Well I winterized my garden.. How do you?

I just put blue tarp over it to keep anything from growing until next season.

I had a really bad grass problem this year and i know they where able to seed my garden.

what do you do to make sure grass wont grow?

Cover crops, along with preventing weeds, they hold onto soil to protect it from erosion, and hold in nutrients to protect them from being washed away in the rain/snowmelt.

Buncha oats before the season is over works great.

I don't like plastic tarps because they don't allow O2 to get through and you might end up with anaerobic problems like mold but I do like salt marsh hay. It's permeable and the seeds in it won't germ unless they are in a salt marsh. There are selective herbicides that only kill some grasses. Apply those in spring/summer when seeds emerge. And pre-emergent herbicides like Preen keep all seeds from germinating...Just a thought.

Edit: corn gluten meal also is a pre emergent herbicide. Cheap and totally safe and organic

i spread corn gluten all over my grass sometime in the fall. it stops the grass from seeding itself. good stuff

dannyboy602 said:

I don't like plastic tarps because they don't allow O2 to get through and you might end up with anaerobic problems like mold but I do like salt marsh hay. It's permeable and the seeds in it won't germ unless they are in a salt marsh. There are selective herbicides that only kill some grasses. Apply those in spring/summer when seeds emerge. And pre-emergent herbicides like Preen keep all seeds from germinating...Just a thought.

Edit: corn gluten meal also is a pre emergent herbicide. Cheap and totally safe and organic

Click to expand...

its not on very tight... the wind blows underneath it sometimes... just blocks the sunlight

ya know what else makes a good cover...burlap. i see ppl wrap up their fig trees to protect them from winter burn.

well it just snowed 7 inches here...done. lol. about the grass in the garden, what i do in that situation is cover it like the op (usually with a tarp or contractor bags), then when spring comes i spray a very mild organic grass killer herbicide everywhere that i'm going to plant. i add a few days to the "ready to plant" date (if it says i can plant 2 days after spraying i'll wait 4 days). add some good tilling and i don't see weeds or grass emerge until summer, and it's managable. i practically have to saran wrap my garden because of all the icemelter that gets used around here.