Couch Grass Advice and Tips

Many homeowners have a love-hate relationship with couch grass, also known as twitch grass and scutch grass. On the one hand, it’s a robust, hard-wearing lawn type preferred by people in coastal and warm areas with busy children and pets. But on the other, it’s a highly invasive, hard-to-control, and unattractive grass type that’s particularly unfavourable with farmers and those who take pride in their property’s appearance.

If you’re starting to explore your grass options or have a type of grass that you can’t seem to put your finger on, you’re in the right place. Let’s look at what couch grass is and some advice and tips that may come in handy.

What Kind of Grass is Couch?

Couch grass is a rhizomatous weed that competes for light, nutrients, and water against other plants and crops. While it can look very similar to other grass types without seed heads, it does tend to have much pointier heads than other varieties while also feeling much rougher underfoot. You can also differentiate it by its underground rhizomes, which most other grass species don’t have.

Is Couch a Good Grass?

To answer the question of whether or not couch grass is a good grass can depend on who you ask, because people will like or hate it for different reasons.  

Gardeners tend to loathe it because of how invasive it is. It can take over gardens and pathways and isn’t phased by many eradication methods like some herbicides. However, if you live in a warmer part of New Zealand, you might see it as an ideal grass variety for your lawn. It’s resilient and thrives in sunny, warm, and dry climates, whereas it can grow untidily in shade or colder climates.

But there’s one thing that’s frequently noted, whether you grow it intentionally or not: it doesn’t like to be told where to grow. Its highly intricate root structure means that even if it provides you with a beautifully cushioned lawn, it will still try and make its way to parts of your property where it’s not welcome.

How Do I Get Rid of Couch Grass in My Lawn?

Getting rid of couch grass in your lawn and other parts of your property can be complicated. If you try to remove it manually, roots and rhizomes will be left behind, which will simply sprout and regrow. As a result, hours of careful pulling can all be for nothing.

One of the best ways to remove it from your lawn is with spot treatment. If you only have a few areas of growth, wear rubber gloves and paint a specific couch grass-killing product from your local garden store onto its crowns and as many leaves as possible. With the right product, like Weed Weapon Invade Gel, you can kill both the roots and grass.

Similar approaches can also be taken if you’re struggling to control couch grass in your flowerbeds, waste places, and on paths and driveways. Use a specific couch grass-killing product and apply it to the roots and leaves. In flower gardens, follow up this treatment with a product like Weed Weapon Preventer on the soil to stop new couch grass weeds from growing.

Farmers trying to control couch grass in their pastures must take care to get the timing right. Apply glyphosate after the couch grass plants have produced at least three or four leaves. Avoid applying it in early spring as the grass may still be semi-dormant from winter.

If you’re trying to avoid harming broad-leaved crop species nearby, consider using selective grass herbicides like haloxyfop. However, these can’t be used in grass crops like ryegrass and cereals.

How Did Couch Grass Get Into My Lawn?

If you have never purposefully grown couch grass, you might be wondering how on earth it’s now taking over your lawn, gardens, and every area in between.

As couch grass is spread via underground stems in the soil, cultivation is the easiest way to spread it on both rural and suburban properties. It can also creep from lawns over to vegetable and flower beds with ease. However, couch grass is also easily spread by seed. As it produces flower heads, the seeds from these heads can spread far and wide. 

Once it takes hold, it forms dense mats of stems underground and competes against your plants for more than its fair share of nutrients and water.

Get Help With Lawn Care

Whether you’re fighting a losing battle against couch grass or you simply need a helping hand with lawn mowing, you’re in luck. Crewcut is ready and waiting to give your yard the attention it needs, with services like weeding, garden tidy-ups, lawn edging, hedge and tree pruning, and more. Sit back, relax, and let the experts take care of all the hard work.