Your bulbs will be just fine. You could save a lot of time and money on the corn gluten by putting down a thick mulch. It will prevent an awful lot of weed seeds from germinating and keep moisture in the soil too. You can use chopped leaves, pine straw, compost, or you can purchase mulch too. I would recommend the book called Garden Bulbs for the South by Scott Ogden. You can learn in that book about the bulbs that will come back year after year to bloom and multiply even in your part of the country, and without re digging, chilling, etc. They are out there, but you have to know which ones to look for.

Thanks for the advice everyone. We tend to have wet Springs around here so chances are good that the weeds will get what they are wishing for. :) Therefore I think a pre-emergent is a good idea, at least for the first year as CDUB suggested. The other factor is the fact that I have no idea what the turf will look like once all the this snow melts. It might be thinned out or in other worrying shape. I left it at 3" for the Winter and I applied Urea in late November after top growth stopped so hopefully it should get going well once the weather starts warming up. Should I cut it short for the first cut of the year? I read somewhere that it's a good idea to cut off all the dead top growth from the Winter. What do you recommend for pre-emergent? Thanks. Regards, Robert

Roger505, The great thing about Dimension is it will kill crabgrass post emergently up to five leaves, before it tillers. So, this gives you a larger margin of error when applying Dimension. That being said, if you keeps you up at night then go ahead and apply the Dimension it's not going to hurt anything. Preemergent timing, along with everything else involved in the care of your lawn, is going to have a learning curve. Use your meat thermometer and measure your soil temp at the same time everyday for three days and record the average temp. Apply your preemergent, then if you get some early crabgrass say in middle to end of April, then you know you applied your preemergent to late and next year you can apply at a lower soil temp. Also, it would not hurt to invest in the herbicide Acclaim herbicide, just in case you make any mistakes with your preemergent application. Acclaim is expensive, but it will last you years. As far as your fertilizer app. goes, I would hold on to the fertilizer that you just purchased and use it in the fall, if your soil test indicates that all the nutrients in the bag are not in the excessive range. Also, just for your edification that bag of "slow release fertilizer" is only around 30% slow release. So if you apply 1 pound of nitrogen per thousand square feet then .7 of a pound of nitrogen will be quickly available to the plant. This is ok in the fall, but in the spring you will be mowing your yard twice a week to keep up. A better option would be .25 to .5 pounds per thousand of ammonium sulfate or urea now. Then when you get your soil test back follow their recommendations plus add .75 to 1 pound of N per thousand that is at least 70% slow release. Henbit usually takes a couple of apps to kill, and herbicides take a little longer to work in the early spring because of the cooler temps.

Interesting. I emailed the go-to turf weed person at our state university this past weekend, wondering if was too late; I also saw what danielj described. Even though my instincts told me it was too early. He replied : “anytime in next 2-3 weeks should be fine; better early than late.” Morpheus: do you have a reference for bacterial role in decline of pre-emergent activity, and the thermophilic nature of those bacteria? ( I don’t doubt it; I‘ve just never read about it ).