Selective Herbicide

My growing beds are overrun with crabgrass and bermuda grass. I'm at the point where I'm having to do a couple hours of weeding a week. Is there a selective herbicide that is safe for junipers? ( The juniper beds are the worst, my pine and maple beds are easier to control)

Selective herbicides are designed to eliminate broad-leaved weeds in the lawn. There are specific chemicals to prevent and kill crabgrass, but read the label carefully to see if they are safe around junipers. Don't know about Bermuda grass.
Your trees that like moisture might benefit from mulching to keep out weeds, but the junipers might not like that. I suggest you consult your local extension agent.
Iris

I think it is a bad idea to use a herbicide around plants you want to keep. As Iris says there are few herbicides that kill only grass. Most specialized herbicides go after broad-leaved plants. Oddly, that includes juniper.

But even if you sprayed inches awy from the targeted grass, fumes (the smell!) are capable of doing severe damage to plants above and near them -- even on a windless day.

Grass roots are (usually) quite shallow. A hoe and a rake should be a fairly easy way to keep grass down. I know it is hard to do on an urban lot, but keeping a couple of feet netween the trees planted in the gound makes this easier. And then, you can mulch heavily, even around junipers (keeping a ring of free soil around each base.

However, junipers in a landscaped lot are often mulched up to he trunks and they seem to do fine.

Crabgrass pays no attention to mulch. It grows right through it. My biggest problem with weeding is that when I pull weeds near a tree it upsets the roots. I've even uprooted trees when a crab runner went under a small juniper. The crab roots are deeper than the tree roots, about 1 foot deep. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

If you feed and water your trees properly the only one bothered by the weeds is you.

Forgive the religious angle but the Gospel this week was the parable of the weeds and the wheat. The weeds are discovered growing up among the wheat and the farmer says leave them both until we are ready to harvest the wheat, then we will pull up both, burn the weeds and "gather the wheat into my barn."

Preston, GOOGLE ENVOY over the top herbicide. It's a common herbicides used in nurseries.
Wood[i]

Every time you pull up a weed, you uncover more weed seeds that start to germinate. With that in mind, I'd recommend a combination of mulching and herbicides. I've used this method on turf to prepare it for planting a perennial or veggie garden, but I don't see why it wouldn't work for you in your situation. First, you need to wrap your trees in plastic to protect them. Then, spray the weeds thoroughly with roundup. Wait a week, then cover the entire nursery area with newsprint, 10 pages thick, making sure the pages are overlapping. Finally, apply a 2-3 inch layer of mulch to the top of the newsprint. That should take care of your weed problem for this year, assuming your mulch doesn't have weed seeds in it.

Billy M. Rhodes wrote:If you feed and water your trees properly the only one bothered by the weeds is you.

Thanks for the quick reply. The problem is that it IS well watered and fertilized. In a week the weeds are as tall or taller than the trees and I'm worried about shading out and losing lower branches.

Gary, Dave, thanks for the advice, over the top looks like just what I'm looking for. Bagging and using round up sounds pretty good too. I've been using inexpensive sheets of masonite in a similar fashion to the newspaper technique, but newspaper would compost and till in when I'm done with the bed.