Have you successfully gotten rid of foxtails?

My neighborhood has a lot of foxtails, lining all the pedestrian paths where people walk their dogs as well as in the community orchards. It seems that people don’t do anything about them until they start to get dry seed that’s so dangerous for dogs!

So anyway, I went to a talk on weeds today and asked how to manage foxtails without herbicides. The advice was to pull or hoe them out in the fall, as soon as they emerge in the rainy season, when they are 4 inches high.

I’m thinking about doing some test plots, getting emerging foxtails out and then overseeding with a winter cover crop (vetch, clover, California poppies) that can be mowed.

The neighbors have foxtails all over there yard. The Wife spends more time picking them out of the flower beds than she does with weeding and maintaining them. They will grow between and among the poppies as well as every thing else. Sometimes they will pop up in the raised beds, or pots with the Veggies. It is a pain in the a@#@#. We just pick them up or if they start to grow pull the out.

Mowing often and pulling or digging them up are the best methods unless there is a bunch in a place with nothing else; then Round-up is the best if you are so inclined.

I pull them as soon as I see them sprouting. I can spend hours doing this. Somehow they crept into my perennial garden and they are a beast to get rid of.

Smaller area here, so I pull them like crazy. Leave the dandelions, and pulling the oat grass seed heads and the foxtails as soon as I see them. No animals right now, but those are nasty weeds.

We had a whole bunch of foxtails this year and last. This year, we mowed them down with a weedwacker-like device (a lawn mower would be a lot faster, but we don't have a lawn), let them dry out, and then put black plastic on top. They actually seem pretty good at adding organic matter and structure to the soil. That soil was pretty loose and dried out quickly before, but now it looks great (as good or better than adding peat moss).

If the black plastic were easy to take up in the spring (which it's not), it might be nice to let a bunch of foxtails grow there, mow it down, and lay it over again. However, it wouldn't be good for the neighbors.