I don't have a garden soil, but I will purchase one. Thanks for the advice! I'm glad to know that I don't have to replace the soil.

Marie :)

Replacing the soil? The problem isn't the soil, it's the grass!

till it then throw a couple inches of soil over the top, plant and then mulch. the grass will just decompose quickly into the soil.

It looks to me like the grass is spreading inward in the bed from the outside. If it is spreading under the sides, by rhizome, then the OP has an entirely different situation.

I would dig down under your grass in the beds. If it has roots like thatch, very small diameter and they only go down a few inches, then all the advice above sounds good. If it has rhizomes then you have a battle on your hands. Rhizomes will be thick when compared to many other grass roots, tend to be pale in color, and extend from the plant in only one or two long lines.

I don't know if the pic will come through since I only copy/pasted. If it does, this is a picture of rhizomatous grass. It is much more persistent than other grasses and will continue to cause you trouble no matter what you do with the soil in the beds, even if you get rid of all the grass you can see, since it reproduces even from a tiny fragment of rhizome. There are many threads on these forums that deal with it - search for crabgrass, quackgrass, bermuda grass, and you will get a lot of information on how to deal with it, if that is what you have.

OK darn it, I can't get the pic to show up even when I download it and try again. so I linked the page, that way you can see it. Hopefully it does not match what you have in your beds.

IA state quackgrass link

mazerolm IF you are going to start over I would put more space between those beds. I prefer 4ft between beds and a 4ft perimeter around the beds to prevent just this problem.

IF you have left over lumber such as a 1x2 cut to 4ft - paint it and mark on it 6in. & 1ft marks all the way up. Make two if you can. They come in handy in the garden for measuring or just laying things out to see how they will look before you move things.

Even 3ft, 2ft, or 1ft pieces come in handy. I've had mine for yrs now.

btw - if that grass has rhizomes and/or stolons - and it appears it does, then tilling that will break the plant into many pieces and each piece becomes another plant - making matter worse.

So IMO it's either manual removal of the plants or the cover and smother techniques mentioned above using copious amounts of cardboard, news papers, or even salt hay. Preferably held in place by a thick covering of compost.

I agree about grass with rhizomes which is what we have. I would dig out the grass. To prevent more from growing in or at least to slow it down, I would put wet newspapers between the beds and top with grass clippings. I do this in my high tunnel because we left grass paths (stupid, I know). I have creeping Jenny which gets into my squash bed during the growing season. We put black plastic down for a couple of weeks to kill it. It's not completely dead but good enough so it's easy to use a spading fork to remove it from the bed. I don't think two weeks is long enough for this year but might work for you next year if you don't have any perennial plants left in the bed you want to save.

Garden is a verb as well as a noun. Lots of people don't understand that.

What kinds of long handled tools do you have? Even now that the roots are so well established, some effort with the right tools, well sharpened, will help you reclaim your raised beds.

rhizo makes a good point. I use a hand weeder similar to a Cape Cod weeder. It has an "L" shaped blade. Since the grass is against the wood frame, my favorite spading fork might not be the right tool. With my hand weeder, I can pull up the clumps. I might start with a chopping motion using the blade like an axe, then pull but if there is a long root (always is), I pull the blade thu the soil and lift as I go. Lifting just enough to make the root come free, not yanking which would make the root break. Sometimes it depends on the amount of moisture and time of year. Right now in early spring in NH, the long roots are coming up pretty easily.

Thank you so much for the advice, everyone!

Rhizo, the only long handle tool that I currently have is a shovel. I'll check at my local hardware store for a "Cape Cod weeder", as suggested by Defrost49.

I think it's regular grass that I have growing in the beds, not quack grass, as mentioned by lilyd74. I think that my best bet for this year would be to remove as much grass as I can manually, add some more soil on top, mulch, cover the ground around the raised beds with black plastic, and in the fall, I will put cardboard over the garden beds to block out all light, and we'll see from there.

Thanks again, I really appreciate everyone's comments.

I can't figure out why great hand weeders are so hard to find. Sorry but the local hardware store probably doesn't carry Cape Cod weeder. I checked price of something similar called a Cobra headed weeder and it was almost $40 at a well stocked nursery. When I lost my weeder (but later found) I did find a reasonably priced similar weeder at a local nursery. Gardener's Supply catalog does have Cape Cod weeder ($39.95). Check their website so you can see what shape I'm talking about. I use a spading shovel but my favorite long handled tool is a spading fork. It lifts the weed clump. I can shake off loose soil but a lot of soil just falls back into the bed.

You have a shovel so look up double digging. Good idea to loosen up your soil anyway and the grass clumps will easily come loose to be 'weeded' out.

Also a good time to add some amendments as well. Last years garden ate up some nutrients so best to add some food.

I put my beds to 'bed' in the fall by covering. Heats up the soil come spring and all ready to go weed free.

You are in good shape and seem to be figuring it all out.

You could add something around your beds like thick wet newspaper or cardboard but you need to add some mulch or something to weight it down. I use black rubber matting from the hardware store, comes in rolls. Cut down the middle it is about a ft and 1/2 wide. Then i use it to cover my beds come fall. Nice and heavy and cover with mulch when used as edging in the summer months.

I've got the devil grass but just a few clumps every year to deal with. I've got 16 raised beds and not really a problem at all. (and i'm a lazy gardener).

Cover come fall, double dig in spring...and with planting as needed as everything goes in over a few weeks time and work load spread out it is not to tough.

Difficult to garden without a good set of tools - a couple of hoes including a shuffle hoe (aka hula hoe) and a good broad tine fork are the minimum. Lots of good short handle tools are also available but save your back and go for long handle ones. If money is no object look at the Eliot Coleman garden tools sold by Johnny Seeds online.

Dave

You need one of these to dig out rhizomatous weeds including grass. You can get deep under the roots and lift them out and the soil will sift through the tines as you go. A shovel (or even a spade) is no good at all. The fork is also needed for light cultivation and deeper digging. You can use it to move compost, to aerate the lawn, to get weed out of small ponds, to spike yourself through the foot and lots of other applications. Absolute basic cultivating kit: fork, spade, rake, hoe, hand fork, hand trowel.

Thank you all for the suggestions on garden tools, I'll go to the largest hardware store tonight to see what they've got. :)

I don't have a cape code thingy, I use a kitchen steak knife and a broken (single prong) cultivator. It is common for the cultivators that come with 3 prongs to break the weld and end up with just the center prong, so that is what I use.

I don't shake the dirt loose any more as that just scatters unseen weed seeds back in the area. I do add them in the compost making sure to have a hot pile to kill the weed seeds.

I did find one of those cape code thingys on Amazon here - http://www.amazon.com/DeWit-Right-Weeder-Short-Handle

It seems there are either Left Hand or Right Hand tools.