Henbit. Our yard is full of it this winter, and we haven't found a good solution. %^#* !!

I have surrendered to the weeds. I am so much happier.

But in the article they talk about people irrigating their yards during a wet winter. ??????? Are there really people out there watering now?

me too

Might be one of the wild geraniums.

I think it's the same thing I had IDed a long time back...Bowlesia incana identified by TexasFlip

Early Spring plants and a couple to ID

Pam, thanks for remembering it! That's another 'weed' I saw growing in my yard today. It's foliage is so pretty I didn't pull it ... :-)

I am embarrassed to say that I did not notice that Bostedo had already identified it as one of the Bowlesias. I should read more and type less :-)

Hoary/hairy bowlesia does still seem like the best fit after looking through many images of other possibilities. Guess I've just not been confronted with this much of it before (~10ft x 10ft) to take a closer look while young. The more rounded margins, "hair", and firmer stems may come with age. Unique flowers will eventually confirm. Agree it is a pretty enough annual native to leave until then... which is normally eary May, but who knows this year?

Here's a bowlesia flower photo I posted to the NTP forum a few years back:

Does anyone know how to get rid of that horrible winter grass mentioned by Roselee? During the drought, my bermuda got very thin in spots, and this terrible stuff started filling in those areas. The ground was too dry to pull it out at the time, and I just figured that when the rains returned that the bermuda would fill back in and the winter grass would be minimized. That is not how it worked out! The winter grass has continued to take over and is now over half of my back lawn. I put down corn gluten meal this fall, but it didn't even faze it. Now that the ground is soft again, I can pull if that's what needs to be done. (Boy, will that be a chore!) I'm just wondering if anyone's had success with anything else. I want to stop this invasion now, before it's too late. (It may already be too late, but I'll try to stay optimistic.)

Michelle

Yes, winter grass will take over by shading out the desired grass until it dies back in summer, but since it is an annual you can control it by not letting it go to seed by pulling it, or prevent the seed from sprouting by using pre-emergence weed killer applied at the right times which is usually twice in the fall. You can look up when the right time is right for your area. I have not found that corn gluten helps much, but the commercial products do very well in stopping the sprouting.

I had a lot of it and though it's a lot of work to pull it, but that's what I did. I used a digging fork to loosen the whole area before pulling and also applied the pre-emergent the next fall. Now I have very little problem, just have a few sprouts that I pull as soon as I see them. With all the rains this year I've had more come up than usual. My neighbors don't control their so the seeds blow in.

Keeping it mowed short helps a little, but it learns fast to grow low and send the seed heads out horizontally.

I tried using Grass-B-Gone being very careful to spray only the center of the grass, but apparently it leaks out through the roots because it killed the good grass for about a foot around it. I do use Grass-B-Gone in flower beds for Bermuda grass mostly since it only kills grass.

So yes you can get rid of it, but it takes a little time and work at the first. Wishing you well!

Thanks so much, Roselee. I will pull, pull, pull for the next couple months and keep what's left mowed short. Then next fall, I'll put a pre-emergent down to help finish it off. I don't mind pulling it out, it's just gotten out of hand. And I don't want pulling it to become my new winter job.

I have to thank you for the suggestion on Grass-B-Gone. A few years ago when I first put in my flower beds, the bermuda was driving me mad. You suggested Grass-B-Gone on Gardenweb, and it was a miracle worker. Now I only spray along the border between the beds and lawn a few times a year. It's no work at all. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!

Michelle

A weed, is only a weed, in the eye of the beholder....

Roselee, you mentioned seeds blowing in from your neighbor's weeds and that is the problem we've been battling since we bought our house in 2012.

We live at the 'T' upper-middle intersection on the center of our street and end of another, so we have a wind tunnel blowing at us from the south. My next door also neighbor does nothing to his front yard (outside of paying a guy to mow in the summer to keep the HOA off his back.) His back yard never gets mowed (and I keep praying we don't end up with critters in ours because of it!)

Is there anything we can do to reduce the number of weeds we have or is it a lost cause (since we are essentially fighting weeds from at least two yards?)

Since the weed seeds are going to keep coming no matter how much you pull the weeds in your own yard I think using pre-emergent weed killers every year would be a way to go. The active ingredient in granular pre-emergent weed killers is minimal compared to spraying weed killers. Here is how they work.. It would save you a lot of pulling. There are specific times to apply in each locality which you can find by looking on line. Wishing you the best!

For me it's cleavers. Cleavers everywhere. In the lawn, in the beds, in the potted plants. Never heard the name "bedstraw", though it has lots of names -- clivers, goosegrass, catchweed, stickyweed, robin-run-the-hedge, sticky willy, sticky willow, velcro weed, and grip grass (according to Wikipedia). I have a small lawn of all cleaver under an oak tree out back. Fortunately, this stuff grows in a clump, and one tug will remove a whole lot of it. It's hardly scratchy. At least no more than velcro is scratchy.

Useless bit of trivia: I read that 'cleavers' (a good descriptive word as it cleaves to everything it touches) was actually used as bed straw because being like velcro it sticks to itself and doesn't pack down easily.

I don't know the name of any of my weeds, except the winter rye grass, but yes, I have at least 5 varieties of weeds. We forgot to put down pre-emergent last fall and it shows. Probably need to do that soon for the spring.

Not only do I have a front/back yard full of weeds, I have a couple of early dandilions for an added bit of color. ;)