Crabgrass in my St Augustine lawn

Help in Fl – posted 27 March 2006 12:45

We live in Jacksonville Florida and have had 40% of our St Augusitne lawn taken over by crabgrass. We have started pulling it up, but our large yard would be hours and hours of pulling. Any help would be appreciated.

Dchall_San_Antonio – posted 02 December 2006 17:47

I realize the timing is way beyond helping the original poster, so this is for someone else reading this.

If you can limit watering to once a week, that will do more to keep weeds out than anything else. Let the surface of the soil dry out so the weed seeds cannot germinate. The underlying roots will have moisture and that’s all that matters. I realize Mother Nature does not always cooperate with you on this. I water once a week in the summer for 3 hours in each zone. I’m shooting for once every 2 weeks but I haven’t gotten there yet. I have a very shallow soil.

The second thing you can do is to mulch mow it at the highest setting all year long. The tall grass provides enough shade on the surface of the soil that any young seedlings that might germinate cannot get enough sunlight to photosynthesize.

People who have switched to these two “rules” have written to me to say their neighbor’s crabgrass lawn stops right at the edge where the lawns meet. The crabgrass will not even creep into a tall, dense lawn with relatively dry surface soil.

paramedic313 – posted 08 January 2007 14:18

also adding to what was said in the post-reply is to mow on a high setting and mow twice a week for several weeks, do this and it keep the weed from derminating (it doesn’t have enough time to derminate between mowings))

Alex_in_FL – posted 28 February 2007 20:13

The best solution to crabgrass is put down a good pre-emergent RIGHT NOW (early spring).

I am putting a pre-em down this weekend. Between now and then I have to decide whether to use roundup or try baking soda thing on the patch of crabgrass I had sneak into my yard.