These pics are from the PNW fall, but we have a decent sized lawn, the previous owner left 3 years before we bought and it wasn’t watered or cared for. Most weeds were 2-3ft dandelion type.
I brush cleared it and mowed and this is what was left. Some tufts of grass, but mostly weeds. Soil is decent, but retains water. The lawn gets full sun most of the day.
It’s covered in leaves at the moment that I’m letting just break down.
Can I kill just the weeds? With the patchiness of the grass is this a multiyear project to get a grass lawn? I’m totally lost and not sure what to research and really when to start.
Any help would be awesome.
by HitHardStrokeSoft
1 Comment
Honestly, I’ve seen, and successfully revived, way worse lawns using only fertilizer and selective herbicides. In a matter of a few months.
Easy peasy. From what I can see in the pics, there is actually quite a lot of grass… It just doesn’t look like much because the weeds are better at drawing the eye.
– Fertilize it every 6 weeks while it’s actively growing (soil temps over 45F) Use a fertilizer that’s roughly 5:0:1 (so, 25-0-5 for example, doesn’t need to be exact). I’d recommend doing half of the listed label rates until spring (when you get more sunshine, and thus the grass can use more nutrients)
– spray the weeds. Backpack or hand pump sprayer with a flat tip nozzle. You can spot spray every 2-3 weeks, or blanket spray the whole lawn every 4 weeks. When your soil temps are above 60F, you can use any selective broadleaf weed killer (3 of the following active ingredients: 2,4-d, dicamba, mcpa, mcpp (mecoprop), triclopyr, quinclorac), for example Ortho Weed b gon. When your soil temps are between 40F and 60F, use those same active ingredients, but use esters… Herbicides can be salts or esters, the active ingredient names will say one or the other. Crossbow is an example that has esters (only 2 active ingredients, which is fine).
– get the mow height back up. 3 inches minimum, 3.5-4 ideally. Actually measure it, don’t trust numbers on the mower.
– when soil temps start trending upward in the spring, and hit 50F, apply crabgrass preventer of some sort asap. There’s tons of options, but active ingredient prodiamine would be the best.
– when soil temps hit 60F, water once a week. Water to the point that the soil becomes NEARLY fully saturated.
– when soil temps hit 70F, water twice a week. Same saturation thing.
– when they hit 80F, you might have to go up to 3 or even 4 days a week, but fight as long as you can.
– WHEN crabgrass shows up in June. Spray that with something that contains quinclorac (weed b gon with crabgrass killer for example). Sedgehammer if nutsedge shows up.
– keep constantly fighting weeds through the summer. The sooner you spray a weed, the less of a problem it (and its potential offspring) will be in the future. If a weed doesn’t die within 2 weeks of spraying, hit it again.
– towards the end of summer, evaluate if you think the lawn needs any seeding… I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. [either way, here’s my seeding guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/lawncare/s/4Cf44ZslT6)
Edit: fyi, im working on a mega guide for cool season lawns. Basically this but expanded to the extreme. Essentially a glossary of my guides, a bunch more new ones, and any new guides anyone presents for consideration.