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Beekissed said:

Did find some spuds under those vines....harvested some really big, very healthy looking taters from that one small row. Got a 5 gal. bucket full, which is less than I had wanted but more than I expected after this gardening season. No bug or fungal damage noted.

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I actually had a similar situation. All my potato plants were so diseased but when I dug down to look for the potatoes I actually ended up with 2x the poundage as what I planted. I don't imagine that's a good harvest to most people, but last year I only got the same poundage as I planted with different varieties and I expected to get nothing from this year so this is a real blessing to me.

I had WAY more poundage than I had planted...only planted about 2 lbs of spuds, but harvested a 5 gal. bucket of taters. Not sure what it weighed but it was the usual heaviness of taters. Nice looking spuds too. I was pleasantly surprised.

Even the tomatoes are kicking in pretty well here at the end of the season, though not nearly as well as previous seasons for those Brandywines, but the Jetstars performed VERY well, as per usual for that type.

The asparagus loved the wet year but only two rhubarb plants survived the wet and heat of this past season. Peppers didn't yield more than a handful, though I had planted more peppers than anything else...also more varieties. They just didn't bloom at all.

The corn was not good...pollination was spotty so the ears were not filled out properly. Squash did okay at first but died off early. Green beans did fine, though some didn't germinate as well as others. Sunflowers did GREAT, as did the zinnias. Broccoli was beautiful and bigger than I had ever grown before....but in a couple day's time was turned into green lace by some million tiny caterpillars. I didn't catch that before it happened, got busy around here.

No hornworms this year...the ducks took care of that, as well as reducing the number of squash bugs by around a million down to a handful. And they ate most of the eggs that were laid, so very few were reproduced...that should do well for following garden years.

Does anybody here have any more ideas on how to broadly kill persistent weeds and bermudagrass in a garden bed without spraying any chemicals. I've generally been trying folded up cardboard boxes which work decently well, but I have trouble finding enough larger boxes to cover the amount of ground I need to. This year I tried buying a gigantic roll of brown craft paper like I heard Paul Gautschi recommend in one of his L2survive videos on youtube but 1 layer doesn't appear to be affecting the grass and stuff at all. I'm going to try 2 layers, but I'm not sure if that will work either.

Finding God in the garden said:

I've generally been trying folded up cardboard boxes which work decently well, but I have trouble finding enough larger boxes to cover the amount of ground I need to.

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Check with an appliance store. They often have huge boxes and may be willing to let you have them.

Bermuda grass is some kind of supernatural stuff...I don't know of anything it can't grow right through or tunnel under.

For my most frequent weeds, I just have to stay on top of them. If I get a whole carpet of seedlings of weeds, I just cover it thickly with hay, then anything that isn't killed by that and pops through any thin areas, I pull it up.

They say, whatever you do, don't till the Bermuda and chop it up, as that will spread it like wild fire. Hmmmmmmmm.......fire...maybe a good burn with a propane torch would kill it for awhile? Won't kill what's underneath the soil but it sure would feel good cooking that BG.

Beekissed said:

...maybe a good burn with a propane torch would kill it for awhile? Won't kill what's underneath the soil but it sure would feel good cooking that BG.

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Tried that in a gravel driveway and parking area. You can turn what's on top to black grime that gets on your shoes, in your car,and in your house (my wife was not happy) but the roots are not damaged.

I've seen Bermuda tunnel under a five foot width of a barrier, whether cardboard or scrap metal from a roof that blew off. I'd have hoped that metal would get hot enough to cook it but nope.

That's what I figured. I don't know exactly why Bermuda grass has not taken over the whole Earth, but I do believe it's definitely capable of it. I've never seen anything to compare with it.

I fought with BG for decades.
Then we moved and it doesn't grow here, for which I am eternally grateful.

Ridgerunner said:

Check with an appliance store. They often have huge boxes and may be willing to let you have them.

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Thanks, that's a good idea.

Beekissed said:

Bermuda grass is some kind of supernatural stuff...I don't know of anything it can't grow right through or tunnel under.

For my most frequent weeds, I just have to stay on top of them. If I get a whole carpet of seedlings of weeds, I just cover it thickly with hay, then anything that isn't killed by that and pops through any thin areas, I pull it up.

They say, whatever you do, don't till the Bermuda and chop it up, as that will spread it like wild fire. Hmmmmmmmm.......fire...maybe a good burn with a propane torch would kill it for awhile? Won't kill what's underneath the soil but it sure would feel good cooking that BG.

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Haha! Yeah I wish I could set fire to all of it within about a 20 ft. radius of my garden. My general tactic has been to cover the entire area with cardboard when I'm starting a new bed and then continue expanding the cardboard in a circular fashion around the existing cardboard so that it kills off the nearest Bermudagrass plants growing runners under the existing cardboard. It takes extreme diligence and because I can't get enough cardboard to do that on a regular basis it is failing. Eventually I plan to either use landscape timbers sort of like Paul does or pour a concrete footing around the garden once I get the boundaries where I want them.