Getting Rid of Crabgrass?

Question:

What is the best and easiest method for getting rid of crabgrass? This year is probably too late to do anything. What should I do for next year? My lawn was over run with crabgrass this year more than any other year.

Hardiness Zone: 5b

Vanet from Saugerties, NY

Answer:

Vanet,

I cannot think of any easy solutions to controlling crabgrass, and I'm not sure a person can hope to ever get rid of it completely. Even when using pre-emergent herbicides, it seems to come back eventually. The first thing that I would suggest is to raise the height of your lawn mower blades to 3 inches. This will support the healthy growth of turf grass and leaves less room for crabgrass seeds to take hold.

For long-term control, I would recommend applying corn meal gluten. This is an all natural by-product of milling corn that acts are a pre-emergent for controlling crabgrass, barnyard grass, foxtail, dandelion, lambs quarters, pigweed, purslane, smartweed and others. If applied once in mid spring (around the time the lilacs bloom) and again in mid August, you should catch two different flushes of crabgrass. A third flush will probably be ready to germinate just in time to be killed off by frost.

Corn meal gluten should not be used if you're trying to establish a lawn, because it prevents regular grass seed from sprouting too. If you apply this at a rate of approximately 20 lbs per 1000 sq. ft. the first year, you should see at least a 40-50% reduction in crabgrass. Control will continue to improve each year with successive use.

Ellen