Goodbye bermuda grass pathways

Last fall, we decided to take out the last of the grass in our backyard. We had mixed feelings about this because although the grass was attractive when green and nice to walk on barefoot, it was time consuming to mow and edge and futile to keep from invading the raised beds.

We sprayed the grass with glyphosphate, which only works when the grass is green and growing, last fall. Although I'm not a big fan of chemicals and prefer avoiding their use when possible, there are times when they are necessary and this is one of them. Other methods, such as solarizing the soil with clear plastic, aren't as effective in getting rid of the grass and tend to kill off beneficial soil organisms.  Here's an article from the Maricopa Cooperative Extension Service giving more details about the safety and efficiency of this method, along with more detailed instructions.

The glyphosphate did a pretty good jub of killing the grass, because we only saw a few patches of green this spring, which we resprayed. We then scalped the dead grass as closely as possible, applied pre emergent herbicide, and covered the pathways with 3/8 inch screened gravel.  Rain is predicted for the weekend (the first in over two months) so hopefully we'll get enough to thoroughly water in the pre-emergent.