Tips & Tactics: Weed Control

We get a lot of questions here at Dothan Nurseries about weed control. I've got weeds in my yard. What do I do about them? First thing I tell people is it's not a one time battle, it's a war. It's a consistent war. And you know, you have to be consistent. And you can, you can have pretty good luck. So the, the first question I usually get people is they come to me when, when the temperature is warm and they can see the weeds out in their lawn. What do I do? Well, you first you got to identify the weed. And no, I don't mean you need to know if it's crabgrass or bahia or dollar weed. Most people bring in a weed, they'll say, hey, what's this? And I say, I don't know, but I can tell you how to kill it. And you have to identify. You've got grassy weeds like bahia grass, and then you've got broadleaf weeds like dollarweed. Broadleaf, you just think of a wider leaf, not a real thin blade of grass. And there's two different types of products that you can treat that with. The one we have one's called Weed Free Zone, that takes care of the broadleaf weeds and then the weed out takes care care of the grassy weeds. So you have to determine which weeds you have. And then, and then you can spray those weeds. You can spray it on your lawn. Won't kill your lawn, it'll kill just, just those weeds. And sometimes that takes two or three applications, two or three weeks apart. What you also have to remember is like I said, it's not like, okay, I'm going to spray this, I'm done. I don't have to do anything else. The biggest thing, so we want to do these sprays when it's warm, when you can see the weeds, really when the battle is won is in the wintertime. What we like to treat weeds in the grass with is a spray as opposed to the weed and feed you put out. That just seems to work better for us, the actual spray. So the weed free zone for the broadleaf weeds, the weed out for the grassy weeds. And we have a little, it's real easy, hook it up in your hose, spray the yard. And we've done it out here on this grass multiple times. And you'll see pretty quickly the weeds turning yellow and going away. But really the battle is won and lost in the wintertime, like I was saying, from November, January, February, March in that area, when your grass is dormant, when it's brown, doesn't look like anything. Believe it or not, that's when all the weed seeds are laying out there in the grass, dormant, just waiting for it to get warm one day and pop up in your yard. So this is when we do put out a granular material. We call it pre emergent. And it's a pre emergent that kills weed seeds before they have time to germinate and become weeds and come up in your yard. So that battle is really one, we tell people, if you can do that two times, probably one time in November, one time in February or so, that will get rid of 90% of the weeds you're going to have in your yard for the winter or the weeds that you're going to have in the summer, if you can treat them during the winter. Then the other thing too, we talked about treating weeds. Cut your grass taller than you think. Two to three inches is good. I like three inches. And then keeping it fertilized. Well, a thick, healthy grass will choke out a lot of the weeds. The main thing we use for that is 15 015. That's the formulation. 15% nitrogen, 0% phosphorus and 15% potassium. And that middle number is usually for the blooms. You don't want your grass blooming, so therefore that's why it's 150 15. The 15% nitrogen makes it green and the 15% potassium really helps the roots and all over help with the grass. So and we want to do the fertilizing like we said, when it's warm, April, May, June, July, August, first couple of weeks of September.