Safe grass eliminator in flowers

20 years ago

Due to bad knees, I can no longer get down on them and pull the grass in my Iris, and my Lilies. Is there something I can use to eliminate the grass that has started to grow in them?

Leslie

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Comments (4)

yarddoctor
20 years ago
If you are willing to be tedious, you can control the grasses with round up and a paint brush. Simply get your sloution and paint a couple fo grass blades on the plant. Do not touch nayhting else green with the round up.
chrismich250
20 years ago
here is my method of removing grass in my thick daylily bed. you need to --if you are not over 200 lbs you can sit on an overturned 5 gallon pail and then use --1) pair of plastic gloves, put on hands over skin 2) on one hand, put on a fabric glove over plastic (be sure they are new with no soil on them) 3)spray the finger tips of the fabric glove with round-up and then gently drag the grass leaves/stem in your hand so your finger tips will get the grass wet with the round up. rewet finger tips as needed. works for me with quack grass in Michigan. For horsetail in the beds, use the same method but the poison ivy/shrub killer. be sure to write 'round-up' on the gloves to know which one to use--and not to use them when working around other plants. (if only a few, a plastic bag on your hand and hand paper towel in your hand works too.) The brush idea works great if the brush doesn't drip and you don't dump the 'container' over on the plants-been there done that!!
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You need to identify the grass, but if it is quackgrass, it can be tough to kill without killing your flowers. I have had good luck using Round-up, but that was when I was planning to redo the entire bed anyway. You must use edging or some kind of barrier to prevent roots from the surrounding area from moving back in as they will do that fairly quickly. I have also had good luck using the active ingredient in Grass-B-Gone. However, it is fairly slow to kill the grass--it just stops growing, then slowly dries up. Usually takes a couple applications when the grass eventually starts to regrow, but it is easy to apply. It is safe for many of your common yard flowers, but not for all. If your beds have flowers that it affects, then I think Round-up will be the better choice. Pulling the grass from damp soil, getting as much of the roots as possible is probably one of the better treatments. Just remember to keep after it everytime more grass appears--you have to get all the roots, any that break off and remain in the soil will start a new plant, so you have to keep going back after these, and again you have to prevent roots from outside the flower bed from moving back in. If the grass is an annual grass, then pulling by hand is very effective. Round-up and Grass-B-Gone will also do a good job, but could damage your flowers as noted above, and with annuals, there is probably more seed in the soil so new sprouts of grass will come up again later and the herbicides won't stop this unless you also put down a product containing trifluralin (Preen) to stop the germinating weeds for a longer period.
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lawndan
20 years ago
I have used a product quite successfully called Poast. This product is available under many names. The last batch I got I just did a search on Ebay for Poast and it came up with other products that use the same chemicals. These seem to work well too. It is very slow to respond. I sprayed this spring and it took about 4 weeks to kill the grass. What I like about it is that I can spray it right in the middle of a flower or bush and it will kill out the grass. You might get a quicker response by repeating the spraying in two weeks. I have not had it kill any flowers yet but I would be careful around grasslike plants.
Billl
20 years ago
Long term, your best bet is a thick layer of mulch. Lillies and iris will have no problem growing up through 3 inchs of pine bark or similar covering but it will keep 99% of grass seed from germinating. Hire a neighborhood kid for a one time pulling and then pile it on.

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Safe grass eliminator in flowers

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yarddoctor

chrismich250

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