More pictures

Photo

Photo

It looks and sounds like creeping bentgrass to me. I have been fighting it, too, using a combination of hand pulling and applying chickweed/clover control herbicide. In a thick patch I hand painted round-up then re-seeded. It is a very tenacious weed, the roots are hard to get out completely; even though they are shallow and pull up easily, they leave tiny bits behind that re-sprout. Also the stolons will infiltrate the clumps of desirable grass. It is a prolific seeder, too, so be sure to attack and pull as much as you can before it flowers. Good luck!

The "leaves tiny pieces" part amounts to the beginning of a never-ending chase and nightmare. If you want it gone everywhere, bite your tongue, roll your eyes, pay the price and get a bottle of "Tenacity". That's one of the things it is a specialty herbicide for. Ignore any Google articles from before 2011 - that's when "Tenacity" came to the residential market.

I was under the impression that bent grass is a finer leaf species. These blades are wider than fescue almost comparable to the leaf of smooth crabgrass. I dont see any creeping habit from this weed...

could you post a picture of what you have or a comparabel one? Every photo i can find of creeping bent looks nothing like this :/

How does this one spread? The words you used describe St Augustine, and the pictures sort of resemble St Aug, but I don't see the boat shaped tips in any of your pictures. Does it spread across the top of the ground? And St Aug would not have been growing in the winter under any circumstances.

Oh and it's not glyphosphate, it's glyphosate - pronounced GLIF oh sate or GLYFE oh sate. It takes awhile to unpronounce it the way you probably do - it did me anyhow.

This post was edited by dchall_san_antonio on Fri, Mar 7, 14 at 19:21

Not bent grass. My guess is orchardgrass. Orchardgrass is a contaminant in tall fescue seed. I believe orchardgrass would not be listed under weed seed, it would be considered other crop seed. Orchardgrass doesn't like low mowing height of tall fescue. Keep your tall fescue mowed at 2.5 inches and the orchardgrass should die on it's own, over time.There are not any selective herbicides for orchardgrass so you can pull it by hand, shovel,or spray roundup on it.

I'm currently battling a very similar weed after a complete lawn restoration in September 2013 so it looks like we could have the same problem. By the end of January it was completely weed free but I noticed these weeds popping up by mid February. The stuff I have is very easy to pull up after a rain when he soil is very moist and it doesn't appear to be spreading from the roots. I was thinking its crabgrass that germinated in the fall and sat dormant through the winter. Only problem with that theory is that we have had several heavy frosts and a couple snows which didn't kill them. I would have thought this would have killed crabgrass, right?

The seed I used was the Hogan Tall Fescue blend from the Hogan company which clearly states on the label 0% weed and 0% other crop so I'm positive this weed didn't come from the seed. I did use straw I purchased from a local company so I'm thinking if this weed is orchard grass the straw is most likely where it came from. Some of these weeds in my lawn are just individual while there are others in small groups which to me indicates they were in the straw, some as complete seed heads while others were just individual seeds.

Last weekend I put out an application of Prodiamine 65 WDG (Barricade) pre em in hopes it would keep more of this stuff from germinating but it doesn't say anything about controlling orchard grass. So far I have manually pulled about 50% of it but that's not much fun on 20,000 square feet of lawn with my beat up old knees! I did spot spray a week ago with Ortho Weed-B-Gon crabgrass killer which seems to be hurting it a little. Going to wait another week and do a second spot treatment and see what happens.

Here's the photo of my weed for comparison:

This post was edited by ForsheeMS on Sat, Mar 8, 14 at 9:42

That's the exact same grass popping up in my yard! I shoveled out a ton if it last weekens and replaced with sod. Yard looks great for now but I didn't get all of it.... Let me know if the weed b gon does any good anything would help even if the herbicide hurt it that may allow for the fescue to out compete this weed

Aaronmac, so far the weeds I treated with the Weed-B-Gon have yellowed some but still are not dead. We're supposed to get a lot of rain here starting tomorrow and as soon as that clears out I'm going to do another spot spray on them. I'm thinking the same thing, if I can hurt the weed bad enough the fescue should be able to choke it out. My fescue is just barely starting to grow and hopefully will be outgrowing the weed soon.

This post was edited by ForsheeMS on Sat, Mar 15, 14 at 19:32

Hey Aaronmac,
Do a Google Image search for wheat seedling and it looks just like the weeds we both had. I did put out straw over the fescue seeds when I did my renovation and from the seed heads that were in it I'm sure the straw came from wheat. Did you by chance use straw on yours also?

I think most likely it will die out over the summer and end up being a non issue but I'm researching an herbicide or other options for it anyway. If it is indeed wheat it shouldn't be able to go to seed so that's the good news. Anyone else here know of a good herbicide to kill it?

Here's a thread I dug up on Gardenwebs from last year that might answer my questions. Looks like we might be dealing with the problem this year but should be gone by next year.

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/lawns/msg030004262602.html

This post was edited by ForsheeMS on Mon, Mar 17, 14 at 10:28