I have zoysia in my front yard and am thinking about widening the garden in front of the house. To do this, I would bring the edge out into the existing zoysia (would probably keep what I dig out to plug bare spots elsewhere in the yard). Despite my best efforts, the zoysia always creeps its way back into my garden. If I'm going to spend the time and effort widening the garden I thought perhaps I would go ahead and invest in some sort of barrier to prevent the rhizomes from spreading into the garden. Does anyone on BL use root barriers around their gardens to keep their lawn from invading? Any ideas of how deep a barrier would need to be for zoysia?

Thanks!

flo

I use one to stop the KBG from invading the small strip by the front door--the gardens, for the most part, are on their own and I neaten manually. Over time, the gardens have actually expanded slightly because of the heavy mulching.

They're the plastic ones from Home Depot that you bury, and I dropped the plastic rounded top right to just above ground level, then dropped mulch over that so I don't see them. They work fine.

To stop rhizomes, an inch or two deep would be fine, the rest is just gravy. To stop runners...well, you won't at any reasonable height setting. You'll have some Round Up use at the edge of the bed for what inevitably creeps in, but the barriers do help a lot. Most runners will bounce and go another direction.

I've used extra strips of old aluminum siding buried to stop the rhizomes in the past in smaller areas and have gone down between 6-8 inches with it. It works on the rhizomes, but not on the stolons that creep right over the top of it if you bury it to ground level. If I stay on top of it, I can usually keep the stolons in check because I see them creeping, but the rhizomes tend to be sneaky and not show themselves until they're half way to where they are headed. I don't have much aluminum siding pieces that are that wide or long on hand and it's sort of a bear to work with when you have longer pieces of it - sharp edges, too! I think that zoysia rhizomes must go deeper than KBG. Some of the ones I've pulled out have been about 4" down, so I always went deeper just in case. If I use RU on the stolons that creep over the top of the barrier, won't it kill the grass that's actually in the lawn as well? I know that a spritz of RU likely won't kill the entire lawn, but will the grass on the lawn side of the barrier die off as well?

At least with my KBG, no--only the daughter rhizome dies, although I have no idea why. If forced to guess, I'd say it's because the parent plant is supplying the runner, not the other way around, so the RU never gets up into the main plant.

The only other solution for runners would be a decorative barrier high enough to stop them. I've never seen a decorative barrier that was both attractive and effective--they'll crawl between brickwork, so the only solution is a solid line.

MorpheusPA wrote:At least with my KBG, no--only the daughter rhizome dies, although I have no idea why. If forced to guess, I'd say it's because the parent plant is supplying the runner, not the other way around, so the RU never gets up into the main plant.

The only other solution for runners would be a decorative barrier high enough to stop them. I've never seen a decorative barrier that was both attractive and effective--they'll crawl between brickwork, so the only solution is a solid line.

makes total sense about the plant supplying the runner and not the other way around. Zoysia spreads through brick, concrete and just about anything else! Perhaps I'll go down with a barrier and up some sort of edging that's not too terribly hideous to look at. I wonder if it would work if I put a barrier in and then did a garden edge cut and filled with mulch inside the barrier. Not sure what they call those fancy cuts at the edges are that are angled and kind of deep. Think that would hold?

Those cuts tend to drop into themselves over time, and are a bit of a trip hazard (or at least they are for me in bifocals and terrible vision to begin with!) Plus a runner will happily skip right over it.

Simple's best, I think. Go with the non-hideous barrier and then work from there.

Thanks, Morph! Hope Santa brought you lots of new goodies for your lawn and gardens! I'm going to have to post pics of my shade garden on BL so I can get you and Andy to toss out some suggestions for me.

Santa brought me a nice fluffy robe to replace the one I've worn out and restitched so many times it looked like Frankenstein's Monster (comfort before style, however).