[permaculture-oceania] Would a thick mulch kill grass? another posting on this

[Robyn Francis]

I established a food forest in an area of dense kikuyu grass - had it deep
ripped, sowed pigeon pea into the rip lines and a year later planted tree
legumes and 1st phase fruit trees between the pigeon peas. Mulched around
the trees with cardboard, newspaper and mulch. That was 13 years ago. I've
never needed to bring any further mulch into the system since the initial
planting. Cutting back the pigeon peas provided follow-up mulch in the early
years and once the living mulches were established it's simply been a matter
of pruning back some legumes & sickling back taller living mulches for
on-going mulch requirements. Haven't seen a blade of Kike for over 10 years
in that area.

Veg garden areas infested with kikuyu and couch I initially chook-tractored
then sheet-mulched with newspaper and hay. Still need to battle the couch in
some parts but no more kikuyu.
Ciao
Robyn


On 23/8/06 2:52 PM, "Terry Leahy" <Terry.Leahy at newcastle.edu.au> wrote:

> Dear Permies,
> 
> I was thinking about this some more.  The ideal thing is definitely to mulch
> around the quick growing legume trees that you plant first - about 50 cm deep
> but not right up to the trunk and maybe a metre wide.  But I also note that my
> bush regen group in Wangi established bush plantings quite effectively by deep
> ripping on contours and just planting into the rips without any other
> treatment - a fertiliser pellet is good.  Plant in the wettest period (Feb
> March for us on east coast).  In those cases we planted eucalypts and wattles
> for the most part and would only go to smaller and slow growing natives later.
> Would not advise eucalypts if you later want to establish rainforest species
> for bush tucker.  Also a fire risk.
> 
> On another occasion I used a mattock to dig fish scale swales - about half a
> metre deep and two metres long on the contour and planted rainforest trees in
> the mound on the down side of the swale.  This was a sloping site.  I pulled
> up the lantana and just went for it.  I think I might have mulched a bit to
> begin with but later just removed really problematic weeds.  This also worked
> well for fruit trees - apple, mulberry etc.  Again, the ultimate aim was to
> shade out grasses which eventually happened.  A detailed description of site
> establishment for an orchard is Holmgren's book on Hepburn - go to his website
> to find out how to buy this - it is a ripper!
> 
> Seeds for quick growing legume trees and bushes can be bought from seed supply
> catalogue places - see Organic Gardener in ABC shops for ads for these
> companies - e.g. Green Harvest etc.    Dont forget to soak overnight in hot
> water before planting them out,
> 
> Terry
> 
>>>> mikro2nd at gmail.com Tuesday, 22 August 2006 7:53 pm >>>
> On 21/08/06, Paul Darrington <paul.darrington at optusnet.com> wrote:
> 
>> I've got about 3 acres of grass to kill, progressivley, & am wondering how
>> thick mulch would have to be before grass will not grow through it.
> 
> I would guess that, in part, it depends on the variety of grass(es)...
>  I have been almost-totally unsuccessful at killing off Kikuyu grass
> with a thick (30-40cm) mulch of wood shavings (could not source enough
> cardboard for the area in question, but, based on experience, I'm sure
> it would have only delayed the regrowth of the grass).
> 
>> For our own block, we want to kill the grass (glyphosphate), mow & till (if
>> need be), and then sow with a lucerne / chicory / clover mix.
>> This is intended to form a living, N fixing ground cover in which we can
>> then plant our trees into.
> 
> Would love to hear of alternatives to this, as I am faces with approx
> 1acre of the same problem, and really, /really/ don't want to resort
> to roundup, but digging grass out by hand will take me too many years.

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