How to stop grass weeds from growing while dymondia taking root
dgrdinh
10 years ago
Featured Answer
Sort by:Oldest
Comments (6)
dgrdinh
10 years agoRelated Discussions
Killing weeds while growing juniper
Comments (4)Patrick, I'm in the same situation and so interested to hear about the responses. Some of my junipers actually didn't survive. My problem is bermuda grass. We tilled up and pulled up but couldn't get down far enough for the long roots of the bermuda or we would be digging earth out from underneath our fence. I think we are somehow going to need a bobcat to completely renovate but limited expenses won't allow this. I'm overwhelmed and just want the land to go away in that area....See MoreHow to kill and stop weeds growing back.
Comments (4)sye, this sound like a job for a spray bottle of RoundUp RTU. You can purchase the product at any garden center; it's already mixed up and ready to use. Read and follow all directions carefully for best results. You only need a tiny bit for get the job done. Apply on a sunny day, in the morning preferably. It may take a day or two for the systemic herbicide to kill the weed all the way to the roots. You can also try a spray bottle with pure vinegar...on the hot sunny day...to see if that burns the weeds. Vinegar won't kill the roots, though. Please, please don't pull apart the patio in order to clean the bricks! It will never be the same again. Your picture didn't come through. Maybe you could post it again. It might be helpful if we could see identify the weeds to know just what you are working against....See MoreHELP!!! This 'grass/weed is taking over my lawn!
Comments (6)First contact your local office of the Clemson USDA Cooperative Extension Service and the can help identify that and can also help you get a good, reliable soil test which might do as much to control this as anything else. Many "weeds" grow in soils that are not good soils for turf grass and turf grass most often needs a good, healthy soil or it will not grow well. At the same time dig in with these simple soil tests, Structure. From that soil sample put enough of the rest to make a 4 inch level in a clear 1 quart jar, with a tight fitting lid. Fill that jar with water and replace the lid, tightly. Shake the jar vigorously and then let it stand for 24 hours. Your soil will settle out according to soil particle size and weight. A good loam will have about 1-3/4 inch (about 45%) of sand on the bottom. about 1 inch (about 25%) of silt next, about 1 inch (25%) of clay above that, and about 1/4 inch (about 5%) of organic matter on the top. 2) Drainage. Dig a hole 1 foot square and 1 foot deep and fill that with water. After that water drains away refill the hole with more water and time how long it takes that to drain away. Anything less than 2 hours and your soil drains too quickly and needs more organic matter to slow that drainage down. Anything over 6 hours and the soil drains too slowly and needs lots of organic matter to speed it up. 3) Tilth. Take a handful of your slightly damp soil and squeeze it tightly. When the pressure is released the soil should hold together in that clump, but when poked with a finger that clump should fall apart. 4) Smell. What does your soil smell like? A pleasant, rich earthy odor? Putrid, offensive, repugnant odor? The more organic matter in your soil the more active the soil bacteria will be and the nicer you soil will smell. 5) Life. How many earthworms per shovel full were there? 5 or more indicates a pretty healthy soil. Fewer than 5, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, indicates a soil that is not healthy. to learn more about the soil you have and what yo need to do to make that soil into something that will grow a good, healthy turf. Here is a link that might be useful: Clemson CES...See MoreWeed Troubles While Growing Zenith Zoysia from Seeds
Comments (9)OMG! Stop IT! STOPIT! Slow down!! Relax. Chill. Take this weekend off from the lawn and go to Schlitterbahn or something. You are waaaaay over thinking this. And you're, well, let's just leave it at that. I have a lot of questions about how and why you did what you did, but I'm not going to ask - I assume someone you trust told you to do all that stuff. For the most part they were misinformed about what works in Austin and other places, too. Here's how you do a lawn in Round Rock. First look around you and notice that nobody has a zoysia lawn. There must be a reason for that. The first thing to know about gardening is to select plants that are well adapted to your climate and soil. That's the reason about 80% of the lawns are St Augustine and 15% are one form of bermuda or another. The rest are either xeriscaped or some form of zoysia, but those can be hard to find. The reason everyone has St Augustine is that it is dead simple to grow. The reason they don't have zoysia boils down to disease. Once it gets a spot of fungus, it goes dormant for the rest of the season. It will come back next April, but most people choose to replant with St Aug or bermuda. People will tell you that St Augustine requires too much water, but all grass needs to be watered once a week to look good. You've done something that you will be reminded of over the course of the next 3 years. You rototilled. I realize the Seedland website suggests rototilling. I'm not sure where that comes from but it is universally a bad idea. Scott's website also tells you to rototill in preparation for new grass. That's dead wrong. What is going to happen is your fluffy rototilled soil will settle back and form a new structure over the next 3 years. As that happens it settles unevenly leaving holes and hills for you and your mower to run over. It you try to level it now or next year it will continue to settle and recreate new hills and holes until the soil structure is finally finalized. The new structure will be formed by soil microbes, chemistry, soil mechanics, and gravity. You should have ignored the hard soil and rocks under the top layer of soil. That can be addressed from the surface without damaging the existing soil structure. I did not see any zoysia in the pictures. The first close up pic might be crabgrass but is more likely dallisgrass. Crabgrass would be much preferred because it will all die in about November with the first frost. Dallisgrass is perennial and will come back if it freezes out or not. Your second picture shows nutgrass. Nutgrass is a sedge (more formally it is called nut sedge). As a sedge it needs a sedge killer to affect it even slightly. Nutgrass is a swamp type grass that much prefers continually moist soil to even occasionally moist soil. But if it gets continual moisture it will take off and not look back. There is another sedge called green kyllinga that looks a lot like nut grass. Green kyllinga is not nearly as aggressive as nut grass, but it also will survive in deeply dried out soil. Either one needs a sedge killer to kill it. Sedgehammer is one and Image is the other one. If that is nutgrass and you get yourself on a deep and infrequent watering program, the nutgrass has a good chance of going away permanently. In step 6 you sorta wasted the bags of fertilizer. There were no roots for the fertilizer to fertilize. By the time the grass would have come in the fertilizer would have been washed through. At step 8 the thing to do would have been to roll the seed down. Rollers are not used to level the soil. They are used to press the seed down into the surface of the soil. Leveling is done with a drag which picks up soil/sand from the high spots and drags it to the low spots. Then the soil is wet down and soil added to the low spots that appear when it was wet down. But I digress. Step 9!! You're using my favorite sprinkler. I have six or seven of those (several houses with large yards). Step 10. Yes you could have done something else to the soil, but you didn't need to. And you did not need more soil. More soil too often leads to new drainage issues. The worst case is the soil backs up rainwater causing it to flood the house. You did not need the 20 bags. Step 13. Are you going to leave the hoses buried or, sometime in the future, dig them up? I have hose splitters on top of the ground to cover all the grass at once. Sears hoses, by the way, have a lifetime guarantee and you don't need to keep the receipt. Step 14. Hmmm. Those oscillators barely put out any water. 15 minutes 4x per day is probably fine even running through the night. I can't imagine that would be too much water. Step 15. The bastard weeds sprouted in 9 days which too often leads the home owner to stop watering frequently enough to sprout the real grass seed. What you should have done was water exactly like you did immediately after applying the RoundUp. That would have sprouted all those weed seeds that you now have. Then you could have reapplied RU to kill the newly sprouted weeds. THEN you put down the grass seed after all the weeds are outta there. Step 17. Don't use any more starter fertilizer until you have your soil tested ($25) at Logan Labs and you post the results here for feedback. With Texas soil you have to worry about P and K levels. No other test labs will give you the quality of results that Logan Labs will. TAMU, in particular, has a terrible reputation for their soil testing problems. Step 19. The new grass coming in might be the zoysia. The problem now is the weeds are up and shading out the new seedlings. Zenith needs sunlight to take root. But at this point you have a mostly dallisgrass lawn. Dallisgrass can be killed with atrazine. If I remember correctly zoysia is safe with atrazine. But is NEW zoysia seedlings safe from atrazine? I'm not sure of that. At this point you're going to have a weed lawn. What do you want to do? I would suggest rethinking the logic behind zoysia. Let's discuss that with respect to how to proceed. If you're working with a tight budget let us know. Some lawns are a lot more work over the long haul. What are you looking for? Do you want the nicest lawn on the block or just something to keep the mud out of the house? Or something in between? To have a really nice bermuda lawn is a lot of work with mowing 3x per week and monthly feeding. To have a really nice St Augustine is dead simple with mowing every week or two and feeding 3 to 5 times a year. I'm not mentioning watering because all lawns need to be watered once a week in the summer heat, so that's just the way it is. There are some non traditional grasses that can be used for low water usage if you want to go that direction. Even prairie grass is preferable to zoysia. So what do you want?...See MoreHU-286141989
4 years agolgteacher
4 years agoAndrews Construction
3 years agoHU-821625769
last year
Related Stories
CURB APPEALTake Your Hell Strip to Heavenly Heights: 8 Design Ideas
Trade weedy dirt and trash for a parking strip filled with wispy grasses, low-growing flowers and textural trees
Full StoryHOUZZ TOURSHouzz Tour: From Overgrown Weeds to Picturesque Farmhouse Expanse
This once-neglected 100-acre South Carolina site now features a lake, a wood-filled farmhouse and a far-reaching view
Full StoryGARDENING GUIDES5 Weed-Smothering Ground Covers
Let these landscape plants do the dirty work of choking out weeds while you sit back and enjoy the view
Full StoryGARDENING GUIDESLet's Weed Out 4 Native Plant Myths
Plant wisely for a garden that supports pollinators and requires less work
Full StoryEDIBLE GARDENSNatural Ways to Get Rid of Weeds in Your Garden
Use these techniques to help prevent the spread of weeds and to learn about your soil
Full StoryGARDENING GUIDES5 Ways to Naturally Win the Weed War
Show irksome weeds no mercy with these tricks for combating them sans chemicals
Full StoryLAWN ALTERNATIVESStop Fighting the Patchy Lawn!
Here are 3 situations where a garden may be a better idea than more turfgrass
Full StoryGARDENING AND LANDSCAPINGVegetable Growing Lessons From Longwood Gardens
Get ideas for your own edible landscape from a Pennsylvania showpiece and teaching garden
Full StoryGARDENING GUIDESGrow Your Own Privacy: How to Screen With Plants and Trees
Use living walls to lower your home and garden's exposure while boosting natural beauty in your landscape
Full StoryGARDENING GUIDESGreat Design Plant: Bugle Weed, a Quick Ground Cover
It’s highly adaptable, suppresses weeds, reduces erosion and provide weeks of bright flowers. Just watch for invasiveness
Full StorySponsored
User