HELP....Weeding on a LARGE scale with a SMALL scale budget !

We grow daylilies for resale in our field in raised beds and the weeds are driving us nuts. We sprayed Ornamec for the grass type weeds (one of the few herbicides that will not kill the daylilies) but only had moderate success. We mulched heavily with straw for weed control, but we managed to sprout not only more weeds but also oats...NO GOOD !! Last summer, we hand weeded relentlessly until we finally lost heart and then there was suddenly more weeds than daylilies !!
Please, please, please!! Any help is greatly appreciated.
We do not have a usable tractor to use for cultivating, but we do have a Troy Bilt and a small Mantis tiller (we love it by the way). We can till between the rows for weed control, but tilling close to the plants will injure the roots or even rip out the plants. We are at a loss. We can not physically spend our entire summer hand weeding or pay someone to do it. It would make the whole operation unprofitable. Are there any commercial flower growers out there who have conquered this horrible problem in an economical way? Would ground fabric be a viable solution?
We are posting this in a couple of forums for the greatest chance of "picking" your collective wonderful brains !
The photo below is before the weeds took over.
Thanks again,
Ron and Gloria

After going through with tiller, how about laying down layers of newspaper or old carpeting to keep the rows clean.
Any chance of hiring students to help between the rows, sometimes it is hard for kids to get summer jobs? Pulling out weeds, after watering might make the job easier for them. Would a broad leaf herbicide help? I hate to suggest, due to human and nature concerns, but maybe something organic? How about trading some plants for weeding?

This message was edited Thursday, Feb 20th 11:58 PM

This message was edited Thursday, Feb 20th 11:58 PM

Any way you could buy Preen? You should be able to buy it wholesale I would think since you are in the business. It has been a life saver for me. A huge box is only $20 and you just spread it thinly over your dirt. It works like a miracle for me. I thought neighbors were walking by and just throwing handfuls of grass seed in my garden.....I had so much growing........it would take me 1 day all day every weekend just trying to keep up. Then my back went and I found Preen............ truly a miracle. Just remember it can't differentiate between good seed or bad........... so my volunteers are gone.......but the trade off was worth it for me.

Silly
Ornamec will only work if the weeds (grasses only) are
rather small and not under stress due to temperature, etc.
Have you positively identified the problem weed as one that
Ornamec will control?

An alternative herbicide is Round-Up, applied with a wick or
mop type applicator, being very careful to avoid touching
any parts of the lilies.
There is also the old stand-by, Steel, in the form of a hoe.
Once you get them cleaned up, you can use trifluralin as
a preemergence herbicide.
Good Luck ?
Bud

I remember reading about corn gluten meal being a good pre-emergent. Anyone know about this? It wouldn't help with weeds which spread by root, but it might help cut down some. It's supposed to be very cheap, too.

This message was edited Friday, Feb 21st 12:41 PM

Have you considered planting buckwheat as a cover crop? It supposedly can smother out grass weeds, but it shouldn't hurt the lilies. You might try it on a newly-weeded row to see how it does compared to other methods; t couldn't hurt anything for sure and it's pretty cheap to buy the bulk seed.

I have used corn-gluten pre-emergent with huge success for a couple of years in our lawn. The only difficulty is locating it locally. I apply it in early to mid-August, just before the fall rains begin which trigger the winter annuals to sprout. It breaks down fairly rapidly though; it is spent after 2-3 months so it would need to be re-applied a couple times per year.

You might consider starting a new field for your daylilies; after ridding the area of all perennial weeds, use a pre-emergent to keep new ones from sprouting.

I have also successfully used buckwheat to eliminate weeds from a vegetable garden; but to be most successful it needs to be done when the field is fallow for a season or year. The repeated tilling exhausts perennial weeds, and causes all the dormant seeds below ground to sprout and then die after they are tilled 25 days later, in order to re-plant new buckwheat.

I have also used the method of covering a plot with clear plastic for 1-2 months during the summer. It kills everything (plants, insects, disease organisms) for 6-8" below ground. But again, this would be a method to clear a new field, rather than helping to clear your present growing field.

sillylily,
i don't have anything to add to all these great suggestions but i wanted to ask if that was your farm in the picture? it is wonderful. i live in suburbia and am a farmgirl at heart. my grandparents imigrated to this country and were tobacco farmers here in the connecticut valley, of massachusetts many years ago now. i have always held farms close to my heart.
good luck with your problem. i have found things like preen to be worth every back breaking penny. :)
debi z

Hi Debbie,
Thanks for the kind words about the farm. We still have a ton of work to do (both inside and outside) on this 140 year old, 102 acre homestead. It had been rented for the past 30 years and became very run down...not abused, just neglected. We just bought it about four years ago. If you are near Boston and its high real estate prices, it might amaze you to know that it cost only a little over a $1,000 an acre around here! We are about 60 miles north of Pittsburgh.

As for weeding the daylilies, we wish to thank everyone for their wonderful suggestions. If we do not hear anymore in a week or so, we will let you know what we are going to try this spring. Thanks again!

Here is a before and after pic of our little spring house. We replaced the roof and redid the outside. It was a small enough project to give us confidence to tackle the bigger jobs.
Ron and Gloria
Here is the before..

This message was edited Saturday, Feb 22nd 9:39 PM

Here is the after...

Oh my gosh..that was a great job! Sure is a nice looking area.

what a great job on that little spring house you did. I just love it and think my granddaughter would love it as her playhouse.

You might consider laying roofing material between the rows and then cover with pea gravel, or mulch, or some other type of covering to put on top of the roofing material.Don't know if laying a good covering of straw would help or not,but I used to lay straw around tomatoe plants to help with weed control. Will have nice paths to walk between the rows and will block out the weeds.

Once you till up the ground and then till again a second time, you have more of a chance of having more weeds coming up because you are stirring up the weed seed so by tilling twice, brings the weed seeds back to the top.

This message was edited Saturday, Feb 22nd 10:21 PM

WOW...... if your springhouse is any indication your home and land will be fantastic! Great work!! Please keep sharing your pictures...... I just would love to see the conversion!

Glad to see this thread. Didn't realize they are so hard to keep clean. I planned on starting a bunch this spring. I think I will use a different approach than I was planning.
The roofing paper idea seem's like it should work. Sam's club has a commerical grade landscape fabic at a very low price, 200 ft roll for about price others get for a small roll, and better quality. We used this on our greenhouse tomatoes years back. It lasted about three years, but we didn't have it covered either. Maybe covered with gravel would last forever.
This picture was shortly after it was put down.
ßernie

Love!!!! your cute little spring house!
TLC

Nobody has mentioned a scuffle hoe, also known as a stirrup hoe because that is what it looks like. It is much easier to use than a regular hoe so the work goes much faster. You use a back and forth motion and it really takes care of the weeds, cutting them off just below the soil level. Your daylily roots would be deeper than that.

I once had a similar problem with wild onions. They were embedded so deeply that you could't pull them out. I put on some rubber gloves, made a solution using Round Up and put some in a small plastic bottle containing a spray head. Then sprayed some on my glove and wiped it on the onion stems. After they died they almost fell out. Have also done that for Wild Bermuda Grass. Just don't get sloppy with it.

Good idea, Woody. I've heard of putting a cloth glove over a rubber glove and putting the Round-Up on the cloth glove; that way it stays on there and your skin has the rubber glove between it and the Round-up, too.

About paths...I've seen people take carpet remnants and even used carpet and cut it for paths. The ones I saw were winding paths, but it'd work for straight ones, too. They put it down, then put their choice of mulch, pea gravel, etc. over top.

These are great ideas for weed control. I must confess a couple of days ago I called someone out to give us a quote on weeding our backyard. I feel really bad about this because I do love to weed, but I work for a CPA firm and am working 6-7 days a week. Well the guy told me it would be $180 to weed our small back yard. Well my DH had a fit and is going to help now, so I feel much better, somehow I felt strange having someone working in my yard. Does anyone have a good ground cover they use after the weeding is done?

I don't believe that black plastic has been mentioned. It not only helps to warm up the soil, but it most definitely cuts down on the weeds! We ALWAYS use it in our veggie garden, pathways and flower beds. I would much rather be picking flowers and/or veggies, than hoeing weeds!! Simply cut an "X" in the plastic, where you wish to plant your bulbs or plants, loosen the soil and add the amendments. As the bulb grows, its foliage & flowers will sprout through the "X" in the plastic, and the weeds will be kept to a minimum. Don't forget to weight down the black plastic with rocks or other heavy objects. You don't want it to become wind borne in a storm.

A couple downsides I've found with black plastic:

1) It doesn't allow air or moisture to pass through, so it can really make a nasty mess underneath (I know first-hand after pulling up yards of landscape fabric and plastic in the beds here, and coming face to face with putrifying, slimy, rock-hard clay soil - ewwwwwww!!!!)

2) If you're expecting/wanting plants to grow and expand in size, plastic is going to constrict that growth, or (if it does allow the new growth to break through) it's too weak to keep weeds from doing the same thing.

And - as far as I know, black plastic does not warm soil. Yes, it absorbs heat, (and white or light colors reflects heat.) But the heat doesn't pass it through to the soil.

Which makes sense if you think about it - if you put a black piece of cardboard between you and the sun, the cardboard will get hot, but if you're in its shade, you're nice and cool. JHMO :o)

Ron and Gloria,
Down here in NC, there is a local grower just south or Raleigh in the suburbs that grows several acres of daylillies for sale in the summer. They have the town truck in hundreds of cubic yards of leaves every fall and spread them amongst all their beds. Not a weed in sight. If you have a municipal yard waste facility close buy (Pittsburgh?), someone could truck in the leaves for the trucking fee. Secondly, down here in NC, we have bermudagrass and centipede, both of which spread by above ground runners and are very invasive. I have found that Sorghum-sudangrass is a great summer/frost sensitive cover crop that will out-compete these grasses. You could plant it around June 30 where you are and probably get a 3 ft stand by the end of July. It loves heat and will grow about 6-8 ft by september. Better yet, if you cut it down with about 4"-6" of stubble left, it regrows till frost and also will send roots deeper into the ground to improve your soils tilth. One word of caution, it is toxic to horses. It is also drought resistant and you can interplant it with buckwheat, cowpeas, soybeans. Many people up north grow it for beef cows to graze (I'm originally from western new york) but it is also toxic after frost to livestock (frosting the tissues makes prussic acid ). Pennington seed calls it "Summergrazer" and other companies will call it "Sudex". Seed is cheap, about $20 for 50lbs/acre. Great crop for smothering weeds and producing summer organic matter.

Sorry, I called it "black plastic", but meant to say "landscape fabric". We use it in our veggie garden, flower beds, and shrub borders, 'cause I HATE WEEDING!!! The landscape fabrice is breathable, it lets through moisture, and I cut a "X" in the fabric with a pair of scissors when planting shrubs, veggies, flowers.
I've read just the opposite, Terry. Many articles state that it definitely warms up the soil. I guess this will need to be researched further. I've never had a problem with "weak" plants. They've always grown "big & strong".

Before I forget, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" SillyLilly! Hope you are enjoying this beau-ti-ful day and are celebrating with family & friends!!!

Have used newspaper in layers for four years now and the beds are doing well.Am still pulling up black weed mat from years ago and would never use it again.Cant hardly dig the beds without choppin up a worm or two now that I changed to paper.We have always had nut grass and it really does take care of it.We do put peat and shreaded bark on top and I try to let it sit for a while.But... sometimes I just plant right in and it works.Just add a little something when you plant.

I agree about the newspaper - it breaks down nicely and you don't have to tear through heavy weed fabric. As with the weed fabric, though, you must kill the vegetation beneath it prior to installation, or give it PLENTY of time to do so naturally...Otherwise you will, as we found out, end up with all kinds of weeds and grass coming up through the planting holes you make! Ugh, ugh, ugh. Double work then.