| Article Index |
|---|
| The Black Plastic technique |
| Some basic botany |
| Simple instructions for laying the plastic |
| Trouble shooting |
| All Pages |
Trouble shooting
Soil moisture must be adequate before the plastic is placed; otherwise the grasses will not be stimulated to grow.
"Hot" manures or fertilisers may also be added prior to laying down plastic as they may stimulate growth too.
The plastic must be held down tightly at the edges, preferably trenched in or covered with soil, to exclude as much light as possible.
Punctures to the plastic may be repaired by laying another piece over the top - but do this quickly as once the grasses start to photosynthesise they can store food away rapidly.
Check around the edge of the plastic to ensure that bits of rhizome or stolon are not growing out from under the plastic or up from the ground (they may transfer starch back to the covered rhizomes).
This technique may work well with other weeds too, but is a very useful strategy for stoloniferous or rhizomatous grasses.
In cool or cloudy conditions, where the sun is not strong enough to damage etiolated growth, remove the plastic, mow away all the etiolated growth, and replace the plastic. In this case the technique works by starch exhaustion only, rather than a combination of exhaustion and burning.
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