Removing grass from creeping/moss phlox??

I promised my daughter I'd try to find an answer to this. (She's "internet-challenged".)

She's got phlox on a slope next to her driveway. It's the low-growing evergreen, jaggy kind that blooms so beautifully right now here in Pittsburgh. It was there when she bought the house, and neither of us have ever grown phlox before.

But in one long patch of it, there's grass growing up through it, which not only looks like h*ll, but it's crowding & overgrowing the phlox. It's all so intertwined, we don't know how to get rid of the grass while leaving the phlox.

Any help & advice will be greatly appreciated!

Edited to add: this topic might be better in a different forum, but I didn't know which?


This message was edited Apr 17, 2006 10:49 AM

My phlox "lifts up" and I am able to pull the grass out by the roots-hope that this helps. I don't know of anything else that will work, unless there is an herbicide that will kill the grass and not the plant-due to the difference in the way the feeding veins are structured.

Cheryl,

It seems like a losing battle. If you dig it out (or spray around the edges), something else will fill its place. Mine got so bad that I dug it up to loosen all the roots and then pulled out the weeds and grass. It did look better when I put it back down but you will also kill some of the phlox with this method. The next year the weed seeds were back up so I basically gave up.

What I would suggest is do the best hand weeding you can do then use a pre-emergent barrier (Preen for example) on it to keep new weeds from sprouting (use at least twice a year - in fall and early spring). Maybe this way you can get a handle on it. The hard part is the perennial weeds and if you have something like bermuda grass then you will have a struggle. Diligence should pay off.

Thanks, Marcia and hcmc. I appreciate your help.

I tried lifting the phlox out of the way to get at the roots & pull, but it's really a pretty tangled mess.

I will suggest we try the Preen, and I know it will take some diligence.
(She's 8 months pregnant, and of course she wants it to look good NOW!) I'll keep her far from any chemicals until after my new grandchild is born. :-D

There is a herbicide that kills only grass. I don't know the name of it for home gardeners...but in the agricultural world it two of the products are called Post Plus and Fusilade. Maybe you could look up the active ingredient and then find the name of the product for home gardeners. I know it exists. This product will kill any monocot (grasses) but not harm at all the dicots (your pholx!)

Robin

Robin,

I went ahead & searched. Turns out Ortho makes Grass-B-Gone, garden grass killer for use on ornamentals, ground covers, evergreens & shrubs. Sounds like just the ticket.

Thanks a bunch!

grass-be-gone? who knew? i am on that one right now! thanks for the tip.

There are a few products out there that will work. Select is one as is Poast or Fusilade. I'd consider the Fusilade product first. I bought more Fusilade yesterday.

I literally just had to deal with this issue because I let an iris bed go too long. I should have taken care of it last year but I guess I like to abuse myself. I flooded the iris bed and lifted each rhizome out individually and removed grass from the crowns and set them aside. Then I physically removed clumps of grass and took off another 5" of the soil for good measure. All I can say is that with the products they have on the market to take care of grass that are effective, that is the last time I will ever be so stupid as to let something go to the extent that I end up spending about 6 hours on my knees with my hands in cold water bending over to remove grass from desirable plants. Talk about back breaking work. I am going to add Preen to that bed early next year. Preen will help a lot and that was a great suggestion. Too bad I didn't do it at the right time though last year.

Spray round up on the whole bed then plant some shrub, trees, etc that you can place a barrier mat underneath and mulch the whole thing. = Gardening with no work. LOL

Oh nooooooooo, that's too easy. We women like to find "work arounds". Don't spoil our fun sofer! Besides which, her phlox would all end up dead. You plant murdering male you!

Who wants phlox anyway? You have to commit a whole garden to it. I always buy phlox and plant it in my unfriendly neighbors garden. Hee Hee. I always think "phlox you" when I plant it in Johns garden.

Why sofer! You shameless sneak!

Just tonight after digging up all my Peonies at my rental house that I am selling I had to remove all the dirt and replant cause the Phlox always grows around the transplant. Though I did do what I enjoy and planted the Phlox down with an invasive bush here in montana. I can't wait and see who wins.

Not to change the subject but did you know they have peony supports out there? I just bought a few. Those are the greatest things and they really work well.

Yeah 3 years ago I scored on Kmart closing down and they had a collection of every support you could think of. I got over a dozen peony supports. I only paid $2 a piece for them. My favorite supports are the tall delphinium 8" ring. I use them everywhere.

When you have a spare moment, please show me a picture of what the tall Delphinium supports look like please.

My knees are sore and this thankfully gives me a break from rock chipping and ground digging on my new bed. These are the supports. They are about 3 1/2 ' tall and the ring is about 6" closed.

Thank you dear. I am deprived, my garden center doesn't have those!

I like them because they are good for everything as it is getting strong. Delphs, Cimicifugas, Dahlias, even Sea holly when it gets its burst. Then they are easy to take off and use on the next plant. I think I got over 30 different shapes and sizes when they were closing some of the Kmarts in Seattle. Right place at the right time. Hey look at my new bed tonight when I get finished. http://davesgarden.com/journal/ed/index.php?tabid=2976

I like them very much. Haven't seen them around here or I would have bought them.

Way to go sofer. Come by my house with this Misses sofer. She and I will go shopping with your credit card and my husband's credit card while you and hubby make on of them nice planters for me. Loved that bed!

What is a credit card? My DW would love to go shopping at a new nursery. We are off to buy tomorrow. Then probably a canoe trip to finish the weekend. Take care Equil. The finished product

Man you should win some sort of an award for that. That's no planter. That's a work of art.

A credit card is a piece of plastic with little numbers on it so that purchases can be billed to the appropriate party which preferably is a woman's husband. It slides in and out of a little machine when one is at the check out register. I'm pretty good at this and would be more than willing to teach your wife exactly how to use little pieces of plastic. Does this help explain what a credit card is?

Oh a credit card. That is what we used to call a yolk, the thing around a man's oh I mean oxen's neck. My wife and I always shop with the box they provide. We call it a 1,2 or many box day. We conveniently bypass the cart, trailor, wagon so placed by the front door. This does 2 things: We always by the smaller of the plants so we can get more in and it teaches us patience. The 4" looks just like the 1 gallon next year.

Yes dear, a yolk. Your wife has done well by you if you know it by tat name.... no sense me teaching her how to exercise the muscles used to swipe the card.

Truth be known my husband is a good sport like you and he just laughs it off. He rarely goes shopping with me as he really isn't into plants and such but he will go with me if I'm buying tropical orchids. He likes house plants for some reason but could care less about what goes outside.

The patience thing works for me. Bulbs and plugs are a great way to purchase a lot of plants that collectively will make a statement the next year. Here are some of last year's bulbs-

I like the broken look of you Dafs that way they are more natural looking. I don't do bulbs though. I can't plant the same thing over 3 times. My DW and I are off to the nurseries tomorrow hand in hand, well until we pick up our boxes. We think of it as better than christmas the first 10 trips to the nurseries.

Merci beaucoup! I planted the bulbs that way.

Tee he, gotcha beat. I'm well past 10 trips to nurseries right now. You got some ground to cover to catch up.

Have fun. What did this thread start out as anyway?

Oh Cheryl_103! I'm so sorry for hijacking. Were you able to pass on information to your daughter to deal with the grass growing in and amongst her Phlox?

LOL...yes. Although our local Home Depot has plenty of Weed-B-Gone, we haven't been able to find the Grass-B-Gone yet.

Soferdig, you've got quite a Heart Of Stone going there, awesome!
Wish I had some local mountains I could rock-raid; we need to build a wall around a new raised garden, and it's looking like we'll have to *buy* a pallet of stone. Cha-chinnnngggg!

yes, we have to buy all of our rock around here too. do you have any farmers in your area? sometimes they cleared fields decades and decades ago and left field stones and farmers are pretty darn good natured people and my bet is that if you asked a few farmers to share some of their field stones with you that you wouldn't pay a dime and you'd end up with more stone that what you could imagine. farmers have hearts and they share.

Cheryl, try here-
http://www.gemplers.com/a/shop/product.asp?T1=G49785

this product works. maybe you could split the cost of a quart with a fellow gardener? if not, keep trying for the Grass-B-Gon as that you should be able to pick up for under $15.

I pay for mine too. I cut my fingers, slam my toes, pinch my everywhere, scratch my truck, wreck my shocks and springs, and burn out my clutch just bringing the little ones home. After a day on the rock garden it is hard to scrub in with a surgical scrub brush with Iodine scrub. Ahhhh haaaaaa.

Good old Betadyne. Love the stuff. Does it take out the scratches in your truck ;)

No I am a firm believer that no truck worth its salt doesn't have all kinds of scratches, dings, bangs, thumps, whacks, ooops', torn, ripped, bent, dirty, chipped, and bugs all over it. My 2000 F 150 is a beautiful macho truck. There is a guy who got the same short box here in town and it is still like new. I feel sad for his truck.

If I ever buy a used truck, I want the one from the guy in town. I beat my car like you beat your truck and my husband flat out told me I wasn't allowed to do that again. There were a few times I was hauling slate chips that the wheel wells were down to just about where the white wall on the tire was. My husband was thoroughly disgusted. Come to think of it, same thing happens when I have to haul top soil and distilled water but shhhh.... what he hasn't seen won't upset him.

Yeah I think that anything you can hide from the DS is wise. My DW and I are opposites so she keeps every thing clean and spotless. But she doesn't get anything done in the garden but watering and planting. I do the dirty and she loves me for it. I think Equil you need to put a wheel on your trailor hitch so you don't rub your tires on your wheel-wells.

Oh, now there's an idea. Sounds like it has great mother's Day potential were it not for the fact that my husband told me to sell the car before it self destructed. He wants me to consider an SUV even if it is a smaller SUV or another nice car IF and only IF I buy a decent used PU truck. I've got until this fall to figure out what I am going to do. The car I trashed was only 3 years old. He is not happy.

You need to buy a truck like I did. I got a standard tranny, simple V-6, crank windows, and almost no electrical so I can keep it for years and years to haul doo doo and rocks. So when you buy a used one keep it simple and get at least a 3/4 ton. Preferably all dinged up and cheap. Dh will love your choice.