Getting rid of Rye grass

meghan · Joined: 19 Nov 2003 Posts: 2

:oops: I spread some annual winter rye recently to hold a berm in place. Two days later we had torrential rains. My neighbor (on a slope below me) now has a strip of winter rye running through their front yard. Is there anything that I can do so that neither one of us has to mow their yard this winter?

CaptainCompostAL · Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 875 Location: Irondale,Alabama

Try spraying down the areas that you don't want, with lots of straight vinegar. Vinegar is a powerful herbicide.

NOTE: Be careful not to get any of the vinegar (acetic acid) on your good plants!

meghan · Joined: 19 Nov 2003 Posts: 2

If I spray with vinegar, should I use straight 20% or dilute it?
And, if I spray with vinegar, will the Bermuda grass under the winter Rye be OK in the spring?

CaptainCompostAL · Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 875 Location: Irondale,Alabama

Use any kind of straight, undiluted, vinegar. The natural kind is better. The 20% is the strongest. The grocery store grade works, but you just have to more of it.

Yes, anything vinegar touches will dry out the sugars in the plants produced by photosynthesis, thus eventually killing the plants.

Dchall_San_Antonio · Joined: 18 Mar 2003 Posts: 2001 Location: San Antonio,TEXAS

20% vinegar barely has any effect on my bermuda. Probably if bermuda was my primary grass it would kill it. :lol:

tncmcdaniel · Joined: 29 Dec 2003 Posts: 1

Vinegar WILL kill bermuda...

I would dilute it... if your neighbor's yard is bermuda with the rye in it, to at least 10% maybe less... 20% will definitely kill bemuda.

I remember this from Howard last year telling a woman who was wanting to make a new flowerbed where bermuda currently was growing...20% was his answer to kill bermuda in 2 weeks.