Summer is the perfect time to sit on your front porch and admire your freshly mowed lawn. A patch of crabgrass, however, can ruin your lovely lawn, cutting short this happy moment. In addition to crabgrass, finger-grass is a pesky weed that has blades that look like fingers. Several yards, lawns, gardens, and pastures suffer from this common lawn pest.
The 6 Best Ways To Get Rid Of Crabgrass In The Summer
There’s nothing better than sitting on your front porch in the summer and admiring your freshly-mowed lawn. A patch of crabgrass can suddenly ruin your lovely lawn, putting an end to your happy moment. Known as “finger-grass” because of its blades that resemble fingers, crabgrass is a pesky weed. Many yards, lawns, gardens, and pastures are infested with this common lawn pest.
What is the best way to get rid of crabgrass in the summer? You can prevent or get rid of crabgrass by following these steps:
- Regularly fertilize your lawn
- Prevent crabgrass on your lawn by using a crabgrass preventer
- Make Sure Your Lawn Gets Enough Water
- Raising the blade of your mower
- Herbicides can be used on crabgrass that already exists
- Hand-pull the crabgrass
If you don’t stop crabgrass in its tracks, it can quickly take over your yard. Fall is the time to prevent crabgrass and prepare for next summer. Crabgrass dies each fall, so now is the time to start preparing. Discover how you can get rid of crabgrass and keep it away by reading this article!
Prevent Crabgrass by Fertilizing Your Lawn Regularly
The crabgrass weed can thrive in environments where grass struggles to survive. Unlike other plants, crabgrass thrives in arid conditions without the proper nutrients. Patchy lawns with crabgrass may result if the soil that supports your lawn lacks nutrients.
The best way to prevent crabgrass is to fertilize your yard regularly throughout the summer. Each six to eight weeks, you should fertilize your lawn until the plants die away in the autumn.
Fertilizer will provide your soil with the nutrients it needs to make a healthy lawn. The presence of the right nutrients in the soil will prevent crabgrass and dandelions from growing.
Fertilizers We Recommend
It is essential to use a quality fertilizer on your lawn. The following lawn fertilizers are some of our recommendations:
Using Southern Ag All Purpose Granular Fertilizer 10-10-10 will provide you with superior results. The nutrients in this fertilizer will help your soil produce a thick, healthy lawn. In addition to Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium, this fertilizer also contains trace elements.
A good fertilizer to use on newly planted lawns is Scotts Turf Builder Starter Food. There is no doubt that Scotts is one of the best lawn care product companies you can invest in, and their products usually deliver positive results. Using this fertilizer will make your lawn grow fast and thick on any type of grass.
The GreenView 2129269 Fairway Formula Lawn Fertilizer can help maintain the health of your lawn, especially if you live in a hot, arid climate. So the lawn is constantly replenished with nutrients, and the product contains both immediate-release and controlled-release nutrients.
You can also treat brown spots on your lawn with lawn fertilizer. Our article Why Your Lawn Has Brown Spots (And How to Fix It) explains why your lawn has brown spots.
Crabgrass Preventer For Lawns
Since crabgrass can quickly take over and ruin your lawn, it is considered a lawn pest. If you’re dealing with a pest, sometimes you’ll need to use pest control to eradicate it. You can control crabgrass with a crabgrass preventer, which is the ultimate pest control.
What is a crabgrass preventer? The crabgrass preventer is an herbicide that kills crabgrass during its germination process before it sprouts.
Almost all lawn fertilizers contain crabgrass preventers, so you can fertilize your lawn and eliminate crabgrass at the same time. There are, however, some things you should know before using a crabgrass preventer.
Crabgrass Preventer: What You Need To Know
What Is The Best Time To Put Down A Crabgrass Preventer?
It is called a pre-emergent crabgrass preventer because it should be applied to the soil before crabgrass emerges. It won’t work if it’s applied once the crabgrass has established itself as a seedling. A crabgrass preventer is most effective when used at the right time.
Crabgrass preventers should be applied in the spring when the soil temperature is between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit. In the Spring, if you lay it down too early, it may dissolve before the crabgrass germinates. You won’t need to worry about crabgrass seedlings if you plant them too late.
How Do You Prevent Crabgrass?
It’s easy to apply crabgrass preventers to your lawn, regardless of whether you’re doing your own lawn care or getting a lawn care service to do it for you.
In addition to being a crabgrass herbicide, Jonathan Green & Sons Crabgrass Preventer is a lawn fertilizer as well. You can use this in your yard safely.
What Is The Best Way To Lay A Crabgrass Preventer?
It’s imperative that you understand how crabgrass preventers should be applied and used if you plan to use them. Even if you spread the preventer correctly, if you don’t follow up with the necessary steps, you may not be able to get rid of this lawn pest.
The majority of crabgrass preventers can be spread with a normal fertilizer spreader. It’s important to water your lawn once the preventer and fertilizer have been applied to allow them to soak into the soil. Without this step, your crabgrass preventer will just sit on top of the soil and do no good.
Make Sure Your Lawn Gets Enough Water
There are many weeds that thrive in arid environments, including crabgrass. Water isn’t necessary for most weeds to grow and flourish. By regularly watering your lawn, you can prevent crabgrass from growing on your lawn.
You should water your lawn based on the climate you live in and the amount of rainfall you receive each year. You should water your lawn 1 inch a week to keep the grass healthy and weeds at bay.
It is important to water your lawn regularly in order to keep it healthy and prevent crabgrass from growing. Rainy climates may not require this step, so if you live in one, skip it. You should, however, come up with a watering schedule for your lawn if you live in an arid or hot region.
Herbicides Can Be Used On Crabgrass That Already Exists
Herbicides are applied to plants in order to kill them. Some herbicides target only specific weeds and plants, while others destroy any plant they come in contact with. This is why you need to choose a herbicide that will kill crabgrass in your yard but not your grass.
Herbicides for crabgrass are available in a variety of forms and can be applied in many ways. In a spray bottle, crabgrass herbicides come in a form that can be sprayed directly on the grass. Moreover, there are herbicides that come in fertilizer bags that you spread like fertilizer.
Hand-pull The Crabgrass
Another option for removing crabgrass is to pull it out by hand if you don’t mind manual labor. The work can be grueling and backbreaking, but it is effective. Wear gardening gloves to prevent hand injuries.
You should not use a shovel if you intend to pull the crabgrass out by hand. The roots of crabgrass can be dug up with your shovel to make removal easier.
There is no guarantee that crabgrass won’t return even if you remove all of it by hand. There is a good chance that crabgrass seeds are in the soil in your yard since crabgrass spreads rapidly. The best way to prevent crabgrass is to practice proper lawn care methods and fertilize and water your lawn regularly.