Hi guys!

I planted a new lawn from seed in late april/early may of this year. A lot of new soil was brought in as I had trees removed and ivy/pachysandra ripped out.

About 40% of the back yard is comprised of sections that are mostly crab. I did not apply a starter fertilizer than contained a pre-emergent crab preventer as I never had a crab problem here...but I should have known that the new soil would contain seeds.

As I see it, I have 2 options at this point:

1) Let the crab die over the winter. The soil will obviously contain loads of crab seeds. Plant new grass seed in the spring along with a starter fertilizer that contains a crabgrass preventer.

or

2) Manually rip out the crab grass NOW and plant new seed NOW and get a decent lawn established before winter. Then, in the spring, apply a pre-emergent crabgrass preventer.

I would imagine #2 is the better option? How much better? Is the crab preventer that comes along w. the starter fertilizer (siduron, I believe) pretty weak as far as preventers do? Would it not do a good job on soil that was infested with crab grass the previous season?

Thanks guys! If I can have good luck with the first approach, I'd rather do that before I go nuts ripping out large sections...but I would go with #2 if they chance of good results is much higher.

thanks!