A few years back, a local farmer sowed a sort of grass variant - I assume it was some sort of green manure but I’ve never seen it before. It’s incredibly invasive and although we can largely get rid of the bigger plants, at least temporarily, from the main veg area of the garden, our salad bed is a disaster!
A friend who helped me weed the beds name this rather pernicious thing Mogg grass - no idea why of course. The problem with it is that, every few weeks a new crop of seedlings apprea across the whole bed, very densely packed. If we get reid of these, another mat of them appears a few weeks later. It strangles everything in the bed so we’ve ogone short on salads this year. I presume the seeds from years ago are still in the soil.
My question is - is the only solution to dig out the whole bed down to a decent depth, destroy the soil (somehow?) and start again with loads of bags of compost?
Any ideas anyone? (If I can manage to photograph the stuff I’ll post the pics)
Maybe they said mott grass ? That’s elephant grass that can be grown for silage. It’s very fast growing and very invasive. A piccy would possibly settle it.
Mott grass is also grown in several EU countries for silage. It grows quickly and can get to a couple of metres high given time. It could easily sprout and grow a few inches in two weeks.
Not here. We’ve had one heavy shower since May. My bottom pond, which suffers from evaporation is not even swamp, it is dry as a bone. Good job my swimming pond is in the trees, the surface is still ony a couple of inches below max.
Each one of the small seedlings you can see in the salad bed will grow into a single plant with a flat middle like the last photo, if given a chance.
The roots go to Australia and even the tiny seedlings form a dense mat underground so if you weed a clump like in the first photo, you end up lifting a layer of 2-3" of soil as ell. I thought that getting rid of the entire layer would mean I’d got rid of any residual seeds but no such luck…
In fact for grass that’s not too bad - we’ve stuff that goes much deeper. Also, I’m assuming that quite a lot of the year your ground is quite workable. Some thoughts:
Probably no need to remove the soil, just weed out the grass with a fork, lifting if possible the roots along with the top part. Try to do this before it seeds (eg good time to do it in the lettuce bed while it’s young. Avoid just hoeing - that leaves too much of the root.
Looks to me like it’s spreading via its seeds rather than its roots. Can you let some of your beds go completely dormant and cover with good thick weed suppressant (cardboard etc) with NO HOLES. After 6 months / year even better you are likely to have killed off small plants attempting to germinate from the dormant seeds. This could take quite a few seasons. You know the expression: “seed for one, weed for seven.”
I’ve been trying to make sure the areas near the salad bed don’t seed but this has been going on for years now. The established palnts have muuch deeper roots but I agree that it does look like it’s speading by seed - just not sure whre they are coming from. Also, i get a new crop every few weeks from spring onwards. Perhaps I’ll try putting that bed out of use for next year and get on with making the new beds that were planned anyway. Frustrating though,isn’t it?
Google lens suggests it may be Digitaria ciliaris. This is used as a fodder crop but is considered an invasive species in many European countries. It’s been in France for quite a long time.
Looking up that plant, I agree it dos look like it. Horrible thing - not surprised I’m not the only one to think it’s invasive!
Mind you, we bought an eleagnus a good few yeas back and were then told it’s regarded as invasive in a lot of countries, but it wasn’t here, thank goodness. We have a climber with chocolate scented flowers whichis also supposed to be invasive. It grows like the clappers but doesn’t seem to seed or reroot elsewhere so it doesn’t bother me.
We’ve had one heavy shower since May. My bottom pond, which suffers from evaporation is not even swamp, it is dry as a bone. Good job my swimming pond is in the trees, the surface is still ony a couple of inches below max. 
