Staying Afloat
by MrZebra on Apr.01, 2009, under The Garden
I’m currently drowning under a tidal wave of bills: house & contents insurance, car tax, service and MOT, water, oil… I’m living from paycheque to paycheque and barely managing. Hopefully once this round of bills is paid there will be some respite, and I’m also awaiting payment for a job I did a few months ago – when that comes through, it will really ease the situation.
The other thing threatening to swamp me is the sedge. After being cut by the farmer last year, it has all grown back. I can’t for shame ask the farmer back (his giant flail mower was badly damaged last year after hitting a telegraph pole dumped at the edge of the field), so I have been tackling it myself. I tried to cut the bottom field with the strimmer last year and didn’t get very far. This year I’m trying to cut the top field with the lawnmower. The only way I can do this is to take the box off and drag the mower backwards over the clumps of sedge, while lifting it slightly so that it doesn’t get stuck and cut out. It’s at times like this I wish I’d been born a shire horse, but I am making some slow progress. I’ve spent a few hours and I’m probably not even a quarter way through yet, but if the weather holds then I will try to do a little every night and I’ll get through it eventually. I hate the sedge – the grass won’t grown, and animals won’t eat it. I was told that if it’s cut repeatedly then it will eventually die (although it is tough as hell – I had a bonfire on top of a patch and it just grew right back up through the ashes). I also dug up a few sedge plants near the septic tank, so Victoria’s paddock is now sedge free!
May 13th, 2009 on 8:02 am
Hi Mr Zebra. I know how you feel about tackling the sedge, as I had quite a lot of it on the land with my previous house. The best way to deal with it is to learn how to sythe. I went on a day course to learn the technique and then bought a basic sythe fairly cheaply through an ad in permaculture magazine. It is much quicker than using the mower and costs nothing but your time once you have the sythe and technique. It is actualy quite a pleasant and satisfying activity once to get going, quickly clears your patch. Another approach to clear couch grass is to grow Yellow Rattle. If you dig up a line of grass and then plant the Yellow Rattle seeds they grow and kill the grass roots. It may well work with sedge. Do a patch per season. This is a longer option, but could be combined with the sything so that you quickly have it all manageably under your control. Good luck. Jazz from RM.