Here is what i have done with bermuda grass which I had a huge problem with and now after 2 yrs it is much much better. Put a border around your beds. I use a shoveled out trench on most of my beds and i mulch heavily. The Renegade Gardener website talks about a professional-strenght edging. Once the grass cannot get in to the beds anymore, then you can work on cleaning them out of the grass that's in there. Resolve to do one section at a time. In the morning or the evening with a cup of coffee or glass of wine. Find a good "claw" twisting tool or other good weed extractor. you can find all sorts of neat tools on the internet. Keep a bucket handy to compost it. I, too, hate to use chemicals. Once in a blue moon I have used roundup but only in extreme circumstances, which this might be for you. I do *threaten* to use it often, though. Laurie

Today I took the day off just a tad sore and stiff, can't think why LOL. Couch grass is EVIL, the roots look like white pieces of coat hanger, just as stiff and they can be quite long, they can snake their way through thick and thin. They can and do bore through anything, not only will it bore right through a lily bulb it can bore right into landscape ties. The bed has been dug, gone over with a fork getting as much of the evil stuff out as I could, then tilled with my little mantis. There's still bits of this #!%$&@$ grass root to be dealt with in the next few months, the bed can't be replanted until next spring. In the meantime it will be tilled every day for a week or so and then every couple of weeks through out the winter weather permitting. We did the same thing with the adjacent bed last year and it seems to have worked. I've got 3 more beds to do, two not bad and the other one is going to be murder, not only do I have to contend with couch grass roots there's that d*mn landscape cloth some idiot, wasn't me, nope wasn't me, (why is my nose getting longer) thought was such a brilliant idea. Needless to say watering this bed is a total loss cause if it does manage to get through the mulch most of it just runs along the top of the landscape cloth. It's a good job we get a lot of rain most months or this bed would be toast. It looks like I'm going to have quite a pot ghetto come winter. Oh well that's just the way the cookie crumbles :). Annette

Hi my lawn is currently mixed, partly south african couch with a lot of kikuyu coming through. It was all originally couch and i am guessing over the years the kikuyu has spread and started to take over. How can i get it all to become couch again without having to pull everything up and relay new turf? (if possible) TIA Moe

You probably do not need to extra soil on top - especially if your soil drains well now. The most important thing, since you are going with this low growing grass type, is to get the soil perfectly profiled for drainage. You want no dips or humps in the grade. The easiest way to do that is with the soil you have now. When you add more soil, that new soil is going to be fluffy. When it settles it will settle to the grade of the underlying hard soil. If you don't get it level now, that can be fixed later after the grass is growing. If you think you have problems with your current soil, they can be fixed from the surface after the grass is growing. There is a soil test lab in Ohio that we recommend as being the best in the US. I'm sure it would not be unusual for them to receive soil tests from elsewhere. The cost is US$25. They will email you the results. If you post the results on this forum you'll get a ton of free advice as to how to proceed with the test results. Check some of the topics with soil test in the title. Here is another link about sprigging couch/bermuda from SimonR in Adelaide. SimonR also has a video on YouTube showing him mowing his lawn.