At Lawnbright, we get a lot of questions about weed control. Specifically, what is pre-emergent, how does it benefit your lawn, and when does it need to be applied? The answers are fairly straightforward but when you dig deeper, they get somewhat nuanced. This blog post is designed to help answer some of the frequently asked questions around pre-emergent weed control.
What is a Pre-Emergent?
An application of pre-emergent weed control, like Lawnbright’s weed wipeout, helps to control weeds that have yet to appear in your lawn. In order to be effective, a pre-emergent has to be applied well before weeds appear in a lawn. In many cases, this requires you to apply it months before you notice the weeds. This is true of all pre-emergents, not just Lawnbright’s Weed Wipeout.
To prevent winter weeds (weeds that appear in warm season lawns over the winter) it needs to be applied the previous autumn. Late September to mid-October in most areas.
To prevent crabgrass, which starts showing up in June and July in most areas, it needs to be applied in early Spring. March-April, in most areas.
Pre-emergents will not kill existing weeds that have already appeared in your lawn. If you spray weed wipeout onto weeds that you see in your lawn, there will be no effect.
Pre-emergents alone will rarely control a weed problem. They are tools to reduce the need for post-emergent weed applications. They rarely eliminate the need for post emergent weed applications altogether.
Gradual Improvement
It may take several seasons of applying pre-emergent, along with post emergent applications and the proper cultural practices (like watering and mowing), to get a weed problem under control.
This could take 2-4 years, but eventually you will see great results, and you will have a dense, thick canopy of turf that will naturally crowd out weeds on its own. You may not even need to apply any weed control whatsoever!
Timing
Most weeds don’t all germinate at the same time. They germinate on a spectrum of temperatures, as the average soil temp climbs past 50 degrees over several consecutive days in the spring. And they continue to germinate all throughout the growing seasons…, spring summer and fall, and even winter in some cases. But most of the weeds germinate in the spring, so we try to target our applications of pre-emergent during that time.
So the best thing to do would be multiple applications, six weeks apart, at the beginning of the growing season, aeration in the spring and fall, another pre-emergent application in the fall, along with two doses of post emergent spray in the fall for anything that got through.
But most people don’t want to do this. It’s cost prohibitive and could be time consuming if you have a large lawn. So instead people settle on one application of pre-emergent per year, and it can take several years of applying pre and post emergent to get the results you’re looking for.
And even then you’re not going to get all the weeds. And this doesn’t just apply to Lawnbright products. This applies to all the brands out there.
So instead of perfection right away, lawn care pros focus on year over year improvement, using a combination of soil improving products and cultural practices (like proper watering and mowing) to get results.
Lawnbright Difference
At Lawnbright, we are here to guide you through all of this. Our Turf Team is here to assist with all of this, including the right guidance to help you manage your entire lawn care journey. You can call for help at any time and speak with a U.S. based lawn care professional. That’s the difference between us and the other guys.
Just the fact that you’re focused on it and reading this blog post proves you’re doing better than 85% of people who either don’t know or don’t care to know how this works out.