Well spring time is here, and in sacramento we’ve been getting a lot of rain in the winter, which leads to tons of weed growth in and around my yard. I had ankle surgery last March so I wasn’t really on top of doing much weed prevention last year before winter hit. Now I am paying the price for it and trying to remove all these weeds manually. I was wondering, what is the best way to prevent weeds from growing like crazy like this. I know putting down those anti weed growth pellets or whatever is probably what I should do or spray chemicals, but I’m skeptical how well those will even work with all the rain we get each winter. I’ve read also covering the ground with about 3 inches of mulch can work, but others have told me they’ll still grow right through it so it’s kind of pointless. Some of the areas where they’re coming through around my yard has mulch, some of it is pea gravel and another part is rocks. I know for my grass yard I need to put down fertilizer/weed preventer, but for the areas around my yard that’s where I’m really trying to figure out how to prevent them from coming back in full force each spring. Thanks in advance!
by WaywardOn
7 Comments
Apply spring pre-emergents when the 5 day average soil temps are in the 50-55F range. Or use [this tracker](https://gddtracker.msu.edu/).
If you have a question about pre-emergents, read the entire label. If you still have a question, read the entire label again.
Pre-emergents are used to prevent the germination of specific weed seeds. They don’t kill existing weeds.
Most broadleaf weeds you see in the spring can’t be prevented with normal pre emergents. You’d need to apply a specialty broadleaf pre emergent in the FALL.
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Also wondering about the best way to remove them. Pull em out as best I can, spray weed killer?
That is a lot to try and handle just by pulling. I would get glyphosate 41% concentrate and mix in a pump sprayer. There’s a wide range of use rates you can go with but I’d do somewhere around 3oz per gallon of water and use 1 gallon of mix per 1000sqft. Get that applied and don’t water for 24 hours (and don’t apply with rain forecasted within 24 hours). After that, water daily for a week or two to promote more weeds to germinate and then glyphosate again. In 2-3 weeks it should be mostly dead. You can pull/rake the carcasses or just mow/weedwhack. Once you have the area cleared put down some mulch. Weeds will certainly grow through but keep some glyphosate on hand (or ready to use roundup) and spot spray as needed. Alternatively you can hand pull them at this point. If you kill the weeds before they put out seeds, over time (years) you’ll have less and less weeds popping up. You can also use pre emergents like preen or prodiamine to help prevent new weeds. Really the best thing to do once cleared out is to just stay on top of it.
Liquid weed killer, hand and spade, or you can try cover the weed with card board. It’ll smother them. Mow it short, cardboard, and wait (and pray). I did this on a section of my lawn. Everything under it died in about 2 weeks.
We use snapshot in flowerbeds helps to keep most weeds under control, the rest we spot spray with round up.
Thanks for all the replies everyone, some pretty good info. Going to try to manually pull as much as I can, then use weed killer, then get more mulch/ gravel to put down to try to prevent them from coming back in full force like this. Appreciate yall!
What are you guys do when you have chickens free range all over the place I’m afraid to spray anything that can possibly harm them