Dig it out. Repeatedly. For the rest of your life. To keep it out, mulch heavily and do not let bermuda grass get within a couple of feet of the veggie beds or it will creep into your veggies beds while you're out of town on vacation for a week.

Because bermuda grass grows from seeds and also grows and spreads from both roots and rhizomes, keeping it out of veggie beds is a never-ending chore.

The organic herbicides that are available do not kill bermuda grass permanently. Some of them may kill back the topgrowth, but not for long. I prefer to garden as organically as possible, but I will use glysophate occasionally to get rid of bermuda grass. You can use horticultural (20%) vinegar--not kitchen (5%) vinegar, if you can find the horticultural vinegar, but it won't kill the bermuda. It only will set it back. Be very careful when using horticultural vinegar as it is very strong. Just because something is organic does not mean it is safe or non-toxic. There are some organic products so toxic or hazardous that I would rather use a chemical solution than use them.

I am saying this in the kindest way possible, but when you have a veggie garden, you always will have to fight the bermuda grass. Always. Forever. I have fought it all my life, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. You just accept that keeping bermuda grass out of the veggie beds comes with the territory. My brother once put down very thick, heavy black plastic visqueen over bermuda grass to "smother" it. He cut planting holes in the plastic, planted shrubs and vines in the holes. He laid a dense layer of white marble chips over the black plastic. He still had bermuda springing up constantly through the planting holes cut in the plastic. When we redid his landscape 5 years later and lifted that black plastic, the bermuda grass stolons were running all over the ground under that black plastic.

After you remove the bermuda, mulch heavily to help keep it out, and then every time you see any bermuda springing up, dig it out (don't pull it, because that just leaves the underground portion still there and new topgowth comes out in weeks, if not days) and be sure to dig deeply to get as much of the roots as possible.

I don't get it re: the black Visquane?? I guess I must have done something right back at the beginning of starting my garden here...a very large area by the way. I totally black plastic Visquaned and solarized the complete area, and yes, it did burn everything to a complete crisp.It was also BONE DRY underneath.

I had left this on a long time, maybe even 3 weeks or so in very hot weather. Then I tilled it up and started planting. This was about 12 yrs ago. Also, even though I use bermuda grass clippings, (now), I didn't used to......somehow, some way, I never seem to get any seed spouts starting up. Maybe because I pile on layers? I have NO idea. I just know it worked. Go figure.

PS:I seldom do any tilling in the garden area, except in the spring, in the rows where I intend to plant, but when I do, I'm careful there are no Bermuda snips in the tines from where I've taken it from the shop to the garden. Oh, once in awhile I place some cardboard or plywood or even a dab of Round Up on this one little section of garden border, but other than that, no where else.

Okie Dawn, the only thing I can figure out about your brother's Visquane failure is that maybe, after that long stretch of time, the Visquane had weathered to the point that it had developed small microscopic pinpoint "holes" in it, and some seed started germinating and started growing underneath. Maybe? How else could that have happened without light or any water, except maybe ground water, or water that had leaked thru tiny holes?

To this very day, I've not had a problem with bermuda grass in the veggie garden. Weeds, yes, but those can be handled. Bermuda is a grass from hell, in my opinion. It has creeped into one raised bed, and that's going to be a nightmare to get rid of.

Lots of luck, this is the ONE thing, other than bugs bermuda can be the most frustrating.

Barb~

Barb, I have no idea why your bermuda grass died because I have never seen it killed out with black plastic, and certainly not in three weeks. I left some on all summer one year and when I lifted it, all the grass was still there. It was a pale yellowish green, but it wasn't dead. I have seen it crawl 3 feet in just a few days when it is trying to reach water. In fact, I have been told that the best way to fill in an empty spot in you lawn is to water away from your planting as soon as the grass is up and it will grow toward the water. I think you must have been really lucky.

I have no idea how it happened. However it did. He lived on the northern edge of the Texas hill country with rocky, limey caliche-clay soil and very little top soil. I never would have expected that the bermuda wouldn't solarize under the black plastic. Maybe it did solarize the first year, but later on might have crept back in from surrounding areas. I was really shocked when we pulled up the plastic and the white stolons were running all over the ground. I don't remember noticing pin holes in the visqueen, but I'm not saying that weren't there because I wasn't necessarily looking for them. It wouldn't have surprised me if his white marble rock made the holes in the visqueen over time. Ironically, in the areas of his acreage that he didn't mow, he had a great mix of wildflowers and buffalo grass, but up around that house where he couldn't let the flowers and native grasses get tallish because of the snake and fire risk, he had the dreaded bermuda.

I hate bermuda grass with a passion. Our land was fallow farm land with what appeared to be native prairie grasses when we bought it. We spent a year clearing the property lines, cutting down about a billion trees and understory plants to fence the land and we never mowed. It was a drought year and we left the grass tall to shade the ground. When we finally cut the prairie grasses in the area designated as the site where the home would be built, I was completely disgusted when bermuda grass seemed to magically appear out of nowhere. An old rancher who lived a little way up the road dropped by and commented on the "beautiful" bermuda and told us, delightedly, that we wouldn't even have to plant a lawn after the house was finished because we already had one. I smiled and weakly and said something like "that's for sure", but what I really was thinking was something like "Well, crap!" or perhaps I was thinking something unprintable.

Every year I do a little bit better of a job at keeping the bermuda grass out of the big garden, but at some point the weather gets hot and I spend less and less time out there, and the bermuda starts creeping in through the fence. There's not enough good workable hours in the summer to keep it out.

Around the house, my strategy has been to plant as many trees and shrubs as I reasonably can, knowing that in the long run, they'll shade out the bermuda. It's working. We've been here for 14 years now, and bit by bit we are shading out the bermuda. Of course, that won't work in the veggie garden, but it makes maintaining the shrub beds easier.

When I break ground in a new area to enlarge the garden, I plant a three sisters garden with corn, winter squash and pole beans. I plant densely and they shade out whatever grass and weeds are trying to come back in the newly tilled area. That works well the first year, but it isn't like the bermuda is just gone and doesn't try to come back. It's just gone for the time being.

We live in the country, so bermuda grass isn't even our biggest pesky weedy grass. Johnson grass is. It is like bermuda on steroids.