Japanese stiltgrass EVERYWHERE. I can’t possibly hand pull it all…I’d be 108 before I got it all put.
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Roundup!
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I have inadvertently damaged way too many plants with roundup even trying to be careful.
I use it in the open areas, but within a couple feet of valuable plants, I’m a little nervous to, now.
Maybe cardboard over it and mulch?
I would weed around plants,enough to cover them with buckets. Then use roundup on the rest. Do not remove buckets until area is dry. Spray in the evening, so your plants wouldn’t burn under the buckets. Another way to handle it to use weed barrier on top of the weed, covered with mulch. But you have to be very carefully removing everything that pops up near the plants. If you do not like weed barrier, cardboard will work as well.
May I ask you what kind of flower it is on second picture?
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Hellebore.
This coming spring lift the hosta and hellebore. Nuke the stiltgrass with glycosphate. Go through the roots of the hosta and hellebore, removing all the dirt, even washing the roots. Replant the good stuff.
Sound good? Just thoughts. May not be practical, though.
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I took a shovel with the square head on it and just plowed a bunch of weeds i had growing in one of my beds… composted that and then put cardboard./woodchips… It’ll buy me a year.
It won’t work for this week’s weather, but I usually wait until there is a string of dry days projected, then use a Japanese weeding sickle to cultivate the soil and unroot the little buggers. Enough dry days with their roots out and they are dead and just mulch. It takes a lot of repetition, but it works. Then I mulch with some wood chips. The sickle and the hori hori are two of my most used tools. I don’t remember which one I bought, but basically this something like this little guy:
https://www.amazon.com/BlueArrowExpress-Kana-Hoe-217-Japanese/dp/B01B2MENPC/
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Japanese Stiltgrass, ugh… There are some selective herbicides that will deal with it, and for the most part not harm anything else. Ornamec and Fusilade II. Ornamec advertises “over the top”, saying you can spray it on just about anything, and only the “weed grasses” will be affected.
One technique some veggie growers use is to soak something similar to a paint roller in roundup to apply. No drift issues. And if you think you touched something just rip that leaf section off.
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They make a hand tool version of the Hula Hoe that would get that stuff right out.
I think it’s ‘microstegium’ …… and I thought it as native to America, but could be it’s not I guess.
Love the hellebores…so don’t kill them with Roundup.
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I am in general not bothered by weeds as much as most people do. I consider weeds plants, as long as I don’t use that particular land that they are growing I don’t pull them out. I will never use any chemicals on my property to control the weeds, especially in the yard where I walk several times a day. If there are some plants I don’t want them to grow, usually either wait for them to grow bigger so it is easier to pull them off, or use weed wacker to wack all the flower heads off to control next generation of the weeds. Spend some time working in the yard is a healthier way than spraying chemicals all over.
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I whack these every year before they flower, they still come back, because they are everywhere around me.
I have a lot here and there popping up in my yard too. It’s edible, maybe pick few leaves put it in the salad
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They take up every square inch of ornamental garden I have. I spend 3 hours and cleared a 10 x 40’ area. I can’t do it by hand, it’s impossible.
Maybe so…but 1/4 acre of poison ivy is not something to pull by hand or chop with the weed whacker.!!
But “Crossbow” sure works.
So, moderation is my motto, with chemicals, as with alcohol…
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No,not poison ivy!
I suppose even moderate amounts of poison ivy are no-no’s.
I have walked through a patch of it barefoot as a teenager going through the woods, and I have eaten honey and pollen produced from it. (And lived).