Coping with couch grass

17:06:20 20th June 2008

People trying to deal with invasions of couch grass have been provided with a number of suggestions on how to cope with the invasive rhizomatous plant.

Industry analyst Anna Freud makes her comments in the online pages of the Telegraph, suggesting that a selective weed killer which kills couch grass but leaves other foliage unharmed is no longer available.

She notes that the grass can be smothered to death by covering whole areas with black plastic for a period of at least a year.

"With a horribly invaded flower bed, however, the only way to tackle it is to wait until autumn and take out all the plants, pulling out the obvious white pointed shoots of the couch from the underside of each root ball, and sifting through the whole bed before re-planting," Ms Freud suggests.

The Royal Horticultural Society states that they look like any tuft of grass above the surface, but their roots spread quickly beneath the soil layer and can easily smother ornamental plants.