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| I neglected my lawn this year, because I was too busy planting a vegetable garden. The result is a very patchy, crab grass infested lawn. My thoughts on trying to fix the lawn and get a jump start on having a nice lawn next year is to try to pull up some of the crab grass, put some soil down and overseed the whole lawn. I have been reading about corn gluten as a good product to get rid of crabgrass, so I was thinking maybe I should put corn gluten down now, they wait a month before putting grass seed down. Any advice on what I should do first? I do have an irrigation system, so I can keep the seed watered during the hot weather. |
Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by dchall_san_antonio 8 San Antonio (My Page) on Sat, Aug 15, 09 at 11:34
| Putting corn gluten meal down now will not help with the crabgrass. Crabgrass sprouts in the spring. If you wanted to do something organic now, I would use alfalfa pellets (rabbit food) at 10-20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. That will have a good effect with the seed. Are you going to blend in some Kentucky bluegrass seed? That will spread and help keep the crab grass out next year. |
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| I wouldn't put down the corn gluten. It acts as a preemergent, preventing seeds from germinating, so it probably won't do much to the crab grass now, and could possible affect your overseeding efforts. I say pull up the crab grass as best you can, overseed in the late summer, and put down the gluten (or siduron) in the spring to prevent crab grass and weeds. |
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| Thank you for the advice, I have been spending a little time each night trying to get some of the crabgrass out, then I will overseed. |
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- Posted by BinThere(dani4984@aol.com) onThu, May 5, 11 at 11:32
| Corn gluten has to be put down before the crabgrass seed sprouts. It also stops lawn grass seedlings, so you must plant your grass seed in the fall to have grass that won't be damaged by pre-emergents in the spring. If one already has a lot of crabgrass embedded in the lawn, then the best bet is to prevent it from going to seed. (Crabgrass will be killed by frost in the winter and then resprout about 2 or 3 weeks after the forsynthia first blooms in the spring.) Stop seed production by mowing the areas of crabgrass almost to the ground before the seed matures. Be sure to collect the cuttings rather than mulching. Crabgrass lies low to the ground so raking it upward before mowing can help. One can be sure that the crabgrass does not grow back with seed by spot treating each scalped crabgrass crown with a few drops of Round-Up. In the spring, use preemergents to stop the sprouting of 2 year old crabgrass seed. Usually areas that have been heavily overgrown with crabgrass in past years will require at least two applications of preemergent in the spring at 6-8 week intervals. If you are not all organic, products with "Dimension" actually will kill small crabgrass sprouts as well, perhaps a week or two old at most. After doing this for a few years and if your lawn is pretty dense, it may be possible to control crabgrass simply by pulling up any plants before they go to seed because the density of crabgrass becomes quite low. |
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