Gardening and Horticulture - Keeping out the weeds

When planting a native grass seed mixture into raised beds, is there any way to keep undesirable herbaceous species from blowing into the bed and taking root? I was thinking of using a frame with fine screen, but I know that grass needs full sunlight to thrive.

Hi Texastrees,

How about planting the grasses in individual pots and transferring them to the raised beds? I'm not into grasses, but I'm sure you'd have weeds coming up in the soil. How would you tell which grasses you wanted and which (weeds/grass) you didn't? Some might be easy to identify, but I can't imagine that all of them would be.

Then you could keep pulling/hoeing weeds out of the top 1" of your raised bed. By the time your grasses were big enough to transplant, you shouldn't have a problem with weeds.

Gami

Cover the seeded area with burlap. It'll grow fine to several inches and continue through the holes. Remove the burlap when the grass is established.

This works fine for turfgrasses.

Thanks Gami and Sled. As a traditional forester, I still have a lot to learn about this "urban forestry".