By Dr. Robert Moon
Have you every wondered where all those weeds growing in your bermudagrass lawn have come from? Well, look not further than the open farm land all around the Harvest Development. Unfortunately, many of these weeds left seed behind to infest your yard.
To control these weeds, you have to attack back in two ways. One, you can control them as they start to germinate by using a pre-emergent herbicide. Pre-emergent needs to be applied in mid February for spring weeds, mid May for summer weeds and mid September for winter weeds. You can find products called Preen or Halts for all of these applications. When you apply any product, always read and follow label instructions for best results and proper handling.
If you have missed these application dates for spring and summer or if you did not get total control, you will need to control weeds with a post-emergent weed killer. The product to be selected needs to target the weeds to be controlled. Weed control can be broken down into these categories – grassy weeds such as crabgrass, dalisgrass and poa annua; broadleaf weeds such as dandelions, clover and dollarweed and nutgrass.
Grassy weeds can be controlled with any of the many brands of Weed Control for Southern Grasses, Poa Annua with Bayer Revolver, nutgrass with Image and broadleaf weeds with Bayer Advanced Southern Weed Killer for Lawns or Roundup for Lawn (note: purchase Roundup that kills weeds not the lawn). Again, when you apply any product, always follow label instructions for best results and proper handling. Some of these products will control many kinds of weeds and reading the label will give you this information.
So if weeds are a problem in your yard, start with applying a pre-emergent at the appropriate time and attack current invading weeds with a post-emerge.