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Potential murder of crabgrass tonight?
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Posted by
Tosalawn WI (
My Page) on
Fri, Apr 6, 12 at 0:07
| Hi I live in SouthEastern Wisconsin. Near Milwaukee. Tonight we are expecting a whats being described as a hard freeze (28-32 degrees) I have a certain patch where the 3 dogs piddle out front that is completely overrun by crabgrass. The beginning of our spring was extremely warm and caused everything to bloom early. The crabgrass took off before I could do much. It literally went from 6 inches of snow to 80 degrees out in a week.
I was wondering if this freeze is going to be enough to kill off the crabgrass? If not should I blast it with some lawn weed killer tomorrow as I am assuming the crabgrass will at least be weak from the freeze?
We are dandelion free this year for the first time in a while so it's a step in the right direction! |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Potential murder of crabgrass tonight?
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| If you live in WI, you don't have crabgrass yet. Crabgrass is a summer annual and it hasn't even germinated in NC yet, let alone be old enough to be taking over in WI. You need to ID this weed properly before you come up with a plan of attack. |
RE: Potential murder of crabgrass tonight?
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| Can you take a picture and post it here? We can help you figure that out if you need help. |
RE: Potential murder of crabgrass tonight?
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| That is not a hard freeze. That is a light freeze. A hard freeze that will destroy less hardy vegetation would be lower than 25 for more than 4 hours. Even then, we don't talk about hard freezes until we are talking less than 20F overnight. That is when it starts effecting the fruit trees and such. Grasses are much too hardy to be killed off by a single night of 30-ish temps. |
RE: Potential murder of crabgrass tonight?
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| I have seen enough crabgrass in my life to know that it is crabgrass. I posted a link with a picture. |
Here is a link that might be useful: Crabgrass picture
RE: Potential murder of crabgrass tonight?
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| >"I have seen enough crabgrass in my life to know that it is crabgrass." Then why haven't you used a pre and post emergent for it then? |
RE: Potential murder of crabgrass tonight?
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| >"Then why haven't you used a pre and post emergent for it then?" As stated in his original post...
"It literally went from 6 inches of snow to 80 degrees out in a week." Kind of hard to put pre-emergent down when there are 6 inches of snow on the ground. |
RE: Potential murder of crabgrass tonight?
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 If that concrete is on a south or west side, it could be crabgrass even this early. Crabgrass normally sprouts in warm soil in May. Concrete absorbs heat and could have helped germinate the seed. Also, normally it comes up light green at first. Yours is dark green with purple in it. Anyway, spraying it while it might be weakened from the cold is one approach. You can try that but at the same time try fertilizing it now and spraying it again in 2 weeks. Many weeds die best when they are strong, not weak. Another thing you can try is baking soda. Search YouTube for the video put together showing how it kills crabgrass in a St Augustine lawn. St Aug is unaffected by the baking soda but the crabgrass turns black and withers away in a couple days. Be careful because most grasses will wither and die with baking soda. Only use it on the crabgrass. If you have Kentucky bluegrass, then you still have time for the grass to spread back in. |
RE: Potential murder of crabgrass tonight?
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| Thanks for the couple of people that understood the situation. Most of the crabgrass appears to be going strong but the part that is most heavily infested appears to be in the beginning stages of dying from a spray I did a couple of weeks ago. I thought the crabgrass was too far gone at that point for spray to help at all but maybe, with the cooler temperatures returning, not. I am going to spray again tomorrow before the temperatures go back into the 40's again. I'll send an update in a couple weeks. Thanks again! |
RE: Potential murder of crabgrass tonight?
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| Again - not crabgrass. Understood you perfectly, but you haven't had enough time with warm temps to have full grown crabgrass. There are LOTS of grassy weeds that look similar. Everyone thinks they can tell the difference, but basically nobody but botanists can. You aren't going to be able to ID them from that distance, but you are likely dealing with a cool season perennial grass if it came up this early and this strong. If the area is small, just pull the big weeds and treat with a crabgrass killer. All the major products target a wide range of grassy weeds. |
RE: Potential murder of crabgrass tonight?
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Here are a couple images of what crabgrass
looks like that is just beginning to sprout. 
 |
RE: Potential murder of crabgrass tonight? -2
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| As you can see, baby crabgrass bears little resemblance to adult crabgrass. |
RE: Potential murder of crabgrass tonight?
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| I ended up digging up a chunk and taking it to the county gardening extension. The horticulturlist that I spoke with agreed that it was annual crabgrass. She also decided to do a soil sample and said the PH was a little high and was also high in nitrogen (likely from the dog urine) and said spreading lime and watering would help prevent the crabgrass. Along with your typical fertilizers every spring and fall. She also said crabgrass is a bad problem this year because the temperature rose so fast, We had almost 2 weeks of 80 degree weather, that many weeds sprouted and are hard to control. Dandelion season is almost already over. They usually don't even begin to bloom until the 2nd week of may. I've been pulling the couple the inevitably pop up since the 2nd week of March. |
RE: Potential murder of crabgrass tonight?
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| "and said spreading lime and watering would help prevent the crabgrass" WHAT?!?!?!?!? |
RE: Potential murder of crabgrass tonight?
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| Tosalawn, you need to disregard what that horticulturalist said to you. High pH means you have too much lime already. High in nitrogen is almost impossible unless it was dripping with urine when you took it in. And I'm reasonably sure dandelions grow all year long if the weather is nice enough. Dandelions will not grow in tall grass. They need room to spread out. If you keep your lawn mowed low, you will almost certainly have the occasional dandelion. |
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