Crabgrass would actually grow in the active wheel ruts of my old gravel driveway. I think it's from another planet.

I've never seen it in my lawn. I have to go to other lawns in the neighborhood to see what it looks like. I think I'll pass.

Water deeply and infrequently and mow your grass at the highest setting on the mower and you'll rarely see crabgrass.

But if you want to nurture your crabgrass,
1. water every day or two for a few minutes every day. The seed needs lots of continual moisture to germinate.

2. Mow it low. Seedlings need sunlight to root.

The problems with crabgrass are the yellow green color and the seed heads that pop up before you wanted to mow. Call the people at Seedland and ask about the seed. It might be more suited to forage than turf.

Have you considered mixing it with Dutch white clover seed? A yard with a mix of clover at 100% coverage looks pretty plush. It never needs mowing, rarely needs water, and never needs fertilizer. It stays green longer than crabgrass, but it won't coexist. The clover will shade out the low growing crabgrass.

I understand the theory behind mowing high and watering infrequently but....perhaps that works for yards that are started by a nursery and done right from the ground up with solid sod and all the associated stuff. In many cases, more often than not, my yard included, the house was built in a field and nothing was done to start a yard. Lawn mowing was more like weed mowing and well...its green and that's a lawn. Converting a mowed wild field to a lawn is like fighting a war against nature. I took drastic measures last year by killing everything, discing, and planting new seed. Even with all that I still have major battles with Crabgrass as well as other weeds. Around here Crabgrass grows like Jack's Beanstalk. Almost overnight it gets started and pretty soon it consumes huge areas of the yard. No amount of techniques like mowing high or low or watering infrequently etc has any effect at all. It just doesn't work. Tried that stuff for decades. A pump sprayer with MSMA is the best thing for Crabgrass I know of. Some suggest digging it up. Hah. Be my guest...It would take a dozen people two weeks to complete the job and it would be regrowing where they started.

I had a horrible weed filled lawn a few years ago.

I grew up in Illinois and never realized soil could be any color but black or dark brown until I bought my house.

I used the weed and feeds, and even hired one of the big companies (true green or chem lawn) to try to fix things.

I finally gave up, bought a turf hound, raised the deck on my mower and said good bye to weeds (for the most part).

I see crabgrass in lawns around the neighborhood, so I know it'll live in this climate, but I don't have any. Even in bare spots (I'll find a native grass yet that will work).

You might be right. If I were to Round-Up my Mag 3 lawn, use crabgrass, and let the chickweed fill in the rest I could have a low-mow solution that requires minimal feeding.

There are some great ideas here today!

April Fool! Who believed I'd actually plant a crabgrass lawn?

LOL.

very amusing! i was actually really curious to see how it went.

I knew it was an April fools day joke when I read the headline. But, well done, very detailed description of what you'd do and even where you'd get the crabgrass seed.:) I think you fooled some of regulars on this board which is tough to do.
It's a strangely interesting idea though. Makes me ponder whether it could be done or not, if you were insane enough to do it. It would die off in the winter but since it reseeds itself, would your crabgrass lawn come back each spring or not? Come to think of it, I have been looking for a low maintenance solution for the backyard :).

I was HAD!

I got my eyes on you wxman81...eyes on YOU.

Still there is some good advice to the contrarian here. If you want a nice lawn, to the opposite of the advice given here.

wxman81...note to self...eyes on wxman81...

actually there are some lawns here that have little other than crab grass and dandelions. the CG is nto a big deal, but the dandelions will get huge if left alone. i saw a house a couple weeks back where they cut a roughly 6x20 path from the drive to teh porch, then left the rest of the yard to itself. there is an OLD ford tractor sitting in the yard that usually by mid summer you can no longer see it except from the air.

would i do it, nope. but i do let a couple acres go and only cut them once a month.

You could overseed it with annual rye in the winter to avoid having dead grass! :)

You could overseed it with annual rye in the winter to avoid having dead grass! :)

Why bother? Just paint it green and call it finished for the season.

Today's April Fool's joke involved wandering into my boss' office and announcing in a voice that carried, "I'm sorry, but I'm leaving the hospital..."

I thought he was going to have to clean pre-compost off his chair. Then he realized the date. Then I had to run *very* fast.

LOL I wasn't too sure how seriously to take you, so I was afraid to comment.
I just released a very satisfying sigh of relief.

Heh. Wouldn't it be funny if I was serious though? And yeah, overseeding with Annual Rye in the winter would be a great idea! :)

I took this seriously! And probably because I decided when I moved to my new husband and home 2 years ago, that if what's happy in my yard is crabgrass and Bermuda grass, then that's what I like, too. He had told me he and his former wife (deceased) had spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on hauling in dirt for the rocky lawn, and many more $$ and time seeding and re-seeding lawn grasses; there is a slight slope to this rock-based 1-plus acre of lawn and sometimes heavy rain in the spring and early summer, which seemed to always wash the seeded grass to the far corners. . . the yard is dappled shade in most parts, but in the sunny spots, everything fries. My first summer was last year, and by July, my lawn had filled in and looked beautiful--the crabgrass and Bermuda grass were going crazy. I told him that since my priorities are the vegetable and flower gardens, if we could mow and have it look good, I didn't care WHAT green stuff was in the lawn. I am a big proponent of whatever works well in the yard is what I'll try to go with--and the crabgrass and Bermuda grass love the yard.

Made me consider an all lespedeza or all dichondra lawn, but no. If I did, I'm certain that little clumps of centipede would pop up and make it look bad.