants. Makes the job easier.

I've done two to three cover crop plantings of Buckwheat to get nut grass to vanish
It tills in and breaks down very quickly in order to plant the next cover
Julie
Cape Cod

Kimm, up until the last two years - I would have agreed with you on the areas that nutsedge frequents. Here in the middle of the US it has become the biggest problem that we face daily. I have a very lush, green thick back yard and just this year it is becoming infested with nutsedge. Garden ditto, all neighbors - ditto. Every property we maintain has the problem to some degree now. Most gardens and landscapes unless thoroughly mulched 2-4" thick - ditto. Downtown Ditto. Farmers fields - some but not to the degree we are seeing in the city and semi rural areas. I don't like spraying chemicals, but only have two that knock it down for the season, and even then it seems to return the next year with a vengeance. I have noticed that in the last two years, the "nuts or tubers" as some cal them, are 5-10 times more plentiful than when we first started treating this pest 6 or 7 years ago. I'm at a loss. TiMo

I agree with Nandina and woodite. The molasses solution has been publicized in the San Antonio organic community for awhile. It is worth a test. They are saying 1/4 cup of molasses per gallon of water. Spray the grass and drench the soil.

I don't know why but I don't have a nutgrass problem. I've seen it several times in the yard but before I get a chance to do anything, it is gone.

Regarding the environment it likes, I have never seen it growing in the uncultivated desert, but I have seen it growing on an uncultivated island in a small river.

The plant prefers acid, neutral and basic (alkaline) soils.
In other words, it prefers soil. Kind of weird wording.

I have to deal with bindweed and nutgrass at the community garden. Slowly but surely we've made headway. Dedicated removal of the green and making sure nothing goes to seed really slows it down.

I just keep reminding myself that I'm the smarter of the three. LOL

One thing for sure, you can't dig them out.

I first started noticing them about a year ago and recently decided to do something about it.

I dug around the "plant" carefully to not break the root. After digging about 2 feet deep and seeing that the root went down even further I just gave up.

Now I'm looking for a solution that doesn't include removing all my soil.

Good luck all.

Clifford

SedgeHammer does wonders for this. I have been using it since 05 with great success. I have a post about it on my site, and I will be putting up a video journal about Nutsedge as well.

Be Blessed

Here is a link that might be useful: How To Kill Nutsedge

SedgeHammer does wonders for this. I have been using it since 05 with great success. I have a post about it on my site, and I will be putting up a video journal about Nutsedge as well.

Be Blessed

Please use link only for information purposes, the product links on this page are for local customers only.

Here is a link that might be useful: How To Kill Nutsedge