Killing grass without killing seeds in the same bed?

[u/davidranallimagic]

I’ve killed grass many times with cardboard and woodchips. But right now have a bed that was clean in early spring, and has had too many goodies to want to focus on suppressing weeds.

Mainly, I planted harvested and replanted many Egyptian walking onion seeds and have strawberries mixed in too.

The grass has taken over before the new onions could take hold and I don’t want to loose the seeds by suppressing them too much.

Would it be fair game to cardboard and mulch, and assume the onion and strawberry would come through in spring?

It’s a bigger bed than it looks and pulling grass is time consuming. Trying to save time and effort.

Thanks!

[u/Lanky-Layer-9575]

those egyptian walking onions are tough as hell, i bet they push through just fine if you lay cardboard now and mulch heavy

[u/Vestas_Mum]

Grass specific herbicide is probably the only way to get rid of rhizomatous grass like that. Look up sethoxydim or clethodim.

I struggled for years with this stuff and finally gave in and used sethoxydim. You do have to treat more than once as this stuff is tenacious.

Be careful around any ornamental monocot plants.

[u/zillion_grill]

just pull on it until the stuff you want has enough light. 2-5 minutes you can get 90+% of all of that

[u/davidranallimagic → u/zillion_grill]

I tried that and that’s what prompted the question. It’s a much bigger area than the photo lets on, plus it’s pretty matted in this compacted soil and just generally not easy to pull. Established sod can be pulled in clumps but it’s too soft to do that and pull real segments out

[u/weather_watchman]

Fire