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Blogs by Adrean Aynsley
Quack grass--the scourge of the garden 6/5/2009 12:30:18 AM
The "major" landscaping at my new home. Renovating a 30+ year old yard is not as simple as it may seem. The house had a reverse drainage problem [inspector speak for "water drains towards and pooled around the foundation"] and rather than piling extra dirt around the foundation to correct the grade and pouring a new patio over the old, I opted for starting from scratch.
The yard was level in the typical 60's/70's fashion with no contour, no hardscape, and two-foot beds around the foundation and along the driveway. There were no trees or shrubs although the remnants of a three-decade maple lay just under the turf. This spring it produced it's first mushroom crop--quite an amazing sight. The back had a very tiny patio and a fairly steep slope to a lower level that had once been a vegetable garden. This is the former home of the late Mr. & Mrs. [the inspiration for Bart & Bea] who taught me in my childhood about gardening, bringing in the harvest, and many other useful things.
I will be creating a berm in the front, which will become the foundation of a xeriscaped forest, a front patio just big enough for a bistro set, and perhaps eventually a garden railroad. The back will sport a new larger patio, terraced herb garden and raised bed vegetable plots. The whole project should have been finished by now, except that i underestimated the quack grass problem.
I have spent many a backbreaking hour out there separating the stems of this ruthless plant from my precious topsoil. I had tried to kill the horrid stuff before excavation began, yet it kept coming back. It thrives more than a foot below the surface and even the heavy equipment brought in for the job has a difficult time working through the tangled vines. I want to be sure to not replant the new yard with the old quack grass so I rake and shake and bake in the near 90 degree heat wave that has interrupted our "spring" weather. I have moved several tons of dirt, one shovel at a time. I have removed enough quack grass to overfill the bed of a small pickup. I am down to the last 10% and don't know where I will find the strength and motivation to finish.
I can't wait to be finished and to burn that pile of still viable invasion until it is dead. Really, I think that in addition to roaches, quack grass will remain after any global disaster of a scale sufficient to remove all life from this planet. Imagine, a world of roaches and quack grass. What was the creator thinking when he allowed these things to exist?
