July 2004

If your lawn shows any broadleaf seeds, don’t kill the grass trying to dispose of the weeds. You could lose the entire lawn applying liquid or granular herbicides from now into September. Only when air temperatures are below 80 degrees is it safe to deal with broadleaf weeds and grassy weeds like crabgrass, goosegrass and wiregrass (muhlenbergia). You can’t spray weeds in the afternoon or at night without destroying healthy turf in the process.

The safe approach is spot-treating weeds, grassy and otherwise, early in the morning when no rain (or your irrigation) will follow. If you haven’t done so up to now, your first investment is buying a new hand-pump sprayer with a plastic tank; generally, good sprayers are available in the $20-$30 price range. Buy one, then print the word WEEDS in large letters on both sides of the tank. Use this only for spraying weeds of any kind. You need another hand-pump sprayer marked “OTHER” for everything else (applying fungicides, insecticides, and other products). Whenever you use either sprayer, remember to wash (flush) it thoroughly after each use.

With the weed control products available to homeowners today, you don’t have to be able to identify broadleaf weeds when it comes to using the right product. The herbicide called “Trimec” eliminates all the guesswork about controlling broadleaf weeds. Trimec weed-killer is a combination of herbicides that kills 99 percent of the weeds we experience in our gardens. Finding Trimec at the nursery or garden shop isn’t like looking for a winning lottery ticket. Seek out the manager at the nursery and ask him to show you his Trimec-based liquid weed killers. Yes, there are granular Trimec weed killers, too, but you don’t want to use them in hot summer temperatures because you could kill grass in the process. Finally, remember not to mow the grass for at least three days before your expected spraying of the weeds.

When should you spot-treat weeds with a hand-pump sprayer? Before you hit the pillow at night, check your local weather forecast. If no rain is forecast, or less than 30 percent, plan on spot-treating weeds early the next morning. What’s early? Try for 7 to 9 a.m. Don’t go overboard mixing oceans of weed-killer. How much spray do you think you will need? You can probably get by with a little less. Start with a quart solution. Check the label and use one-quarter of what’s recommended. Add water to the tank, the Trimec, and then secure the cover before pumping up. Adjust the nozzle for the finest misting spray possible. Remember, tiny droplets stay in place when you spray. Some weeds have glossy, slippery leaves, so you should consider adding a liquid surfactant so your spray stays in place and doesn’t run off. Remember to flush the tank when you’re through.

Are there better times to spray weeds than others? Certainly, so maybe you should explore these options first. You don’t want to kill good grass when you’re spraying weeds, even in the morning, so try to target your spraying the day after a heavy gully-washer. Rain, lots of it, removes the stress on grass plants, so much so that you can apply your Trimec the next morning without harming the lawn. Forget soaking the lawn a day before you attack weeds because it’s just not practical. You would need a half-inch of water everywhere on the lawn to relieve any stress conditions. You’d be billed not only for the water, but the sewer charge as well if you don’t have a separate meter for sprinkling. A half-inch of water over a thousand square feet totals 312 gallons. Bide your time until the gully-washer comes, then spray the next morning.

What if you have crabgrass, then what? If you knew the dangers of crabgrass on your lawn, you’d never let an April go by without applying a granular pre-emergent crabgrass control product to your sunny lawn. These products are inexpensive and readily available, so why not make use of them? The liability of having crabgrass is nothing you have ever experienced in your life. One crabgrass plant produces 60 thousand seeds in late summer. Ten crabgrass plants send 600,000 seeds sprawling on your lawn and garden starting in late August and September. If you have goosegrass (once called silver crabgrass because the runners exiting the soil have flecks of silver on the white tissue), one weed generates 40 thousand seeds in late summer.

How do you destroy crabgrass before it goes to seed in late summer? This is a loaded question because your lawn hangs in the balance. If, if you don’t do things right, you could lose everything in one fell swoop, including the crabgrass and goosegrass. The trouble is that the products that control crabgrass during the heat of summer don’t warn you of the consequences if you don’t abide by the rules. Forget shopping at chain stores because you’ll probably use the wrong product and kill the lawn in the process. Begin by not cutting the grass for three or more days before you deal with the crabgrass. We suggest and strongly recommend the best cure for crabgrass: Bonide Crabgrass & Weed Killer. The pint container contains MSMA for crabgrass control (the one and only way to deal with crabgrass) and some Trimec just in case you also have broadleaf weeds. The pint will treat 5,000 square feet of turfgrass. Check the label so you use the proper rate with your dial-up hose-end sprayer. You want to spray in the evening, but check to be sure no rain will follow overnight. For safety’s sake, wait until a day after a gully-washer, and then put crabgrass in limbo the next evening. Remember to move the deflector “down” at the end of the nozzle. A repeat spray 4-to-7 days later will end crabgrass for the year!

Where to find Bonide Crabgrass & Weed Killer? During weekday business hours, call Bonide at 315-736-8231 and ask to speak with someone in sales. Tell them where you live and that you want to know where Bonide Crabgrass and Weed Killer is available in your area!

Your sunny and shady lawns have gone off-color. Why? Should you fertilize or what?
Forget fertilizer! If you have Milorganite on hand and didn’t spread it on the lawn in June, then put it down the day after you cut the lawn. Disregard the application rate on the label. For sunny lawns, apply 10 pounds of Milorganite (and only this) for a thousand square feet. For shady lawns, apply 5 pounds for a thousand square feet. If you don’t have milorganite, you have other options to consider.

Blazing hot temperatures play havoc with turfgrass. When soil temperatures climb above 95 degrees, grasses have an impossible time keeping their color. There’s an easy explanation for what happens. Remember that grasses stay nice and green because leaf blades are manufacturing chlorophyll. For chlorophyll to happen, grass roots must have access to aluminum and iron in the soil. These minerals must be inside every plant, grass and otherwise, if the plant is to produce chlorophyll. However, when soil temperatures get into the mid 90’s, plant roots cannot take up iron from the soil. Aluminum molecules are there, but iron is not. The result: plants can’t make chlorophyll, so leaves and leaf blades turn pale green.

What can you do to make iron available to your lawn? What about other plants? This really isn’t a problem because chemists solved this problem a half-century ago. All you need is some chelated (key-lated) iron. You’ve probably heard of it before, but maybe never understood what chelated iron is all about. Well, you can have your green lawns all summer long if you put chelated iron to work. One of the first liquid chelated iron products 50 years ago was Sequestrine, a water-soluble powder. You mixed the powder in water, then applied it to the lawn. Over the past 40 years, a host of chelated iron products, mostly liquid, have come on market to help professionals and consumers maximize chlorophyll production by plants during the heat of summer. Today, chelated iron finds application in flower beds, hanging baskets, shrubs, trees, and lawns.

Where can you find chelated iron? Forget jumping in the car and shopping for chelated iron. Instead, get on the phone and dial 1-800-821-7925 for PBI Gordon. Ask to speak with Sandi Genz in sales. Tell her where you live and ask her to give you the name and phone number of a distributor near you. Tell Sandi you want to order a 2½-gallon container of Ferromec liquid iron, 15-0-0. The price will shock you: between $25-$30 delivered to your front door. Your next call is to the distributor, so have a credit card handy so they can process your order. When the Ferromec arrives, use your hose-end sprayer to put the chelated iron to use. Apply at a rate of 4 ounces per 1,000 square feet just before the next gully-washer.