Ground Cover

[joshuaw]

I have three rows of six vines that I planted this year, and they are doing great. I have them in grow tubes, so I have been using Round Up to control weed grown, and to keep grass from growing back.

With that said, Im looking for a good ground cover. My vineyard occupies about half of my small city lot, and I have plans to put in a nice patio covering the other half to completely eliminate the need to mow the backyard. What should I be looking at to put in the vineyard area so I dont have bare dirt encouraging weed growth? I can do traditional wood mulch for about $250 (delivered), but that will obviously fade over time and have to be refreshed.

Any suggestions?

 

[Runningwolf]

Keep in mind if it's a hot dry summer you'll wish you didn't have ground cover drinking up any water your grapes could use. On the other hand if it's a wet summer a ground cover would help the vines from drowning. Farmers around here are either growing grass between the rows or round upping it depending on the season. Seems like half the vinyards are covered with mustard for some reason.

 

[joshuaw]

Im not sure I even want ground cover that would be living, Im thinking more from an aesthetic point of view. I really, really dont want to have to mow back there, but I also cant have it looking over grown. Since I have a small area, I have the benefit of being able to water, if need be.

Could I put landscaping pebbles in that area once I have established trunks? Im not sure how much it would cost me to put down, but it would definitely be a one time cost instead of a yearly thing.

 

[spaniel]

Pebbles may make it look better, but you will still have stuff try to grow in them and need to spray. I finally got tired of wasting time beating back the cover and just started spraying...for the first time today I put down a residual with the glyphosate at a rate safe for grapes; theoretically I will be down to one spraying each spring after this.