Getting rid of couch grass etc after digging it out

[paddyx]

I started digging up some of our couch grass yesterday - all very depressing! There are only a few clumps around, but it rapidly turns into a huge pile of half-dead triffid-monsters, just itching to get their roots back in the ground and take over the world. I'm sure some of it is still growing after being torched and covered in black plastic for ages. It can't be killed!!!! (sorry, getting a bit hysterical there...)
People always suggest burning the roots, but we're not allowed bonfires on our site, and councils are getting strict about filling bin bags with green waste. Any other ideas? What if I soaked it all in a bucket of water - how long would it take to kill it off, would the rotten grass be any good as compost/mulch, or would it stay alive, pick up the bucket and go off on a rampage? I guess I could compost the green grassy bits as long as I keep the roots out?
Any help would be appreciated! Thanks
- paddy

[paddyx]

[RSJK]

Leave it on top of the ground and the sun and wind will dry it out and kill it off for you.

[jennym]

I agree with Richard, also I dug a huge pile of it and just left it in a big heap for about 2 or 3 years - it died. There was some near the top, of couse, where the light got to it, but the vast majority was dead, and made a lovely crumbly soil.

[sandersj89]

Mixing it with water and leaving it for a few months does make a good feed, see here for more info.

http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants.php?Elytrigia+repens

As other have said the sun will do the job for you as does burying it. It is a shallow rooted plant and does not like to be tood far under ground.

Jerry

[supersprout]

If you do make compost from cooch, it's said to be a) extra-nutritious, and b) discourage cooch growing where it is put (a bit like homeopathy :o) I don't have a special pile, but throw all perennial weeds into the current compost pile. If they haven't fully rotted when I come to use the pile, I pull them out and re-compost.

If you want results faster, throw the roots in a large vessel of water and use the water for your plants (like comfrey or nettle 'tea'). The cooch rots away in the water, and the water with all the nutrients goes on your plants. I have a sort of 'stew' of comfrey, nettle and cooch.

Just seen j's link, much more scientific! ;D

[Curryandchips]

A lot of mine gets thrown onto my path, where it dries, and hence dies. Every so often I scrape my paths off, and the rubbish gets either thrown onto the compost heap, or back onto the garden.

[paddyx]

Thanks for all the help - maybe it's not such a monster as I was worrying! I think i'll cut off the grassy bits and put them in my slow compost, but some of the roots in my "stinkwater" bucket and leave the rest out to dry out.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Compost it. I empty my daleks in late spring, and I've never had couch come through alive. Docks, tussock grass and bindweed, yes, but not couch.

[Merry Tiller]

I put it in old compost bags to keep out the light, 12 months later it's lovely stuff.
It really doesn't deserve the bad press it gets, it isn't that hard to get shot of, it's nowhere near as bad as docks or thistle for instance, the roots don't go all that deep and it rarely sets viable seed