Pretty, isn’t it? Like grass, only taller, wilder, less restrained. A true sedge and not a grass, it is a nuisance in the lawn-although the occasional plant can show real beauty in the very lack of its nice, neat, small blades.
Howard Garrett, a long-time organic advocate in Texas recently wrote: “There is only one guaranteed, foolproof method to completely kill nut grass (also known as purple nutsedge). First, dig out every tiny piece of the plant including the seeds and nutlets. Make sure you sift the soil through a mesh screen. Dump the collected material on the driveway and burn it. Sweep up all the ashes and seal in a concrete box. Drive to the coast and dump the sealed box 20 miles off shore.”
A good sense of humor may be necessary in dealing with nut grass. It grows by spreading sideways, with multiple rootlets searching underground for water. When it finds moisture, the small root turns downward towards the water, sending another tender plant thrusting upward.
Its most famous Cyperus family member is papyrus, an aquatic plant from which paper was first made. They both love sopping wet feet, thus are often found in overwatered lawns with poor drainage. Lawn weeds demonstrate that problems most generally exist with the lawn, rather than with the weed; provide the desired environment, and the weeds will come!
Most of us inherited poor lawns, or in search of the perfect suburban expanse, raced to plant our lawns without doing the necessary research. Did we use high-quality, amended soil? Was the grass seed used appropriate to the native conditions, taking into consideration the light and shade conditions? Was the seed an all-perennial blend? Probably not.
Removing the underground “nuts” is the best answer to ridding your lawn of nut grass, but they are recalcitrant, and most home owners will tell you that you can pull out nut grass, stomp it flat, cut it off, or poison the leaves, but with the roots still underground you will never be able to get them all. Regular mowing will at least keep nut grass from seeding, and combined with vigilant hand-pulling, you may eventually eliminate the problem.
Aeration of the turf is probably the most direct method to get some drainage going so that the battle with nut grass has a chance of being won. A core aerator-which pulls out plugs, allowing air to enter your impacted soil- can be rented from your local garden center or hardware store. Then apply a “weed and feed” to give your grass a good feeding and to prevent the nut grass seeds from germinating.
If you live with ducks, geese and guinea hens, they will unearth and eat the tubers for you! Barring that, experiment with a mechanical weed-puller designed to remove dandelions, like the Weed Hound; hopefully it will pull out those little tubers. Either way, you’ll be aerating the ground, and doing everything possible to fight the good fight!