You put a lot of care, time and labor to make a beautiful lawn. Growing a thick and healthy lawn is the best way to prevent weeds but they still creep in. Crabgrass and dandelions patches appear out of nowhere. You are so tired of the regular maintenance of pulling out weeds. The good news is that there are several simple steps that you can take to control the weeds in your yard.
1. Identify the weeds
Lawn weeds belong to one of three categories:
Grassy Weed – leaves look like grass blades. Examples are Crabgrass, foxtail, annual bluegrass and quackgrass.
Broadleaf Weed – leaves that are broad and flat. Not grassy or needle-like.
Examples are: dollarweed, dandelion, clover, ground ivy (creeping Charlie), oxalis, chickweed, henbit, plantain and thistle.
Grass-Like Weed – it looks somewhat like grass in appearance, but the leaves may be triangular or tube-like and hollow, not flat like a grass blade. Examples are: Nutsedge, wild onion are wild garlic.
Now you know what you are dealing with.
2. Control weeds
Next, take care of getting rid of the existing weeds in your yard. It depends on what you are dealing with on how to proceed.
Light Weeds – you can try hand-pulling them. Annual weeds, like crabgrass and chickweed, tend to have shallow roots and are usually easy to pull out. Good luck if you have perennial weeds, like dandelion and thistle. They have deep, extensive roots and are harder to control by hand-pulling the weed will grow back easily. It’s easiest to hand-pull weeds when they are young and your soil is moist. You can spot treat with a ready-to-use product.
Heavy Weeds – if you have more weeds than grass in your yard, you can still get the lawn you want. There are multiple products to use with your particular lawn and type of weed to handle the job.
Once you get rid of the existing weeds, then you need to do something to reverse the process and consider weed prevention methods.
3. Weed prevention
There are multiple products to choose from to put down on your yard to prevent weeds from ever growing. Either talk with your home and garden store about the specific products or bring in a professional lawn company that has the experience to make sure your lawn looks amazing all year round. They offer convenience and no guess work or labor.
A few other tips for preventing weeds are:
- Feeding your lawn regularly especially during the growing season. You can also give your lawn a boost by aerating or dethatching as needed.
- Set your Mower to a higher setting so the grass grows taller and thicker to shade the soil, so weed seeds are less able to sprout and grow.
- Watering deeply helps your lawn grow deeper roots so it can better chock out weeds. Frequent, shallow waterings encourage shallow root growth. Your grass will suffer during periods of heat and drought, causing thin and bare spots that weeds will take advantage of.
- Make sure you have plenty of mulch down to protect your plants by keeping the soil cool and moist and depriving weeds of light. Use about 2 inches deep of mulch. If you use more than 3 inches deep, you can deprive soil of oxygen and kill the plants.
Don’t find weed’s attractive? Get Proactive!
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