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!
