Crawford County Home & Garden
Nuts about Nutgrass
For those gardeners who may have just relocated here from the frozen tundra,
nutgrass - the yellowish, grassy-looking weed that seems to pop up immediately
after you finish meticulously mowing your lawn - is a part of most gardeners'
lives they could do without.
Nutgrass is an unfortunate choice of a name for this weed. It is not a grass,
and it produces tubers, not nuts - unless you count the scores of crazed gardeners
ready to pull their hair out in frustration.
Every gardener has heard the story about how we all should use botanical
names for plants to avoid confusion and pay homage to Linnaeus. The reasoning is
that people have different names for the same plants. However, it turns out that
there are right common names and wrong common names. The correct name for the
plant we call "nutgrass" is nutsedge. That's because it's not a grass at
all - which any gardener who has fought a losing battle against it should know by
now.
Botanically the sedges are in a whole different family than the grasses.
While grasses have round stems with opposite leaves, the sedges have triangular
stems with thicker leaves arranged in sets of 3. They also prefer sites with
plenty of moisture, so, in one respect, maybe a drought isn't all bad. Because
of their thirst for water, nutsedges often indicate either poor drainage, or
topsoil brought in from a wet place.
There are two really problematic species in the garden: yellow and purple.
Both are really green, by the way. The yellow is much easier to kill and is
distinguished by leaves that are very narrow at the tip, like a needle. The
purple nutsedge has broader leaf tips and produces more tubers. (I'm told they
taste bitter if you are into sampling weeds.)
Nutsedges get their name from the underground tubers that perhaps to someone
who has just ingested wild mushrooms growing elsewhere in the yard, resemble
some sort of nuts. These tubers are what allow these plants to be perennial. As
if the top of the plant isn't annoying enough, the below-ground portion of the
plant is downright aggressive. The plant produces a profusion of underground
stems, each of which produces a small tuber at the end.
This tuber is the source of all sorts of headaches.
If you are feeling energetic and decide to pull out the nutsedge, you'll find
it comes out no sweat, but what usually happens is the top of the plant
separates from a tuber that quickly grows a new shoot. Physiologically, the
tuber uses up 60% of its reserves to produce that first flush of growth, so in
theory you could just keep pulling it out and in the process bulk up some very
obscure back and arm muscles. Warning: this could lead to you becoming Governor
of California.
Pulling weeds is too much work, so the recommended way to eliminate nutsedge
is spraying. A product called SledgeHammer (formerly Manage) is available that
will kill sedges but not hurt turf grasses. This works very well, but be sure to
follow the label religiously, because it's a Federal crime to improvise with
pesticides.
In addition to spraying, you may want to consider steps to improve drainage
in your yard. Wet conditions favor the growth of nutsedge over turf.
Many gardeners also find they have problems with nutsedges in their flower
beds and vegetable gardens. This is much harder to deal with. Sprays with
non-selective herbicides such as glyphosate can help early on in the plant's
growth. Or you could sieve the tubers out of the soil.
Although nutsedges are sort of like a neighbor with a teenage drummer, the
sedge family (Cyperaceae) really isn't all bad. Honest. There are numerous
useful plants such as papyrus and ornamental sedges that can spruce up a garden.
And for those with a score to settle, these can be killed with herbicide,
too.
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