The best weapon you have against this annual weed is crabgrass preemergence herbicide (also called crabgrass preventer). You apply this product in the spring before the crabgrass seed sprouts. This granular herbicide works by creating a chemical barrier at the surface of the soil. As the seeds begin germination, they take in the herbicide and die.
Get Rid of Crabgrass for Good:
One of the most visually obnoxious plants that lawns are subject to is crabgrass. All plants are what can be described as opportunistic. As long as there is a viable seed or root or tuber… AND OPPORTUNITY, plants will propagate and spread. Crabgrass is especially efficient at this. Understanding why crabgrass grows is imperative to effectively stopping it from spreading and ultimately keeping it out of the lawn environment.
Crabgrass grows from the millions of seeds that are produced from prior years of crabgrass growth. These seeds can lie dormant in the soil for a very long time before ever producing a “plant” or cluster of crabgrass. Suppressing the growth of the seeds is currently the most effective way of controlling the growth of crabgrass. If you’re successful at controlling the seed production of crabgrass by preventing more plants from growing, then you will greatly impact the amount of crabgrass that can potentially invade your lawn.
The “opportunity” part of the equation also must be addressed…
Opportunity is defined as a set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something or for something to happen.
Two of the major factors that allow crabgrass to grow come from weather conditions and turf density.
WEATHER:
Higher than normal rates of precipitation during the spring and/or summer months encourage crabgrass growth by increasing the breakdown of products like crabgrass pre-emergent.
When a treatment of crabgrass pre-emergent is used at a rate consistent with say… a normal amount of rainfall, but your area exceeds the normal by 6” of moisture than the product will not last long enough thru the summer months to control all of the crabgrass.
When the amount of product is used at a rate consistent with say… an average summer temperature of 90 degrees, but the average in your area is exceeded by 3 or 4 degrees, the crabgrass pre-emergent will again, break down prematurely.
Blue Grass Lawn Services applies 2 treatments of the most effective, longest lasting crabgrass control product.
Why do we apply the pre-emergent twice?
We apply one treatment in the early spring and one treatment in the late spring.
The first treatment will prevent virtually all crabgrass seeds from germinating and will typically last thru a “normal” season. Now ask yourself… When is the last time we had a “normal season”?
This product will more effectively suppress the growth of crabgrass seeds than almost any other available crabgrass pre-emergent product. With the weather being a major factor, alone, this application would eventually fall victim to the same outcome as any other single crabgrass treatment if weather conditions were wet enough, dry enough, or humid enough… which is precisely why we apply the second treatment.
The second treatment will extend the controllability of the first treatment because it is put down at a later date and overlapped with the first application, making the two treatments together not only last longer but will create a crabgrass pre-emergent barrier that will last thru almost any extreme weather event(s).
(A less than perfect season will allow the first treatment alone to last from say: March thru July, while the second application will last from May thru September, at which point the crabgrass will have stopped growing for the season).
THIS IS WHY BLUE GRASS LAWN SERVICE HAS BEEN SO CONSISTENT & SUCCESSFUL AT CONTROLLING CRABGRASS FOR OVER 33 YEARS.
TURF DENSITY:
Remember we said earlier that plants are opportunistic… Well, when there are thin spots or complete bare areas throughout a lawn, this gives crabgrass as well as any other plant the opportunity to grow as these areas have no competition.
Assuming a 100 sq. ft. area of soil can support a 1,000,000 plants and there are a million “grass” plants growing in that area, there would be no room left for any other plant to grow.
Now let’s assume that the same area had only 500,000 “grass” plants… That leaves enough space for thousands of other seeds to grow that will produce thousands of plants that you probably would not like to see in your lawn… This is why keeping your lawn as thick as possible thru overseeding will help reduce the likelihood of plants like crabgrass from taking hold.
