COUCH again

[dandelion]

I've been gardening for 15 years, but until 4 months ago I had never even heard of couch grass. While taking to my lottie neighbour, I mentioned 'the grass with white roots' as I wasn't even sure how to pronounce it ???! 'Ah,' she said , 'The COOCH.' So now I know.

Needless to say, my new half plot has a fair bit of couch  >:(! I'm halfway through digging my first bed which will be 7x1.20 metres.  I have removed the grass sods themselves, teased out all the white couch roots and dug out the docks to a depth of at least 20cm. It's painstaking and fiddly, but satisfying to see it transformed. No weed has re-grown or germinated yet. In fact, I am starting to wonder if it is just a bit too easy... Isn't couch  the devil's grass? Then I started to wonder if the fine  brown fibrous roots still left in the soil could also be couch ???  :'(??? I looked at some old threads on couch. Someone mentioned that the white stuff are rhizomes; the actual roots are fibrous and brown.

Will those fibrous roots grow new couch? And if so, will I be able to keep on top of it by hoeing ????

[dandelion]

[flowerlady]

Best advice is to keep digging it out.  The WHOLE plant needs to come out!!   If you chop it up there will be millions  :o

I can't remember who said it but there is a tip here to grow turnips - they deter couch grass  ;D

[supersprout]

just shows we all treat couch differently, I use the lazy sod method  ::) to make beds
http://www.allotments4all.co.uk/joomla/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,28/topic,13515.0. If you cover any undug bits with manure and black plastic and leave them, when you peel off the black plastic you will see fat white roots which you can easily pull out (and eat, but I've never tried it  :P)
then I hoe and weed as if any remaining couch were an annual weed, and mulch like mad with coffee/compost/spent hops. Healthy growing plants shade the soil and seem to discourage them, and when you dig and/or fork over, you'll get the rest up by and by as the soil gets more spongelike.
My dad used to seive out all roots through a riddle, but a) he was a perfectionist and b) I am not my dad  ;D

[umshamrock]

hi dandelion,

they call it COOCH grass here in plymouth too. it drives me crazy.

when i first got my allotment last year, like you i just dug out the thick white rhizomes and took off the sods and left the little brown roots. it has only grown back in a few places (probably where i missed a fat white rhizome) and definately stays away if i keep up with it. picking out all those little brown roots is way too much trouble and i don't really think it spreads by roots, just rhizomes. so...good luck with your plot!

[derbex]

I was reading today (in my Enjoy your Weeds book -30p from the library book sale  ;D) that couch roots are a delicacy in France. Mind you -so are snails, and I don't want them on my patch either.

Still, if they're edible it would seem like REVENGE  :o

Jeremy

[supersprout]

That sounds like a fabulous book and a bargain Derbex, let me know when you get tired of it  ;). I'll try most things once but drew the line at standing over the sink scrubbing muddy couch grass roots before stir frying them - it was enough to have prised them out of the ground without spending more time in their company. Still, a Good Thought - if you can't beat 'em, eat 'em ;D

[Curryandchips]

I also read somewhere that in mediaeval times couch was a culinary crop. I think I will give it a miss though.

[dandelion]

I'll try feeding them to my guinea pigs!

[telboy]

Why not Dandelion? Best place FORUM. Groan!

[Merry Tiller]

The proper pronunciation is indeed cooch or you can call it Twitch.
It 's not that hard to eradicate just keep at it

[Columbus]

In the midlands we called it twitch, In norfolk we call it cooch

[Robert_Brenchley]

A couch by any other name doth spread as foul.

[Columbus]

i wish i`d written that  ;D

[amphibian]

I only worry about the rhizomes, when a piece crops up i trace it down to its source, this is always a piece of rhizome and is never a bit of fibrous root.