Before you run out and buy liquid lawn fertilizer, you hve to consider what your lawn needs. In order to change your lawn from just being a hodge podge of grass and weeds, you need to consider the food you should be feeding it. Those foods consist of the big three – Nitrogen, Potassium and Phosphorus. Given in the correct amounts you’ll turn that hodge podge into a lush carpet that will be the envy of your neighborhood.

The best way to know what your soil needs, is to do a Ph soil test. The results of the test will tell you what foods your lawn is craving. Here’s a quick refresher at what these foods do, and when you buy your liquid lawn fertilizer, you’ll find them listed on the label. It will be broken down such as 10-10-10 or 15-12-17.

Nitrogen is the top dog in the plant food chain. It makes your grass grown dense, thick and will give it a rich green color.

Potassium helps to strenthen your roots and leaves, while making it more likely to survive a drought, disease and very cold weather.

Phosphorus is the unseen nutrient as it works underground promoting strong roots.

So now it’s time to head off to the nursery and get a good liquid lawn fertilizer. Well, not quite yet. There’s a few more things you have to understand about liquid lawn fertilizer.

First off, it comes in a concentrated form, and some brands are more concentrated than others. So you need to carefully read the labels to ensure that even though one might be cheaper to buy, it’s more expensive to use because it takes more to do the same area as the more expensive brand.

While you are looking at the cost of covering your lawn you’ll make another discovery. Convenience costs. With liquid fertizer the days of lugging around 40 or 50 pound bags are over. But there is a price to be paid. The cost of liquid lawn fertilizer is much higher per square foot of coverage than that of granular fertilizer.

The other thing you have to take into consideration when using liquid lawn fertilizer is that it is a short term fix. The nutrients are immediately available to the roots and leaves, but you have to re-apply the fertilizer much sooner than you do with a granular fertilizer.

If liquid lawn fertilizer costs more to buy than granular, and liquid lawn fertilizer has to be used more often than granular, why would people use it? That’s easy. Convenience. Not everyone has a place where they can store bags of fertilizer and a spreader. Not everyone has the time it takes to use a spreader and cover their lawn with fertilizer. Not everyone is healthy enough to push a spreader loaded with fertilizer around their yard. Since liquid lawn fertilizer is concentrated all you have to do is hook it up to your garden hose and water the lawn. No muss, No fuss.

Next time you are planning on fertilizing your lawn, check out the liquid lawn fertilizer selection at your nursery. And for an added earth-friendly touch, look around for an organic liquid lawn fertilizer. They are becoming easier to find everyday.

Three things to do when killing crabgrass with preemergent herbicides:

1. Make sure you water your lawn after you apply it. Preemergent herbicides are activated by water. If you don’t water it, you’ve just wasted your money because it won’t work.

2. Re-apply the herbicide if you aren’t sure it is working completely. Remember, crabgrass seeds don’t germinate all at the same time. If you do a second application of the herbicide, you’ll get the late bloomers.

3. Make sure you follow the label directions and apply the proper amount of herbicide. Don’t just guess at the size of your lawn. Measure it, and then set your spreader calibration carefully. Just like watering, if you don’t spread the herbicide properly, you are wasting your money.

Three things you don’t want to do when killing crabgrass with preemergent herbicides:

1. DON’T dethatch or aerate the lawn. If your lawn needs to be dethatched or aerated, do it before you apply the herbicide. Think of the herbicide as putting a protective shield over your lawn. If you aerate or dethatch it, you are breaking the seal.

2. DON’T apply preemergent herbicides if you have put in new sod. New sod should not have any crabgrass in it in the first place so again, you are wasting your money.

3. DON’T waste your money using preemergent herbicides to kill crabgrass that is already germinated. Once it has germinated, preemergent herbicides will have no effect ot it. You can buy postemergent herbicides for killing crabgrass, but they only kill small plants, which makes them relatively worthless. By the time you can see the crabgrass, it’s pretty much too late to do anything about it this year.

One last thought on killing crabgrass

One of the oldest methods of killing crabgrass is still just as effective as ever. It’s called weeding. If you see that you have crabgrass, after you water your lawn go around and hand pull the small patches. If you get them before they go to seed, you won’t have to worry about remembering to use a herbicide in the spring. The reason you want to do it after you water is that the crabgrass is easier to pull when the soil is wet.

Here’s to a green weed free lawn for years to come.

You need to know the life-cycle of crabgrass if you are going to kill it. In the fall, cragbrass plants are killed by the frost. However, the seeds still live on. When soil temperatures reach 55-60 degrees, the crabgrass seeds germinate. From midsummer to fall, the crabgrass is busy producing seeds. The process then starts all over again as the plants are killed by frost.

In order to kill crabgrass, you need to use a preemergent weed killer. They come in both liquid and granular form and will kill the crabgrass seeds as they germinate. Since the preemergent weed killer gets rid of the crabgrass seedling, timing is very important in when you apply it. When you see that the lilacs are blooming, you’ll know that the crabgrass is germinating. Therefore, you want to apply the weed killer just before your lilacs bloom.

Types of Preemergent Herbicides You Can Use to Kill Crabgrass

Although there are lots of different herbicides you can use to kill crabgrass, I’m going to only look at two, because frankly, why list a huge group of them. These two are the most commonly used preemergent herbicides for killing crabgrass.

The first is called Dimension, with the primary ingredient being dithiopyr. You can use it on the majority of lawn grasses, but be sure to check the label to ensure that it will not harm your particular lawn grass. Dimension will provide you with long lasting coverage to ensure that you kill the crabgrass seed throughout the germination period. Remember, just like every other kind of seed, all crabgrass seed doesn’t germinate at the same time. You want something that has long lasting coverage to kill the crabgrass.

The other popular preemergent is Tupersan, which has siduron as its active ingredient. The nice thing about Tupersan is that it won’t kill any lawn grass seeds that are germinating. Siduron is often added to lawn starter fertilizers to kill weeds that choke out the new grass seedlings.

Next up: The do’s and don’ts of using peremergent herbicides to kill crabgrass

Centipede Grass, also known as centipedegrass is the perfect grass if you don’t want to spend a lot of time and money taking care of your yard. It’s a medium textured yellow-green colored grass that grows low to the ground. The color of centipede grass most closely resembles a Granny Smith apple. It grows well in the Southern United States, due to the mild winters. In fact, I read somewhere a while back that it is currently the most common type of lawn grass in the South.

One of the first uses of centipede grass, back in the early 1900s was for cemeteries, because of its low maintenance requirements. From there, it moved on to become the lawn of choice during and after the Great Depression. Since it doesn’t require a lot of maintenance, it’s perfect for people who don’t have a lot of time to spend on their lawn. In fact, if you overfertilize centipede grass, you’ll reduce it tolerance to cold while causing yourself long-term maintenance problems.

One nice thing about centipede grass is that it will grow in relatively infertile soil. It spreads from a prostrate stem that grows at or just below the surface of the ground. This stem produces new plants from buds at its tips or nodes. If you are familiar with how strawberries grow, it’s the same sort of thing. It just sends out runners that turn into new growth.

Compared to most other grasses, the maintenance requirements for centipede grass are quite low. It has a pretty good tolerance for shade and can handle drought pretty well. What it can’t handle very well is foot traffic. If you have an area that has a lot of traffic, you won’t want to plant centipede grass there.

Remember what I said about it growing in relatively infertile soil? Well another thing it doesn’t like is a deep sandy soil. It’s very susceptible to nematodes, and nematodes love deep sandy soil. Another thing it doesn’t like is being overfertilized. If you do overfertilize it you can expect two things. First off it’s going to start yellowing, a sign of iron chlorosis. Secondly, and more importantly if you are considering it for it’s low maintenance requirements, it will produce a heavy thatch.

Here’s the top four things you need to do to make sure you have a great looking centipede grass lawn.

1. Avoid overfertilizing it
2. Remove the thatch when it gets to be more than 1/2 inch thick
3. Water it during dry periods, paying special care in the fall and spring.
4. Keep it mowed to 1 ½ to 2 inches.

Here’s to a great Lazy Man’s lawn.

The less grass you have in your front yard, the less time you’ll spend maintaining it. What you want to do is find a good substitute for grass, or switch to a low maintenance grass such as centipede grass.  Since you don’t have to mow centipede grass as often, you’ll cut down on your lawn mowing time.

Another option that some people take is to use clover instead of grass.  A clover lawn will save you money and time.  You don’t have to mow clover that often and if you live in a drought prone area, you’ll find that clover stands up to drought very well.  Another nice thing about using clover instead of crass is that it grows almost everywhere.  Best of all, if you you want to enjoy your front yard, you’ll discover that you won’t have a problem with bugs because bugs don’t like clover.

Another option for making a low maintenance front yard is to install an irrigation system.  As you are probably aware, watering your lawn can be hassle and takes a lot of time.  With an irrigation system there’s no more hauling hoses areound the house, setting up your sprinklers, taking down the sprinklers when you are done, and of course, hauling the hose back to it’s storage area.

While irrigation systems use to be quite expensive to have installed, you can now buy an irrigation kit at most large lawn and garden shops.  Spending a weekend installing your own system can save you a lot of time in the future.

I started talking to people and realized that most people don’t know much about how to grown a healthy green lawn. Over the next twenty years I spent a lot of time, a lot of trial and error, to figure out how to properly take care of my yard.

Now it’s time to share what I’ve learned with anyone looking for help with their lawns. So I hope you find something here that will help you in your lawn work.

In case you were wondering where the name Yard Work Sucks came from. That’s what I used to say back when I didn’t know what I was doing. Hopefully, if you feel that yard work sucks, you’ll change your mind after spendng some time reading.