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rttracey

Weed or grass? Dark fast growing plant in new Tall Fescue lawn.

rttracey
13 years ago

I'm a first time poster. I've searched for solutions to my problem (and convinced that I find the right solution, try it), but I don't think I'm good at matching my problem with the descriptions on this site. I wanted to describe my situation and provide pictures for help.

I recently purchased a new home in Bakersfield, CA with a front lawn landscaped with Tall Fescue grass. Shortly after moving in, I realized that parts of the lawn grew unevenly. Particular spots in the lawn, usually lined-up with the areas that probably acted as drainage, grew extremely fast. I also noticed that the growth areas had darker leaves and looked different from the rest of my lawn. The growth areas have continued to expand and have really hurt the aesthetic of my front lawn. To keep up with it, I'd need to mow the lawn more than once a week to get rid of the high growth areas, and even at that frequency, I am left with darker areas with a different texture.

After looking around, my first reaction was that it might be purple nutsedge. I purchased the herbicide SedgeHammer and applied it to the dark areas with a non ionic surfactant. After waiting 2 weeks, it seemed like the growth might have receded a little bit, but I didn't actually notice any yellowing or other sign that the herbicide had effected the plan. At that time, I applied Spectracide to the same areas to see if it was a different weed that would react to a more general herbicide. One week later, I see no impact.

Today I actually decided to mechanically remove some of the growth and didn't see anything like the nutlets nutsedge is supposed to have. In fact, it kind of looked like the same root system as the rest of the lawn. So now I'm wondering if this is just a different type of fescue (or better growing fescue than the rest of my lawn) of some other type of weed. Bottom line is that I'm looking for a way to get rid of it. I've attached pictures below of the lawn and pictures of the high growth stuff at different stages.

If there is additional pictures or information that could be of use, please let me know. I really appreciate your help.

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