I'm sure some of the regulars here will provide a long, long list of plants you can use for ground covers, but here are a few rather unusual ones that work on my property. I have a number of landscaped acres--the house came that way--so what seems successful on a larger scale.

Pleioblastus humilis::dwarf bamboo. This runs, but runs slowly so it's easy to keep in place. In shade it grows to about 3 feet, in full sun it grows about 8" to 1 foot. It needs occasional watering during the dry, August sun but otherwise it does well. It looks a little distressed in the wintertime. I have an area about 300' long by 20' or 30' wide that is densely covered by this. In summer it is most attractive, although one neighbor down the block has said she doesn't like its look.

Vinca minor::Lesser Periwinkle. Although billed as a shade ground cover on my property it also creeps into the sun. I must admit it seems to be rampant in the shade, well behaved in the sun. This blankets almost the entire underforest area of my property, although I am letting the dwarf bamboo slowly take its place. Taller weeds do on occasion do have to be picked out of it--maybe twice or three times per summer.

Lysimachia::Creeping Jenny or moneywort. I love this plant but many people consider it invasive and a hazard. Me, I have acres and acres of invasive plants--from bamboo to locust trees--so what's another one? This plant requires moisture, so in Oklahoma if you want to get rid of this plant simply withold water. That might be difficult if you plant it next to a stream or creek.

Colocasia xxx::Elephant Ears. What? You might ask! These aren't ground cover! Well, I've found that by planting these giants they create shade underneath their leaves. That shade keeps the weeds and bermuda grass down to a managable level. If you then plant creeping jenny or another shade-loving ground cover (I'm trying Irish Moss this year) it also helps keep the weeds down. I know, sounds crazy, but it works for me. You must give these beasts lots of water for them to be happy. They easily take the worst the Oklahoma sun can dish out in August IF YOU GIVE THEM LOTS OF WATER, otherwise they will most assuredly die a brutal, withering death.

You might try going to outsidepride.com. They have a wide selection (about 100) of seed groundcovers that work great and aren't all that expensive. You might also want to try a few of their clumping, ornamental grasses, which grow quickly and look good. They keep weeds at bay and are easy to pull up if you want to get rid of them.

One of their ground covers--Irish moss, or Sagina subulata--I'm trying out this year.

Here is a link that might be useful: Ground cover seeds.

If bermuda is anywhere in the area and can get air and water, it will grow. When you want bermuda to spread you just water the place where you want it to go and it will send a runner for a drink.

I'm not sure there is anything that can outcompete bermuda, and if there is, you more than likely will be battling it too at some point!

I would suggest using cardboard or 15 or so layers of newspaper (something that will break down eventually.....no plastic, not weedcloth) and topping it with mulch. You can get free wood chippings from the tree trimmers for the electric company. They will dump an entire load in your yard if you want them too. Be aware, an entire load is A LOT!!!!

Lisa

Hi Kelly,

Carol's right. If you have bermuda grass on your property at all, it will get into those veggie beds.

When you rototill the bermuda grass, if you leave as little as a 1/4" piece of stolon every 3 or 4 square feet, the bermuda grass will come back....and it will come back fast and strong. By June, you won't even be able to tell you ever rototilled and took out the bermuda grass because it will be "back" as if it had never been disturbed. I'm not telling you that to discourage you, but rather to emphasize that removing the bermuda grass is just the first step of a 1000 mile journey.

To keep the bermuda grass out of your beds, you'll have to mulch heavily, and preferably with a woven cloth type mulching fabric (NOT the ones that are perforated with little holes to allow water through because they allow bermuda through too). Of, you can put down a double layer of heavy cardboard, or very thick layers (12-20 pages thick) of newspaper, well-overlapped to keep the grass out, and then put the organic mulch of your choice on top of the fabric, cardboard or newspaper. Even if you do that, bermuda will grow right into the mulch and you will have to remove it religiously.

You'll have to check your beds at least weekly and dig out (not pull-out because that leaves roots behind) any bermuda that appears. If you cannot, for some reason, dig it out, then use a small foam brush to "paint" ready-to-use Round-up onto the blades of grass and it should kill them. The bermuda will come back, though. It doesn't permanently kill it. You cannot spray the Round-up near your veggies because the spray will drift onto them and kill them.

If you really want the bermuda gone, rent a sod cutter and remove it that way. You'll leave very little root and stolon behind and you'll find veggie gardening a lot less frustrating.

Digging a trench doesn't help unless you lay down a landscape fabric between the timbers and the ground, which will help somewhat.

Are the timbers chemically treated? If so, with what? Check and make sure that the landscape timbers are not treated with a chemical that will leach into your soil because you don't want to be putting potentially hazardous chemicals in the soil where you're going to grow food. I use plain old untreated pine which has to be replaced every few years, but at least it isn't putting anything dangerous into the soil.

Are you sure you want to put a groundcover in the other beds long-term? Most groundcovers are very agressive and root themselves in quite well which makes them hard to remove later. If you are looking for a short term solution, you might be better off going with annuals for color, or even foliage plants like ornamental sweet potatoes. There again, after you plant your desireable plants, just mulch heavily (2" - 4" deep).

If you're sure you want a permanent ground cover in the southeast beds, we can come up with a list. But, be sure you really, really want it. It would be very frustrating to spend a lot of time and money putting in a ground cover if your ultimate goal is just to tear out the ground cover in a year or two and plant veggies there too.

Dawn

What about a green manure crop, or even melons that will have a lot of foliage. I think I would rather put something in it than leave it open, because something WILL grow there.

Some ideas for summer groundcovers/green manure crops: buckwheat, crowder peas, mung beans.
Annual flowers seed sown: nasturtiums, zinnias, marigolds, a sun loving annual mix.

I read your post just a little closer :) The other beds don't have a problem with bermuda, right? I would plant easy annual flowers there. Zinnias are a really easy flower from seed and they give you a lot of color from middle summer into late summer.

If long term you don't really want veggies over there, you could do some perennials. I would suggest iris, peonies, and daylilies.

Lisa

Thank you so much for your replies! I am so grateful for the help.

This bermuda grass makes me sad! But we have another idea. How does this sound?

On the Bermuda Beds, we lay down cardboard/newspaper, mesh liner, mulch and then - on top of that - make that bed a raised bed with lots of soil on top? Would that work? If so, we can still have our veggies this season, can kind of control the bermuda grass this season, but then I can also kill off the grass after the growing season is over and have a better start after the fall/winter?

Also, the advice about groundcover is spot on. I was wondering about how hard it would be to tear it all out once I go to doing what I wanted to do with it, but didn't know what my other options are. I like the idea of annuals and what not.

Could you help me out a little bit more? So, instead of groundcover in the southeast corner of the yard, what types of plants would be good to put there? The east fence is mostly shaded in the morning, and sunny in the afternoon. The south fence is completely shaded all day long.

You wonderful people are all geniuses in my book! :)

This is what I think you should do :)

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The light is a little different, more shade than you have. But daylilies, irises, coneflowers and zinnias will take full sun. Peonies, I would think would be okay, although I prefer to give them partial sun. But you couldn't use the hydrangeas, they need early morning sun only.

Here is a link that might be useful: Lisa's Yard Shots

Kelly,

It probably will work if you remove absolutely, positively every bit of bermuda grass that you can first, whether you rototill, hand-dig or use a sod-cutter to remove it. We did it by a combination of hand-digging and rototilling, and then by spending days and days and days (and weeks) hand-removing every bit of bermuda we could find re-sprouting and re-growing. Just putting down a barrier won't kill the bermuda, but it will slow it down. My brother put down 6 mm black plastic and had bermuda stolons growing rampantly underneath it 5 years later, so don't underestimate bermuda's staying ability.

You also could do what you described above but with one added step. If you aren't doing to remove the bermuda grass first, at least spray it with Round-Up first, at least if there is any green growth showing on the bermuda at all. (My bermuda grass is greening up quickly, but I'm in southern OK where the temps have been, unfortunately, in the 80s and 90s a lot the last couple of weeks. Yours may not be showing green growth yet.)

And, if you are looking for flower-planting advice, listen to Lisa. She has absolutely the most gorgeous flowers every single year.

Dawn

One day I'm going to learn to carefully read :0) If your south fence is TRULY shaded all day long you might be able to do the hydrangeas. You could also possibly do hostas. There are some very interesting hostas out there beyond the normal green or variegated that you see in the box stores. You might want to watch the area for a whole season and see how much shade there really is.

If you do perennials, make sure you do a variety, so that things will bloom at different times. Otherwise you will have an explosion of color and then nothing :) Annuals, like the zinnas, can help with longer color. Plus, they bring in butterflies ;)

Thank you Dawn :) I have lots of advice from all my friends on GardenWeb!!!

Thanks so much! We'll give the idea a try - I hope it at least allows us to grow some veggies this year and give us more time to see where we should best plant things and what to do about the bermuda grass.

Lisa, your flowers are gorgeous! I would love to do what you did! I'm going to look carefully and then go shopping - can I get all that at Lowe's?

The peonies you can get at Lowes, you can also mail order through different companies. I particularly like Homestead Farms

http://www.homesteadfarms.com/daylilies.htm

and GH Wild

http://www.gilberthwild.com/

I think both companies carry daylilies, peonies and hostas. Homestead runs a little higher than Wild, but they send HUGE plants. They should both be running sales. I NEVER spend more than $5 on a daylily.

Here's the daylily sales page for Homestead

http://www.homesteadfarms.com/2009%20spring%20clearance.htm

I would be happy to give you a few starts. I definitely have some of the white iris (the spikey plant in the second picture, middle right side) I have some other stuff too I'm sure :) I have flower seeds too, especially belamcanda which looks similar to an iris, at least the green part does ;)

Lisa

Oh, I have a flyer from TLC on my desk, they are advertising cannas 10/$10.

Lisa

...and I have irises from TulsaBrian via Moni that I can share this weekend!!!!! Not many, but a few, and they are ready to go into the ground.

Lisa

Kelly,

Peonies are one of my absolute fav flowers, as a novice (which I still am, and probably will be forever!) I planted a few peonies the first year we moved into our house (2006) and I am still waiting for them to bloom! I'm hoping this year maybe, but more than likely next. When I planted them I didn't realize that it took them so long to do whatever they needed to do to bloom!

I wanted to share that with you becuase it sounds like you are in the beginning phase just like me. The people on this forum have definately been my inspiration, my shoulder to cry on, my advisors, and at times, the one thing that kept me from filling the flower beds with concrete and calling it quits!!

Courtney :)

Peonies planted in 2006 should bloom by this year. One of the most common causes of failure to bloom is deep planting. The buds should be right below the surface of the soil. If you planted them that way then surely they'll bloom this year.

Oh, I really hope so!!! I think either you or Dawn helped me back then as far as depth... I've been at war with a gopher since we moved in, and I'm worried that he may have gotten to the peonies over the winter. His mounds were all around the flowerbeds that I planted the peonies in... The ones that I planted in the front bed last Fall, have already come up, and are about 5 inches tall already! But nothing from the ones in the back yet... I've got my finger's crossed!!!

Bizy, are you sure it's gophers?

There's a vole that digs into my yard sometimes. I think he's looking for grubs. According to what I've read, they don't eat plants, they just uproot them. This year I've put down some Milky Spore Disease in an effort to kill Japanese Beetle grubs. Hopefully this will solve my vole problem too.

Kelly, if I wanted to just shade out things so that I could plant veggies later, I'd plant a cover crop. One year I needed some "green manure" so I just threw handfuls of black-eyed beans that I had in the kitchen out in the new raised bed. There's also alfalfa that's mighty good for the soil. You could also mulch heavily. I got some bales of old hay from a friend this spring. She used to keep cattle on her place but has gotten too frail in the last several years to do it. She probably weighs 100 pounds soaking wet and she used to throw bales of hay around like a man. But anyway her barn has quite a few bales left in it. Some of the wires have broken so it was hard to get it into the truck bed, but I got probably 6 bales. The hay comes apart in layers and you can peel off a layer that is thick enough to lay over the top of the bed and it stays put, even will hold down a good thick layer of leaves. It will shade out most things. This year I'm trying to grow potatoes in mulch, which is what I got the hay bales for.

I had a terrible problem with weeds and bermuda in my raised beds till I started mulching. Grass clippings do a good job too, but fresh grass clippings generate a lot of heat. This can be good and bad. Now I only get bermuda in the corners of the beds and I can keep that pulled out fairly easily. I did have to give up trying to grow strawberries, though.

Courtney,

If you are sure it is gophers or moles, the next time you plant, buy a roll of 1/4" wire hardware cloth and make a round cylinder-type cage, place it in the ground, and plant your peony or other vulnerable within it. Sammy has done something similar for years to protect her roses. We had tons of gophers and moles when we moved here, but the cats--in particular a really good hunter named "Moose" who is no longer with us--wiped them out in no time at all. Every now and then gophers and moles try to move back onto the property, but the cats we have now don't allow it either.

And, ditto on Ilene's discussion of mulch. I am a mulching maniac and the time/effort/money spent putting mulch in beds is nothing compared to the time I used to spend weeding.

Dawn

Thanks for all the help! A cover crop might be good. We tilled up everything this weekend, and made my raised bed. I planted onions today (hope it's a good time?).

I know I need to decide what to do with the bare beds that I won't be planting veggies in (cover crops or annuals would be good, from what you're all saying).

But I also have a question: What do you put in your veggie beds until it's time to plant??? Do you just mulch? Or do you plant other things first, and rotate them out? For example, I have 10 feet of my bed that is for tomatoes, but I can't plant them yet. What do I do with that space?

bizydiggin: Funny you should mention peonies! When we bought our house last September, the owner (who was an older Vietnamese woman) took me by the hand and showed me 3 or 4 plants she had tomato staked. "These are lucky, beautiful flower! Don't dig them out! They lucky!!" All 4'10" of her loved those flowers. I THINK they're peonies. I didn't dig them up this weekend, because I could see many pink spikes coming out of the ground. Is that what peonies look like?

Thanks everyone!

Kelly, Louise Riotte's book on companion planting was titled, Carrots Love Tomatoes, so I have always planted carrots in my tomato bed the first of Mar, leaving room for the tomatoes to go in after April 15 (here in z6b). They grow together in the bed until the end of June when the carrots come out and a nice mulch of carrots tops and grass clippings goes back down.

And yes, peonies are up now and they are dark pink shoots.

And yes, this is the time to plant onions. and carrots, spinach, lettuce, radishes, beets, potatoes,

Thank you! I'll plant some carrots there! Can I directly sow the seeds now?

As Dorothy said in the last line of her post, you can plant carrots and all other cool season crops right now.

I've linked the Oklahoma Garden Planning Guide below for you. It contains general planting dates for the whole state.

In the planning guide, a date is normally expressed as a range. So, if the date range for one vegetable is Feb. 10 - Mar. 15, then Feb. 10th date is for far southern OK, the Mar. 15th date is for far northern OK and people who live in between the two can choose a date somewhere within that range. I actually tend to go closer to the end of the range even though I am in far southern OK because I am in a very low-lying microclimate that often experiences significantly colder weather than folks on higher ground just a mile or two away. So, take into consideration whether you are in a low-lying area where cold and frost tend to settle and adjust your planting dates accordingly if you are.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Oklahoma Garden Planning Guide