This morning there was a lovely chill in the air that has me dreaming of fall weather. We are still expecting rainy days and summer heat for a while, but it is nice to look ahead.
If you will, look even further ahead to winter. Now is the time to plan for treating your lawn with a pre-emergent herbicide to start combating some of those more difficult to control winter weeds BEFORE they come up. These herbicides are applied before weed seed gemination and that is how they get the name pre-emergent. They don’t prevent germination, but they do help to prevent the weeds from maturing.
Common examples of winter weeds include: Annual Bluegrass, Common Chickweed, and Henbit.
Photo from Joseph DiTomaso, University of California- Davis
Photo from Joseph DiTomaso, University of California- Davis
Photo from Chris Evans, University of Illinois
We recommend only treating your lawn with pre-emergent herbicides if it has been established for longer than one year. This will prevent injury to the turf.
For the best results, you want to wait until temperatures drop to 65-70°F at night. Back to that yummy chill in the air I discussed earlier. Even though it felt AMAZING, our temperatures are not quite at that range yet. It would be best to monitor the weather to make sure you are hitting at an ideal temperature range. You can do this with our UGA Weather Stations!
Weather
Go to georgiaweather.net The following will include step-by-step instructions for you to find the weather data you need to make the decision of when to treat!
In McIntosh we have a weather station at Harris Neck Wildlife Refuge in Townsend. Glynn County has a station at the Jekyll Island Airport.
1. On the home page, choose the pin that matches your closest location or search by zip code if you aren’t sure which is nearest to you.
2. After you have selected a site, you will be taken to this weather station’s home page. It will tell you current conditions for the site.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select “Yesterday’s Conditions”
4. This page will provide you information on the maximum (highest) temperature and minimum (lowest) temperature for the last few days
5. Use the information under Minimum to decide when is a good time to treat. As you can see here, McIntosh County is so close to the ideal temperature range.
Herbicides
For the most up-to-date recommendations on treating your home lawn for tricky pests, visit our Home and Garden Pest Management Handbook
In our Turf Section you will be able to see the recommendations for fungicides, insecticides, and herbicides along with the efficacy (how effective the chemical is) and safety for you and your grass.
Some of our recommendations include:
Centipede and St. Augustine lawns, Pre-emergent herbicides: atrazine, benefin + trifluralin, dithiopyr, oryzalin, pendimethalin, and 2,4-D+MCPP+dicamba+dithiopyr
