Weed Control In Lawns

When it comes to lawns, less is more

The grass is always greener on the other side, unless you are a neighbor of mine.

On my side of the fence, you will find a lawn that has brown patches in the dry season and is mixed with various weed species. My lawn still works just fine as a place for my daughter to play, my dogs to frolic and the family to view my planting beds.

In order to keep a lush, green lawn in South Florida, a homeowner needs lots of inputs — fertilizers, irrigation, weed control, timely mowing and plenty of attention. Adding synthetic fertilizers and heavy doses of water to plants is not in tune with what we should be doing as stewards of the environment in the very place we can make the most difference, our homes.

The average suburban lawn receives 10 times as many chemical pesticides per acre as farmland, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Federation. In addition, over 70 million tons of fertilizer and pesticides are applied annually to residential lawns. Those are shocking numbers and ones that should make a homeowner think twice before buying pesticides or fertilizers that he think his lawns needs to look its best. It’s not terrible to let a few weeds creep into your lawn as they often bring butterflies and pollinators to your yard. And it’s not horrible to have a few brown patches of lawn in the dry season, as they will green up when the summer rains begin.

If you absolutely cannot live without a green lawn, try cutting your fertilizer input to one quarter of what you have been using and reducing irrigation by at least half. In most cases, that should be sufficient to keep your lawn looking good.

Proper care can also help your lawn look its best. Never cut more than one third the length of the grass. Lawns that are cut too low have a harder time regrowing and staying healthy. Keep your lawnmower blade sharp. Leave grass clippings on the lawn rather than remove them. The clippings will decompose in place and return nutrients to your lawn.

Less lawn can also be a good thing. The more planting beds you add and the more lawn you remove, the less mowing that has to be done. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Federation states that gas mowers emit 10 to 12 times as much hydrocarbon as a typical automobile, weed-eaters emit 21 times as much and leaf blowers emit 34 times as much! So less lawn equals less strain on the environment not only in the form of pesticides, fertilizer and irrigation, but also greenhouse gas emissions.

How To Carry Out Weed Control On Lawns?

Let’s take a look at how to carry out weed control on your lawn.  Weeds are unwanted plans that steal the nutrition and minerals of the important plants and crops that are growing in your garden. And they may grow on the nutrition and food off your important plants and may hamper their growth. It is very important to protect your plants and garden from weeds. Weeds grow at a much higher speed than the normal plants growing in your garden. Weed control is also known as pest control in which weeds are prevented to reach a mature stage when they can harm the livestock and plants. 

In order to reduce the amount of weeds there are different weed control strategies that can be applied to prevent its growth.

The most common and preferred method that is applied in order to remove and destroy the weeds is ploughing .  Today there are many other chemicals present in the market that can help you decrease the amount of weeds growing in your garden.  Herbicides are widely used in different parts of the world to control the growth of weeds. In domestic gardens there are different methods like covering the area of the garden with many layers of newspaper for several weeks in order to control the amount of weeds.  Also, you can use a black sheet instead of newspaper. You keep a newspaper for seven days, it prevents the light of the sun from entering beneath and hence kills the unwanted plants. Saturating the newspaper that you place on the ground every day helps in the decomposition of the plants that die in this process. The dead plants also help in increasing the nutrition and minerals for the soil.  After few weeks you will find most of the weeds are dead and can be removed easily.  If you are using a black sheet then the greenhouse effect will help you in killing the plants and weeds beneath it. The weeds reproduce at a much faster rate than other plants and you will be able to see that they survive most of the adverse conditions as well.  It is very important to know the kind of weeds growing in your garden so that you can easily kill them using the correct method and herbicides. One of the common techniques that are used by growers in different parts of the world is the Stale seed bed in which soil is cultivated and is left for about a week.

Weed control in lawns

Weed control in lawns

Weed Control in Lawns

Weed control in lawns

Weed control in lawns

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