Poa specific Pre-M question

[UrbyTuesday]

I am on the email blast list of a local 'Tru-Green' like lawncare company that I believe generally does a much better job than the typical big box guys. I stay on their list because they disseminate a fair amount of useful info. I have had them out to the house before and will likely be taking advantage of their services on occasion for certain applications I do not have time to do.

Right now they are pitching late fall poa annua suppression and I am wondering if it is a marketing tactic or something I should consider that may be more specific to transition zones like ours. Here's the short pitch.

"Poa annua, aka annual bluegrass, is a cool season weed that will be a reoccurring event if left untreated. Our
2-step treatment process will suppress poa annua in fescue turf by 90%+ by killing baby plants prior to
maturity. Aggressive fall seeding plans are also important to keeping it choked out. As poa annua becomes
mature it is selectively uncontrollable in fescue & only the summer heat will kill the plants. Once you notice
poa annua (white flowery, wheat like seed head) in the spring it is too late. That uncontrolled crop of seeds
creates next year's problem. Must take both applications, best to perform for a few seasons."

I called them and they said they would be applying Poa Constrictor(Ethofumesate).

Can you guys help me make some sense of this? pros and cons? also, whether I should consider Tenacity for the same thing. The cost isn't outrageous honestly. Not at all. But I have also read that Ethofumesate is rough on fine fescue and I do have some FF in my shady areas.

thanks!

[HoosierLawnGnome]

Well, of course an email marketing services is a marketing tactic, but that doesn't mean it necessarily applies to you specifically. Everybody probably got that.

Do you have a major poa annua infestation? What other weeds do you have? How does this fit into your overall plans? What else are you doing?

Up here, it's pretty late for post-emergence applications to be very effective, and not much else is going to germinate now, but that may be different in your area.

[UrbyTuesday]

Well, this is gonna sound crazy, but I'm not 100% sure if I have poa annua or not, but I am fairly sure I do. I do have a couple of pictures that show it. But this is pre-tenacity.






I assumed it was poa back in october and applied 3 treatments of Tenacity over 3 weeks (4oz/2oz/2oz) to kill it along with various weeds. Tenacity has been wicked good for weed control. It put a dent in the Poa (if this IS Poa) but did not kill all of it completely. Maybe damaged it enough to reduce seeding? I had to stop with the Tenacity though. I wanted to make sure it recovered from the bleaching, that I saved 8oz for next year, and that my rookie hand hadn't done something incorrectly. Had a few overlap spots that took a WHILE to recover. I DEFINITELY got better and more consistent/efficient coverage by the third app. I would say at present, I have pretty much tamed the majority of the weeds. Rather, Tenacity tamed them.

As far as temps go, I probably have another 3-4 weeks of mowing. So the growth season isn't over yet. First frost date was Nov 12 and I am going with the averages per Andy's oft-repeated advice.

I know that it is possible that I still have poa. The growing season isn't over yet. It's possible that there will be some seed heads appearing. I would love to go after it in several places i think it remains, but don't want to damage my fine fescue areas. Or perhaps the Tenacity treatments stunted it in a way that it will not produce much seed.

[ken-n-nancy]

Well, this is gonna sound crazy, but I'm not 100% sure if I have poa annua or not, but I am fairly sure I do. I do have a couple of pictures that show it. But this is pre-tenacity.

Hmm. It's not entirely clear to me which grass(es) are the desirable grasses in those two photos.

There's a lot of a fine-bladed grass in those photos which could be either newly-germinated desirable grass if you overseeded recently, or fine fescue if you have that in your lawn, or ??? However, that fine-bladed grass doesn't look like the poa annua I get in my lawn, although I'm most familiar with it after it has tillered a fair bit to make a small clump of about 6-15 blades.

In your photos, there's also a fair bit of sparsely distributed wide blades of grass which looks to me that it's probably some sort of traditional tall fescue (i.e. not a newer turf-type tall fescue variety). Those could be part of your lawn (if that's what you're looking for) or could be weeds if you're trying to keep just the fine-bladed types.

However, I really don't see any of what I see in my lawn when I get poa annua clumps. (I'll have to take some pics of these next time before I pull them...)

So, in sum, I'm not quite sure what to make of the photos you posted, at least not in recognizing poa annua in them...

[UrbyTuesday]

I think it would be very helpful to see some images of poa annua clumps. I can also get some additional pictures in the morning. Google images provides some poa annua pics, but doesn't look exactly like this. I was mainly referring to the blades with the red arrows:



You are correct with a number of your assumptions.

This area was overseeded with a shade area blend in early September containing

37.6% Frontline TTTF
37.6% Cochise 4 TTTF
5.85% Beacon Hard Fescue
5.85% Sonar Chewings Fescue
5.80% Farenheit 90 KBG
5.80% Bolt KBG

The existing grass in the area was a mix of several grasses but seemed dominated by some creeping red fescue (much of which I got rid of with a rake - very easy to just scrape out) put down by a previous resident (wife's ex husband ).

[ken-n-nancy]

I think it would be very helpful to see some images of poa annua clumps.

I'll try to see if I can find some poa annua clumps in my lawn the next time I'm home in the daylight and the lawn isn't covered with frost and I'll take a photo of them before I pull them out! (When I find a poa annua clump I pull it out without waiting for some future day to do so... the situation doesn't get better by waiting!)

Google images provides some poa annua pics, but doesn't look exactly like this. I was mainly referring to the blades with the red arrows:

It's difficult to identify grasses from photos, but those wider-bladed grass blades are not poa annua -- or at least not any variety of poa annua I've ever seen in New England! If I had to guess, I'd speculate they're some sort of "old" tall fescue, such as K-31 or possibly a kind of weedy grass that we don't get much of up here in northern New England...

PS: Glad to see that I was able to identify a lot of newly-germinated desirable grasses in the photo such as the fine fescues. I can't imagine those wide-bladed grasses are TTTF, but I've never grown TTTF before so I don't have any experience to lean on there...

[Green]

I agree that the wide bladed grass does not look Poa annua. I cannot tell what it is from the photos, but I would bet it's some type of forage grass, such as Orchardgrass or Timothy. The specific blades with arrows I looked at do not appear to be Tall Fescue from the photos. I'm actually seeing a lot of similarity between the photos and Orchardgrass that I've dealt with in my own lawn.

[HoosierLawnGnome]

those wider-bladed grass blades are not poa annua -- or at least not any variety of poa annua I've ever seen in New England Indiana!

FIFY

+1 - NOT POA ANNUA

Could be quackgrass, wide-bladed fescue, other options mentioned above.

If Tenacity whitened it the first hit but didn't kill it, that's how I've seen quackgrass respond. Tenacity won't do anything to quackgrass but make your lawn look worse from the whitening.

If it's a small area, paint it with roundup / glyphosate every week or two until you get it all. Even if it's NOT quackgrass, roundup will probably be effective on that plant. Don't pull quackgrass out by hand, it spreads rhizomatically. If it were me, I'd try to paint it once now and start again first thing come greenup in the spring, while the desireable turf is not so thick it's hard to get to those thick blades.

ETA: missed closing markup o\

[UrbyTuesday]

As promised, here are a few more shots. I appreciate the advice, but this stuff is all over the place unfortunately. Not sure I can get all of it with glypho. I'm not afraid to get out there on my hands and knees with a qtip. it's the 25,000 sf of grass that gives my knees pause. I undertook a hand removal effort of lots of papsulum this fall removing a dozen or so plants every morning. Eventually I got most of it! Not seeing it anywhere now!

Your statement about Tenacity bleaching it but not killing it sounds right on the money. Pretty obvious in the last pic on the right on that blade pointing to 2 o'clock. Last Tenacity treatment was 10-23. The areas from the first two pictures were not treated with Tenacity.

I am wondering if this stuff came from the straw my (since-fired from the front yard) lawn guys put down with their overseed attempt in August (before I decided to take over). It's possible. But my lawn is very mixed right now in general. Random lawn services have been working on it for the past several years. I got married and moved in Oct 2016. Wife was living there single and wants nothing to do with lawn maintenance. I knew nothing about caring for TTTF at the time and had to prove to her I wasn't going to kill the whole yard and that her lawn service was ruining things. All that to say I have a LOT of issues to take of. This particular type of weed grass seems fairly prevalent though and I think is particularly ugly.

[HoosierLawnGnome]

Yeah, if it is spread out over 25K, that's not what I'd call a small area!

You can avoid bending over with a tool like this, but it is still might be a lot of time.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0011 ... UTF8&psc=1

Taking a step back, make sure you don't have other issues that will yield more on time and effort. Getting rid of something like quackgrass is one of the last things you'll do in getting a lawn weed-free. It's a difficult task - towards the top of the weed control triangle, requiring specialized herbicides and time.

Getting rid of a difficult to kill weed but having a yard full of something easy to kill like dandelions or having bare ground in areas doesn't make sense.

So, determine what it is. Clasping auricle is a clue for quack. Plenty of posts on here about it. Search is the best option!

[HoosierLawnGnome]

and HOLY COW, sharpen your blades. Look at those shredded tips.....

My best recommendation is to take a step back, breathe, read a lot on here, and work on the simple things that will yield more fruit with less effort. Don't think I'm saying that is DEFINITELY quackgrass. Could be a wide-bladed fescue that is a bit immature that was in the seed used, which is why it's so spread out. In that case, it's even harder to get rid of than quackgrass.

[UrbyTuesday]

OH yeah, this fall is my first foray into managing the lawn myself. Mowed a ton of grass in my day but that's about it. I'm definitely trying to get the most bang for my (time) buck with each swing I take at it. I've learned that I HAVE to. Otherwise it'll consume me!

I will check out clasping auricle. I did take some pics of the offending grass this AM. Not sure they are detailed enough to tell anything.

[UrbyTuesday]

I noticed that too about the shredded tips. Blade is brand new. Got it a few weeks back. Similar to this:

https://www.amazon.com/Oregon-Gator-Mul ... B0018U25SQ

Mowed about 3 or 4 times with it. No more than 3 hrs. Nothing but green grass at 3" and mulching some oak leaves.

[Green]

I'm still leaning toward Orchardgrass.