Have you tried the molasses solution to nut sedge? I works but takes 4-6 months before they all disappear.
No. what is the concentration per 1000 square feet?
I can't say what the concentration is. I heard about this 3 or 4 years ago on a radio gardening show. They said to mix 4 oz per gallon of water but I used 6 oz. What you do is just every week or so just pour on the sedge. I think dry molasses would be better but I didn't want to go out and buy some because I didn't know if it would work or not. I bet a hose end sprayer would be easiest of all but I didn't have one of those either. I don't know why it works either. I have heard that the soil microbes become so abundant that the sedge literally eats itself to death but I don't really know. All I know is that the nut sedge slowly dies out until none is left. It happens very slowly. One day you go out to check and it isn't there.
Ever notice how nobody reports the optimum conditions for weeds? PH, what nutrients they like and all that?
Yep, I guess it's because no one wants to learn about the bad guys. About the only time you hear of weeds is either what are they and how to get rid of them. The father of organic gardening here in Texas is a man named Malcom Beck. He tells a story about his farm that he purchased in the early '70's. He said that the best corn crops he ever grew were in an extremely thick nut sedge patch. He killed the nut sedge and ruined his corn crops for years. Go figure.
I have heard that due to the depth of prairie grass roots, that the humic materials we can dig up in prairie soils are remarkably deep. You would be hard pressed to put organic material as deep into the soil as the normal root cycle of some of these weeds can penetrate.
I don't doubt it at all. I don't hate weeds, I just don't want something interfering with what I am trying to accomplish. I could have left those nut sedges alone but they were stunting my green beans. And unlike Mr. Beck, getting rid of the nut sedge greatly improved my green bean production,. Now if I could only get rid of all these blasted deer.............................
Oh that is not hard. There is a reason they have such a big nose stuck out so far. Hint Hint
Been there and doing that, regularly. There are just so many of them. And with this drought we are having here they are starving. This year I had my entire garden under cultivation and in 4 days they had eaten every leaf off of every plant and ate the entire plant in many cases. I had always thought tomato leaves were toxic but I learned they apparently aren't. I guess I will have to get an industrial sized deep freeze.
Before starting a new garden, you can determine what kind of amendments your soil needs by the types of weeds that grow there.
I really did not consider how much studying was a part of gardening when I started. Thanks for those links. I was already on my way with naming the weeds but now I am even more curious.They do!!
Weeds as indicator plants:
https://www.almanac.com/blog/gardening/garden-journal/weeds-indicator-plants
What weeds can tell you:
http://pss.uvm.edu/ppp/articles/weedstell.html
