I have a vegetable garden in long strips, with strips of lawn in between. I’ve got a problem with crab grass in the strips of lawn.
Not only are those areas lousy with crab grass, but the seeds get in the lawn mower and seed the rest of the yard.
I use Bayer Advanced weed control on the whole rest of the yard, but I worry about using it in areas that might drain onto the garden–and I can’t find any info in the Bayer site about uptake of whatever chemical or residual in vegetables.
I know that Roundup is not taken up by food plants, but one needs a selective herbicide for lawn.
Roundup kills pretty much anything that is green.
(It’s purpose–unlike Triox of years ago–is to kill everything so that in a few weeks, a completely different crop/grass/groundcover can be planted in the now bare soil. I kills swiftly but (we hope) breaks down swiftly so that it does not sterilize the soil or poison the next stuff planted in the same spot.)
I need something in between the garden strips, or else my mother-in-law will plant the whole area solid with food plants and no one will be able to get to the interior to do any weeding or maintenance. She also doesn’t hoe and rarely pulls weeds–when she does pull a weed, she flings it out into my lawn. She also leaves the hoe and rake lying in the yard. If I had a nickel for every time my riding mower has flung the garden trowel across the lawn. . . .
Yes, roundup kills everything, then gloms onto clay particles in the soil (we gotcher clay up here) and won’t let go, then degrades into ordinary elements and so forth.
Plant a different groundcover between your rows. There are several plants that will take quite a bit of foot traffic. Ajuga comes to mind (although it might take over some of the vegetable beds a bit).
Maybe twickster has something else to recommend.
Or, as she said, wood chips, or gravel (or decorative stone) or pavers (you could plant thyme or something else low-growing between them). If you have to have grass between the vegetable beds, make sure you’re mowing regularly and keeping the grass really healthy to minimize opportunities for weeds and then pull weeds that sneak in by hand.
