Crabgrass cleanup before seeding

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Dargin
Posts: 246
Joined: September 29th, 2017, 12:42 pm
Location: Central Mass
Grass Type: Northern Mix
Lawn Size: 1000-3000
Level: Some Experience

Crabgrass cleanup before seeding

Post by Dargin » August 28th, 2019, 7:28 am

I have a little bit of spot seeding to do on a neighbor's lawn tomorrow (we're late). There's still a bit of crabgrass hanging around after doing a couple quinclorac apps. It's not much but it's mostly in the area to be seeded. I've pulled some, but it doesn't always come up easily/neatly.

Rather than pulling, I sorta want to just decapitate the more robust/mature ones with a weeder, avoiding potentially making new little bare spots from pulling that would require more seeding. I tried it in a couple spots and it's much neater.

Is this an effective method, or can the crabgrass still bounce back at this point in the season?

Thanks

Dargin
Posts: 246
Joined: September 29th, 2017, 12:42 pm
Location: Central Mass
Grass Type: Northern Mix
Lawn Size: 1000-3000
Level: Some Experience

Re: Crabgrass cleanup before seeding

Post by Dargin » April 2nd, 2020, 9:07 am

I ended up making a bunch of judgement calls. Never really dealt with such a nasty explosion of crabgrass. Post quinclorac, some CG seemed thin enough to let die out naturally. Some of the beefier CG patches looked like they could potentially cause bare spots come spring; Wasnt 100% on whether they would, but figured better to deal with it in the fall. Pulled the big stuff, made a bit of a mess, seeded the spots, and considered religion.

At it's worst last summer:
Image
Image

First time seeing the lawn since October:
Image

The lawn is still just waking up but everything appears to have filled in and held up nicely. Applied first Prodiamine app yesterday. Gonna get this lawn right this year!

northeastlawn
Posts: 1259
Joined: June 1st, 2015, 3:10 pm
Location: S.E. Mass.
Grass Type: KBG
Lawn Size: 1000-3000
Level: Experienced

Re: Crabgrass cleanup before seeding

Post by northeastlawn » April 2nd, 2020, 1:54 pm

[quote=Dargin post_id=338964 time=1585832878 user_id=8657]
I ended up making a bunch of judgement calls. Never really dealt with such a nasty explosion of crabgrass. Post quinclorac, some CG seemed thin enough to let die out naturally.[/quote]

Old post, but the "nast explosion of CG" sounds like my sisters lawn.

My sisters front lawn was not taken care of for years. She tried countless spring seedings that only fueled her CG problem. This last summer I finally got her a hose end timer and seeded the front with PR. I put down granular dimension down a few weeks ago, it will be interesting if the CG comes back as bad as if has in the past.

I have never seen as much CG as she has in her front lawn.

Dargin
Posts: 246
Joined: September 29th, 2017, 12:42 pm
Location: Central Mass
Grass Type: Northern Mix
Lawn Size: 1000-3000
Level: Some Experience

Re: Crabgrass cleanup before seeding

Post by Dargin » April 2nd, 2020, 4:10 pm

Man, it was ugly. I'm also curious how things will turn out this year, with less apprehension now that I know there's ample time to knockout any young CG that slips through, as long as I'm there to see it. ;) Hope things work out for your sis, man.

I really underestimated the seed bank on this (my uncle's) lawn. He had told me they hadn't had a crabgrass problem in the past 2 years since his reno. I used prodiamine around a few seeded spots last spring, but I let the 2nd split app slide, being overly worried it might interfere with fall seeding if we needed it. Mistake.

Definitely could have thwarted it with quinclorac before it got as bad as those pictures, but health issues kept me away for too long. Looking back at pics from mid June 2019 I can see the little suckers starting to poke through, just didn't notice at the time...

More lessons learned.

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