Monday, January 30, 2017

Weeds, Weeds, and More Weeds



Horticulture Hotline 1/30/17
  Bill Lamson-Scribner

Winter weeds seem to be in rare form this year. Chickweed is what I’m seeing most as a broadleaf weed and that annoying annual bluegrass is maintaining its place at the top of the grassy weeds division. Right now is the time to kill these weeds before they produce seed for next year’s crop.

With the warm winter, we have had, you will probably get your best results if you mow your lawn (and weeds), wait 2 or 3 days, apply a weed killer, then wait a week or two before you mow again. You want the weeds to be actively growing, so they absorb the control product. Then you want to give the weed time to translocate the active ingredient before you mow it again.

Henbit, clover, Florida Betony, lawn burweed (definitely want to kill before the burr is sticking your feet – Gamecocks call it Spurweed)), hairy bittercress, Carolina geranium, thistles, dandelion, and the list goes on… are some of the weeds being a pain in the grass.

Weeds are much easier to kill now while they are actively growing in the vegetative part of their life cycle then when they are in the reproductive part of their life cycle (usually March  / April here depending on the weather – this year seems a little early). Kill the weeds now! The PHD doctors have figure that one annual bluegrass plant produces 2500 viable seeds. Think about what happens if your weeds are not maintained for a year or two. In one year that is 6,250,000 weed seeds, after that my calculator errors out!

Your grass doesn’t usually like to be treated with herbicides while coming out of dormancy (in transition) either, so it is much better to control the weeds now while the grass is dormant.

With preemergent time for summer annuals coming up so quickly, I plan to treat for the winter weeds that are growing now and put out a preemerge at the same time. By putting out the pre and post emerge, I will prevent any sneaky late germinating winter weeds that will try to pop up and re-seed themselves this spring.

At Possum’s (and many other local stores) we have many different herbicides to meet your needs to kill your weeds!