For the past year, I’ve been proudly tending the five magnificent Biodiversity Bee Beds at the Piedmont Eco-Industrial Complex in Pittsboro. The Bee Beds were installed with the help of grant money funneled in through the Chatham County Extension Office as overseen by Debbie Roos. (http://chatham.ces.ncsu.edu/growingsmallfarms/) They were designed to draw pollinators and are alive with bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.
The fifty-some native plants chosen for these beds are all drought tolerant and need no watering. What they do need, however is weeding. There are thistles in the willows, morning glorys in the verbena and wire grass everywhere.
While all other weeds are easily pulled, the wire grass or bermuda grass has proven to be impossible to eradicate. Despite countless hours on my knees, digging deep into the earth to pull up their roots and runners, it greens right back up in the spring.
I’m not saying the weeding itself has been all that bad. I’ve been joined by interns and co-workers for hours of what we have come to regard as “wire grass dialogues.” The conversation can run as deep as those runners and helps me forget the futility of the exercise. Therein lies the rub – futile activity never feels as good as productive activity.
Obviously, we needed help. Debbie consulted with a few experts and found that there didn’t seem to be a sure way to eradicate bermuda grass.
Enter Ecoblend. Gary anxious to do some product trials, asked us if we had any weeds that he could spray with Ecoblends soy methyl ester based product. Since, then he has been spraying every couple of weeks and the wire grass has taken a serious step backwards.
It is very gratifying to see what was once a vibrant, green carpet of Bermuda grass turned dead yellow. All I have to do these days is rip the green wire grass runners from the native plants where they have run to escape Gary’s spray. Between the two of us, we will keep it from photosynthesizing.
Gary and I are sure the grass will give up altogether at some point and are looking forward to spreading the word of our victory to the multitude of other wire grass plagued farmers and landscapers. And I’m going to have to find another activity to use as an excuse for long conversations…
