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.

Yes you should have used it in the fall and you should have used it much earlier in the spring. Using it now is a waste of money. Preem only affects seedlings and keeps them from taking root. You already have full blown weeds. Now you need to use a regular herbicide like Weed-B-Gone for the broadleaf weeds. I would wait until you mow the bermuda for the second time and then fertilize. Two full weeks later, you can come in and spray the boadleaf weeds. Weeds die best when well fertilized. For grassy weeds the only solution in a lawn is to pull them. Well I suppose you could try spot spraying, but the Grass-B-Gone products will also kill any bermuda that it gets on. Of course being bermuda, death is only temporary. Some grassy weeds will die naturally when you mow low and with the summer heat. Some love the summer heat - crabgrass for example. Some of your grassy weeds will be the bunch type of grass. Those can be pulled out relatively easily up to 2 days after a rainstorm. Later than that and it becomes much harder to pull them. Where do you live that the bermuda is still brown??

lainey_6b_va - you need to get that pre-m down fast. You may miss the weed prevention window and have to control weeds the rest of the summer if you don't act quickly. Any pre-m will work now...doesn't have to be Halt's, but if you can find it, fine. I get mine at Lesco, HD, home and garden/nurseries, etc. Also, if you can only find it with a fertilizer combo, that will work too, but is has to have "crabgrass preventer" or something similar on the bag (ex: Dimension/Balan/Team Pro). Also if you have fescue or bluegrass and can only find the weed and feed combo, I wouldn't do it but one time...it's getting a little late now for fertilizing. NCSU recommends not fertiling after March 15. arjo_reich - you say Tupersan comes in liquid form now? I bet that stuff cost you a bundle. I used it before, but it only lasted about 4 weeks.

The pre-emergents are a useful product, but they have their limitations. First, they have a window of opportunity. That might or might not be the 'useful life' listed on the label. That depends, obviously, on the conditions under which the product was put down. So let's assume you spray, and it's supposed to be good for three months. It might even stretch to four, but you can't count on it. Well, poa annua germinates in the fall. Those seeds become viable in the fall, winter over, and sprout in the spring. Crabgrass germinates in late spring, AND LATER. One would think that one could simply overdose the lawn, and spray every thirty days for twelve months, and that would do it. It might, by the way. I've been sorely tempted. But size of lawn, and expense, have kept me from it. Other than that, you've got the concept of re-seeding. The pre-emergents aren't a WEED (with a W) killer, they are a SEED (with an S) killer. The theory of a pre emergent is that 'no seed will germinate'. That's how you stop the cycle of poa, or crabgrass, continuing to grow from seeds from prior crops. But that means that grass seed won't germinate either, doesn't it? If your lawn is primarily Kentucky Bluegrass, that's less of a problem, as you can, with fertilization, get the existing plants to spread out, and fill in bare or thin spots. That's not possible with the ryes, and fescues. They don't spread much, if at all. Striking some sort of balance, between the need to re-seed, and putting down pre-emergent, is more art than science. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you don't. But that really is the nub of the problem. But needing to put down multiple applications of pre emergent, over the course of a year, is fairly common. Having to do it for a two year or three year period, is fairly common. You've got to break that cycle of weeds-to-seeds-back-to-weeds-again. And it ain't easy.