Question form Jake: Fox tail has taken over my lawn in the back yard. I have a grazing tortoise that lives back there so using toxic weed killer is out of the question. Is there any solution? What would you suggest?
Answer from Pat: Several grasses of the Alopecurus, Bromus, Hordeum, and Setaria genuses share the common name of “foxtail grass” or “spear grass”. I don’t know which one you have, but all are hazardous to animals. Wall barley or false barley (Hordeum murinum), is one of the worst. All of the foxtail grasses endanger longhaired dogs and many other animals since they become entangled in the animals’ hair, traveling through it and finally piercing through the skin into the flesh and also into animals’ ears, noses, and eyes. These foxtails cause miserable pain and suffering to animals and even in some cases they can cause death. Whereas turtles don’t have hair, foxtail grasses, bromes, barleys, and millets can all get up under the legs of turtles, under the shell, and enter their flesh, causing inflammation and disease. They can also be dangerous if ingested.
My recommendation is first to treat all the clumps of foxtail with a non-chemical, non-poisonous weed killer. One possibility is to use straight vinegar (a strong but non-poisonous acid.) Simply pour it on the roots of the plants. Another suggestion is to use human urine (a strong but non-poisonous alkaline.) Pee in a bucket and pour it straight onto the roots. You know how dogs can cause unsightly spots on your lawn. Well, use that technology yourself by doing the same. You may find this advice off-putting but this solution is free. It costs nothing and furthermore it is safe.
You need to get rid of the foxtails as quickly as possible so they don’t reseed. So, after using an organic weed killer of your choice to kill all the foxtail grass, then pull out or hoe out the clumps, bag them and send them to the dump. or use a mower or weedwacker to mow off all their tops along with their flowering heads. (If you can see the flowering heads of the foxtails your lawn must be way too long and maybe too tall to use an ordinary mower, so that’s why I suggested a weed wacker.) Do not compost the remains these since the seeds will find any way they can to proliferate. The chances are your compost won’t be hot enough to destroy them. So bag the dead plants and send them to the trash. Check the lawn after mowing and rake it carefully to make sure you have removed all the heads.
After mowing, continue treating with your organic weed killer until all the clumps have turned straw-colored and are completely dead. Then pull or hoe them out. A long-handled, goose-hook weeder works well for this job. If you used the alkaline method you can balance the soil again by applying the acid solution. If you used the acid method, straighten it out with the alkaline and water it in. (A soil test will tell you if you succeeded, but many gardeners just pour a little vinegar on spots made by dogs and then water it in.)
Reseed the lawn with an appropriate grass for your area or replace with sod. (See the Lawn section in the monthly chapter for March in my organic book beginning on page 129 for ideas for drought-resistant lawn grasses.) Once you have renewed your lawn, fertilize it regularly to keep it growing thickly so weeds won’t invade it. Also, treat it once or twice a year with an organic pre-emergent herbicide such as Corn Gluten Meal to keep the weed seeds from germinating, but don’t do this prior to seeding or of course your new lawn won’t grow.
Related Articles:
- Foxtail not Fox Glove
- A Lawn with Weeds and Mowing Lawns Without a Catcher
- Drought-resistant Lawn Substitute for People and Dogs
- Soil And How To Fix It
- Question about Grasses
Our whole back yard (rented house) is nothing but fox tail, it is awful. Can I just spray the entire yard with vinegar, everything is totally weeds, fox tails galore. Thanks
In all my years of living in California this weedy grass has never been as rampant as it has been this year after all the rain. Those rains must have woken up every dormant seed buried in the ground for many years and the temperatures had something to do with it too.
Vinegar won’t help. Foxtails are annual plants. They are going to die anyway and leave their seeds for other years. The only thing to do is to pull out the plants, bag them and send them to the dump with your green waste. I don’t even recommend composting at this point since I fear the seeds will live to sprout another year.
I don’t know what your finances permit but I will tell you what I did. I was lucky to find a reliable man, called Juan, who is willing to work for $10.00 an hour. I had him pull out all the foxtails on the road edges, bag them, and rake and clean up the ground. I had no major problem inside my garden because I regularly cover all bare ground with mulch.
One of my neighbors with a large garden had a very bad problem with foxtails under all the trees and shrubs in his garden because he does not mulch the ground. I suggested he hire Juan. He hired Juan for two days to pull out the foxtails. My gardener pulled the ones that were on a steep bank adjacent to my property. I have been paying these men to pull foxtail grasses and other weeds out of adjoining property where the residents are elderly and cannot afford to have them removed. That way the seeds won’t end up back in my garden.
Our soil is mostly sandy so these grasses are easy to pull out. However, if the roots stick tight in hard ground, such as adobe, the plants will be hard to pull out. Then you could weed-wack them leaving the roots in the ground. They won’t sprout again, and rake them up and bag the foxtails but be sure you do this soon so the seed heads don’t open up releasing the seeds so they get into the soil.
After getting rid of these weeds from your rented property, can you afford to order a load of mulch to cover the bare ground? Four inches of organic mulch on top of the ground covers weed seeds so they cannot germinate. Mulching the ground gets rid of most weed problems. Tree trimmers will often deliver a truckload of woodchips and chopped leaves from their chippers for nothing. It saves them a trip to the dump. This is excellent mulch, in many ways better than what you buy, since you know it’s clean. I particularly like podocarpus chips. Just spread it all over the bare soil about 3 or 4 inches deep. If there are any big chunks of wood in it, I just toss those aside under the shrubberies where they gradually rot and add to the organic content of the soil.
Awesome advice. Our Brussels puppy just had a foxtail removed from behind his eye. We have Round-Up but I read it was bad for pets. I will try the vinegar method! Thank you!!
Purchase a gallon of white vinegar and pour it on the weeds as necessary, wetting the green tops as well as the roots. So glad to hear you were helped by this post.
I am glad you found the foxtail in time to have it safely removed from your puppy’s eye.
Thank you very much for response. I follow your instructions and let you
know how it goes. I am going to order your new book for some hints for the
rest of my garden.
Very kind of you to reply and I will welcome news of your attempts to eradicate foxtail grass. Thanks loads for sending for the book. I hope it solves all your garden problems and contributes to your happiness in and with your garden.