If your lawn or garden’s beauty is marred by a bright yellow-green grass-like weed, chances are you are in a battle with nutsedge. Also commonly called yellow nutgrass or water grass, this vigorous plant produces wide triangular stalks in threes from a center point at ground level. Other similar sedges are purple nutsedge and green kylinga, which are very difficult to control. Being a sedge, it thrives in damp soil conditions, which we obviously have had with the excessive rain for the past several months.
Nutsedge is a perennial weed that is hard to get rid of because it reproduces itself from tubers or nutlets beneath the soil. These tubers can survive even the coldest winter. Each nutgrass plant can produce thousands of nutlets, which can then sprout more weeds as each season progresses if left un-checked. It is often seen in patches, with one plant leading to hundreds more in the same area.
Conventional pre-emergent herbicides do not work on nutgrass, so it just needs to be sprayed as it comes up. It grows more rapidly in low, wet soil, and we have sure had our share of wet soil this spring in Tulsa. It is easy to pull up, but when doing so, you will leave the nutlets in the ground, which will lead to even more plants sprouting up soon.
There is a new product we are using named Dismiss, which does a better job of controlling nutgrass and other sedges after they come up, and also prevents weeds from coming back for a few months. We are using this product in conjunction with Echelon, another new product, during Step 3 of our 7-Step Showcase Care Program. If you want to upgrade your service level to Showcase care, now is the time to do it, as we can apply this special weed-treatment during May and into early June.
Nutgrass is one of the most difficult weeds we battle during the summer months. I have been in the lawncare business for 23 years in the Tulsa area, and it seems to be getting worse every year. It is mainly an environmental factor—record rains leading to wet, saturated soil. As the soil dries out, hopefully, on into the summer and early fall, nutgrass growth should slow down.
Visit our website at www.lawnamerica.com/tulsa/showcasecare.html for more information on nutgrass.
If your bermudagrass lawn has brown circles as the rest of the lawn is green and healthy, you probably have a common turf disease named Spring Dead Spot. Many varieties of bermudagrass are susceptible to this disease, especially lawns that were established from 3-10 years ago. Older lawns are not as prone to the disease.
The fungus infects the turf in the fall, but symptoms do not show up until the following spring, as brown dead spots averaging about one foot in diameter or larger. There is no relationship between which lawn service you use, or even if you use one, as to the incidence of the disease—it just happens on some lawns more than others. Not much can be done to prevent this disease, short of digging out the spots in the spring, replacing with a few inches of new topsoil, and putting in a new piece of sod. Just raking the dead areas and even putting in a thin layer of sand or dark topsoil will also help the surrounding bermudgrass to fill in quicker.
There are some fungicides that are labeled for Spring Dead Spot with a fall application, but not in the spring. We have had some success with this, but only recommend if the disease is severe. With the fall fungicide, you should have a decrease in the number of dead spots the following spring, and quicker fill-in of the remaining spots. Since the fungus infects the turf in the fall, that is the time to apply, and not during the spring after the spots are present. Contact our office if you have questions or would like a price quote on this.
What happens after it rains after one of your treatments?
Easily this is the most common question we hear, because during the springtime, it rains within 3-4 days of many of your treatments! That is usually a good thing too, because all our treatments consist of a pre-emergent herbicide, fertilizer, or both. These products need to be watered in within a few days for best results. Research and our experience have shown that even a hard rain will carry these products down into the soil, and they will stay there to do their job.
Liquid post-emergent products applied on existing weeds can be affected in a negative way with rainfall too soon after treatment. Our invoices will usually state to delay watering for anywhere between 3-8 hours, depending upon the season. So if a heavy rain comes in before that, enough of the product may not have been absorbed to be totally effective. We do use special “sticker” products on days when rain is forecast to help increase the effectiveness of weed-control products if it does rain, allowing the products to be rain-fast within an hour. When the temperatures are warm (over 70 degrees), I have experienced good weed control even if we have had 30 minutes for the product to dry and be absorbed by the weeds.
We cannot assume that any amount of rainfall after a treatment will totally negate our treatment, because it will not. We ask that if it does rain too soon after a treatment of post-emergent weed-control, wait 7-14 days to see if your weeds completely die. If they do not, call us then and we will be out promptly to spray post-emergent again on any persisting weeds for no charge. We cannot just come out and re-apply every time it rains, as applying more weed-control or fertilizer will actually do more harm than good. Be patient and see how your lawn responds after a week or two and then contact us if things do not look well.
Why is my Bermudagrass so slow to green-up this year?
It is the weather. We are basically urban farmers, growing grass as our crop. We have good years, and we have bad years. It seems like lately, it is either too hot, too cold, too dry, or too rainy. This spring, we are about 8” above normal on rainfall, with cooler temperatures. It has not even broken 90 degrees yet! Bermudagrass and zoysiagrass are warm-season grasses, and will get going as soon as the weather turns nice and warm. Trust me—you will be mowing more than you want to be very soon.
With warmer weather, the thickening turf will help choke out some persisting winter and spring weeds also. Shallow-rooted spring weeds love wet soil, so they have been doing great. Hot weather will help burn some of these out soon.
