Beginner Gardening: Raised bed taken over by invasive roots., 0 by

wrote:
max,
I am sorry you are having such a bad experience as a first time gardener. That is discouraging.

I don't have raised beds but when I broke ground for each of my flower beds, I had to fight some kind of weedy grass. The roots looks like what is in your photo. It had an extensive root system that travels underground and sends up grass blades every 6".

I first killed anything green that grew with Round Up. Then I cover the soil with black plastic extending and held over the edges of the border and left it over the summer to allow summer heat to fry anything still alive.

The following May (2014) I removed the plastic. Everything at soil line was dead. I handug and turned the soil over. That is when I found small, live grass roots. I'm glad that I didn't till or I would have had chopped up roots with more work. Even tiny roots would sprout.

As I dug and re-dugged down to 12", I removed every tiny piece of root I could find. It was time consuming but had to be done. Before leveling, I added buckets of rotten horse manure and turned it over. My DD and DSIL have 6 horses so there is a never-ending supply.

I allowed the soil to lay a bit before planting to see if any weeds grew. Finally, June 2014 I planted my 117 daylily seedlings.

Photo taken September 2014, still weed-free.