Author name: Paul Darr

Some of you all are having issues with Winter weeds taking over your yard as we are in the back and forth weather prior to spring. Lets takes some steps to clear that up.

1. Mow the lawn. Even if the grass doesn’t need it, if weeds are going crazy cutting the lawn will remove portions of the weeds to include flowers and seeds and help to reduce their growth.
2. Apply a pre-emergent herbicide. This will help stop new seeds from germinating and has shown to also slow the growth of existing weeds.
3. Apply a liquid post-emergent herbicide like Spectracide, Bayer Advanced, or Image. I find Spectracide works best on broad leaf weeds, Bayer Advaced works best on Crabgrass, and Image is the best at killing Nutsedge. Spectricide is the cheapest but it’s worth paying for one of the others if you have a particular issue with crab grass or Nutsedge. Also look at the ten day forecast when you do this and make sure it’s dry for a few days so that the herbicide isn’t immediately washed out.

I wouldn’t recommend putting down fertilizer quite yet as lawns are still experiencing reduced growth for the most part from the winter. If you tackle the weeds now though your lawn will be ready to take off when we start really getting into Spring.

The first recommendation for this month is to turn off your irrigation systems if you use one. The reason being is that SAWS charges sewer service charges for all metered residential connections. Those charges are computed on the basis of average water usage for 90 days during three consecutive billing periods beginning after November 15 and ending on or about March 15 of each year. You can see more information about this at the SAWS website. So the key is to reduce water usage now to reduce your year round bill.

Second recommendation is to mow your yard to the height you want for the winter. Some of you haven’t mowed your lawn for a few months. Please please just mow it to hide the weeds that have been growing. When mowing you’ll notice growth has slowed greatly as lawns are lowering energy and getting ready to hibernate for the winter. So please mow it but don’t take it down to the dirt as it won’t be growing back to quick.

Third recommendation is about what you should and shouldn’t add to your yards at this point. Don’t use a granular fertilizer as lawns are ready to hibernate and that will feed weeds more than anything. If you want to hold onto green for a bit use a liquid spray fertilizer as a supplement. Use a pre-emergent fertilizer now to help prevent winter weeds. This will help into the winter and spring. If you see birds rooting around like I did, then use your normal yard spray to eliminate the grubs, army worms, ect. they are feasting on that are feasting on your lawn.

That’s it for now. Leave a comment with any questions you might have for any details I missed.