To treat the problem we need to know what grass you have.
Without using chemicals, mulch will kill annuals, Clear plastic sheet will kill everything after about 90 days or so.
I killed the grass & now have a garden in the spot I used Solarization on.
No everyone like this system, but it works better than round up.

Here is a link that might be useful: this may help

I honestly have no idea what type of grass is in the location. It appears to be typical lawn grass with some wild crab grass mixed in. It's very aggressive at taking over an area, as it filled in a good bit of what was still bare ground. There is currently nothing planted there. I'm not worried about killing off any existing vegetation. I just don't want any lasting chemicals in the ground. I considered the plastic idea, but I'm looking at a pretty large area. I'd say 25'x50' rough guess.

So you're in zone 5 but everything else is a mystery...The more info about the problem, the more likely someone can help you with a solution. Solarizing by covering with plastic will work better in summer, in any zone. Maybe your local county agent (in the USA)can help you identify the grasses. Plowing it all under would be what I'd try first, then see what survives that. If you don't want to use chems and don't have much time to spend on it, well you might not be able to solve your problem at all.

Crab grass is an annual and grows from seed every year and should be dieing for the winter now, mine is. If the grass in the gardens is the wimpy Blue Grass, Fescue, Perennial Rye lawn mix fairly typical in the north it can be tilled in, along with your manure now, but it this grass is the very invasive Quack Grass it will ned to be dug out unless you want it to grow back. Quack Grass sends out long rhizomes, roots with growth nodes every inch or three, which grow into tangles that send up more grass blades. Covering now with plastic will do little since it is getting to cold to get the soil to heat up where necessary to kill the grass. Putting your manure down and then covering with newspaper might be an option for the wimpy lawn grasses and will kill the top growth of the Quack Grass but those rhizomes will be there to grow back even more then before. I have not seen that even the glyphosate sprays kill off Quack Grass unless you spray it about every 4 to 5 weeks and then it is only temporary.
If this is Quack Grass digging it out is you best oprtion.

Kimmsr,

Thanks for the descriptions of the grasses. I know it's not rye, as my dad told me to plant that over it for the winter once it's cleaned up for additional spring nutrients. It sounds like I have some Quack Grass mixed in, as I have been spading and finding real long white shoots of roots. My dad said to spade it and flip the grass in the bottom with the dirt facing up. I was hoping I didn't have to spade it all, but it's looking likely.

Thanks!

g'day schlemoc,

see how we do our raised bed gardens, a great way to rid grass and other weeds. no need for tilling ever.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens straw bale garden

Field Rye, Winter Rye, Cereal Rye, the grain could be a good winter cover crop and while it does have some allelopathic ("weed" suppressing) properties that does not include Quack Grass, at least not for me. Do not use Annual Ryegrass, not the same stuff.
Raised beds could be of some help but I have seen Quack Grass grow into raised bed with no problem.

with raised beds you do need to create a weed barrier around them this becomes the path, lay newspaper as with the beds then cover with whatever, hay, bark, stone chip, sand let the imagination run wild.

we generally use grass hay mulches as when these break down they create soil beneficials which ultimately help the beds.

around teh edges of the path/barrier you could grow lemon grass or citronella grass something that is a good weed smotherer this will stop anything from wanting to creep in for us we find it easy to pull stuff that sticks its nose over the barrier as soon as we see it, too easy.

our new beds are great when one has back and age issues.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

The raised bed is quite an interesting idea. I may consider it. The biggest thing holding me back from that at the moment would be the sheer amount of filler I may need, along with the longer term ramifications if I was to get a sub compact to work on it, or a larger rototiller. Thanks for the great ideas!

I've had a lot of experience with quack grass. If you have that, it is pretty persistent. I tried digging it out, I tried rototilling it, which made it 20x worse. The only thing that worked was Solarizing the whole area with plastic. I did that over one whole summer with a large sheet of plastic that we had left over from an ice rink. It was about a 25 x 25 ft area. It killed about 90% of it and the part that didn't die out was along one edge that was under the dripline of a large tree and was in more shade.

Quack grass is an aggressive grass, that is why I mention it. You said yours filled in quickly and that made me think of quack grass. It would be important to identify whether you have it or not. The white rhizome root system is easy to identify once you realize what it is. I found that even with raised beds and using landscape fabric around the beds, if any small piece was left over it managed to get back into the raised bed over time.

I would not expect solarization to work over the winter. I transformed an area of grass into perennial bed over a winter, by the lasagna method. If you research lasagna beds I am sure there are a lot of threads on GW on that subject. I cut back the grass as low as I could and layered grass clippings, leaves, half broken down compost and cardboard. There are lots of other things you can use, but those are what are readily available this time of year for me. I did NOT have quack grass in that area so it worked out fine. I was able to start planting the perennial bed the next growing season.

Since you have such a large area, you might want to do it in parts? I have arrangements with my neighbors who share their leaves and sometimes grass clippings with me. Of course, that is from neighbors who do not use any chemicals on their property.

Good luck... :-)

Many people with little to no experience with Quack Grass will often tell you that it is easy to keep under control. That barriers are not necessary, that raised beds will keep Quack Grass from invading and all of that is untrue. Quack Grass spreads by seeds and the rhizomes, although the rhizomes are the most pernicious. Given a small chance Quack Grass will invade any planting bed.
Janet Macunovich, in her book "Caring for Perennials", describes digging a trench around planting beds placing 18 inch wide plastic carpet runner in that trence and then back filling all in an effort to keep Quack grass out of that bed. I have used 10 inch aluminum flashing, making sure the top edge has been rolled over to keep from slicing someone, with good results until the seed falls into the bed.
The only way to eliminate Quack Grass from a planting bed is to dig it out.

Just one last point on the Quack Grass.....every little piece of root will grow a new plant. That was why the rototilling made it worse. It cut the roots up into many small pieces that all rooted and grew.

I did try living with the quack grass and keeping it out of beds for quite a few years, and it drove me crazy enough that I gave up gardening in that section of my garden which was a vegetable garden at that point, and I left it unattended for 3 years before I got the idea to solarize it and by then I was willing to give up a whole summer of leaving it in place to get rid of it.

Wouldn't lasagne gardening techniques work? Put down a layer of corrugated cardboard. Cover cardboard with 4 to 8 inches of leaves. In the spring, put down another layer of cardboard in the paths and put 8 inches of old hay around all the plants to smother weeds. I'd imagine that would cut down on most of the grass and the rest can just be manually pulled out throughout the summer. Repeat the whole process again in the fall if still having a problem.

Lasagna gardening would be one way to kill the exisitng grass in a lot, the same as covering it with newspaper or cardboard and covering that with a mulch material to hold the newspaper or cardboard in place. However, that will only kill the topgrowth of Quack Grass and thhe roots, the rhizomes will send up new growth in just a couple of months.

Round up...and the a week later till the living hell out of it for an hour and it will be done

Welcome to the Organic Forum Oil_Robb.

...month old thread...Round Up...Organic Forum.

Quack grass and bermuda are the bain of gardners. Burning it off will slow it down but will not kill whats under the ground and it will come up a better growth that befor it was burned. Diggin it out will keep it at bay but if you do not stay after it it will come back. This stuff will even find its way into raised beds. There is no way to easely get rid of this stuff nor permently get rid of it either. Gardening is work its how you are able to cope with it that counts. I would dig it out burry a barrier arround the edge of the garden then attempt to keep the roots on the outside of this berrier. Mulching the pathways between raised beds makes it easier to pull the grass if it get over or under this barrier. If you keep after it you can have a neat garden alos plant very intensively don't give the weeds and grass to much space to grow in. We do all the above in our fight against bermuda grass. we also use a t orch on the outside of our barrier this works better than a weedeater that tends to throw grass over the barrier and into the mulch that then tends to root itself. Using raised beds help too

Go out and dig-up using an eight inch dirt shovel several areas so you can see what type of roots you have. That will allow you to have an idea as to whether or nor you have quack grass.
I roto-till under quack grass in the fall at times and then pull it in the spring as in the tilled loose soil it comes up much easier and you get more of the root system.

I have simply turned over, with a shovel the garedn and along the edge where quack grass is lawn, I turn over the edge twelve inches.
In spring or later in summer I see grass poking through and often pull up a huge chunk of grass I turned over thereby making it easy to remove entirely.

My large garden is slightly shorter than yours and I find turning it over by hand in the fall contains weeds the best.

we had quackgrass when we moved in - we dug out a garden space and the rototiller didn't even touch the rhizomes. We quickly discovered we had to dig way down into the dirt and pull up all the rhizomes. They're a pain in the butt. Once you get all the rhizomes out the bed will stay clear. It's been 4 years and its been gone which is amazing since it's still growing all around the bed. Unfortunately I can't find anything that kills it. Grass killer would but that would kill all your grasses. It sucks, Ground Clear will work but it will kill everything green.

Looks like I have repeated myself over the course of this thread. [g] But since I got a notification on it again, I read a number of the comments over and Billy's who said you can't get rid of it permanently. I just want to repeat - I did get rid of it all using the Solarization method I described and have not seen it in a decade. I tried every method suggested with no success before I did that.

Seven years ago I killed Coastal bermudagrass in my garden. Last winter 2019, I found out I had Afib, it took four costly procedures & 8 months of light duty, no gardening, to fix it.

I found this Spring my garden was covered with the Coastal bermudagrass that was growing on the back side of my garden. Just 16 months & it looked like a hay field again.

Like prairiemoon2 z6b MA, I used solarization to kill the grass, so I can plant garlic this Fall. Solarization works & 2 inches of compost will bring you soil back to life.

If you are into mushrooms, cover the bed with hardwood chips & Winecap spores, in no time you will have a composter & a flush of mushrooms to eat.

https://permies.com/t/130092/mushroom-newbie

https://permies.com/t/108551/wine-cap-compost-observations#1093304

Joe, I hope after all that, you've been able to get the Afib under control and are back to gardening fully. It is amazing when you are out of action how quickly things can get out of control.

So you are growing mushrooms? Is that for mushroom compost, as well as eating? What part of the country are you in? With bermudagrass, it sounds like the warmer part of the country.

S.C., My reason for woodchips is mushrooms, the fact that they compost is a plus, I eat a lot of mushrooms & onions, because they are part of the G.B.O.M.B.S. DIET.

I am doing great for someone turning 60 years old. I was surprised that Wine cap could grow in an asparagus bed, that is not a lot of shade.