Weed Control

Most of a weed-free lawn is decided before anything green comes up. Pre-emergent at the right soil temperature does the heavy lifting and post-emergent is cleanup. Past that, what keeps weeds out is turf density: a canopy that closes over does more than anything we carry on the truck.

Timing comes first. Crabgrass and the other summer annuals germinate once soil temperature at two inches holds 50 to 55°F for a few days running, which in Rome is usually late February into March. Pre-emergent has to be down and watered in ahead of that. It also breaks down in the soil, so we split it: a second application roughly eight weeks behind the first, to carry the barrier through the whole germination window instead of running out in May.

Then the weed has to be identified correctly, because the categories need different chemistry and a lot of “weed control” gets sold as one thing. Broadleaf weeds (clover, henbit, chickweed, plantain, dandelion) come out with a standard three-way. Nutsedge is a sedge growing from tubers underground and a broadleaf product does not touch it; it takes halosulfuron or sulfentrazone and usually more than one visit. Dallisgrass is a perennial grass and the hardest thing on this list: a repeat-application project, not a one-visit fix. Anyone who tells you dallisgrass comes out in a single pass has not dealt with much of it.

Wild onion and wild garlic have one real window and it is not summer. They are bulbing perennials that go dormant in the heat, so they get treated from late fall through early spring while the foliage is up and moving product down to the bulb, across more than one application. Spraying them in June is spraying at a plant that already went underground.

And there are days we will not spray. Most broadleaf herbicides injure turf once the afternoon gets into the high eighties, several need a rain-free window afterward, and none of them belong on turf that is already drought-stressed. We would rather come back than burn a lawn to stay on schedule.

What is included

• Split pre-emergent: two applications, so the barrier holds all season
• Fall pre-emergent for poa annua, timed to soil temperature falling back through 70°F
• Sedges and perennial grasses treated with the chemistry that actually works on them
• Wild onion and garlic treated in their winter window, not in summer
• EPA-registered products at label rate, with re-entry once the application has dried
• Included in the Seven-Step Program, or available on its own

Serving your area

We run weed control across Northwest Georgia and East Alabama out of our Rome office, on the same clay and the same climate everywhere on this list, so the timing that works on one of these lawns works on the next one.