You can find better pre-emergents at suppliers like John Deere/ Lesco (they've merged) than the home improvement stores. I agree with dchall, in my own findings granular pre-emergents don't perform as well as the liquid. The field testing that that the manufacturers site (so take that with a grain of salt) suggest that they perform about the same. If you're after grassy weeds, such as crabgrass, dimension is a great pre-em. If you're seeing a lot of both grassy and broadleaf, Prodiamine is a good alternative. The advantage with Prodiamine is that it is much cheaper to manufacture and has a number of generic versions. The 2-4D that Dchall mentioned is definitely a safe alternative in cool-season grasses for broadleaf weeds. Another, if you have trouble with crabgrass this season is Quinclorac. Quinclorac has the major advantage of being safe on Fescue even when it has just been seeded. To my knowledge it is the only herbicide that can boast that. If you mix it with a methylated seed oil, you have a good crabgrass control. The only odd exception is crabgrass that is in the intermediate stage, between newly emerged and mature quinclorac won't give any control during this period. As for the bright green grass, it isn't uncommon when you've been seeding so see color differences. Tiemco is correct about KBG being a dark green when it matures. There is a definite possibility that what you've seeded has come up much darker than what was there before. I ran across this today with a Fescue lawn that I seeded last Fall. The cheaper Fescue that was in the lawn looked much brighter than the cultivars that I used which included Speedway, Davinci and Blackwatch. So it's entirely possible, that the brighter colored grass was a lower quality Fescue, such as K31 that was there before. All the same, make sure that you don't over-do the seeding, which can lead to over-crowding and cause die-back or pythium blight in the up-coming months. Also, it's good to use a blend. There are a number of improved varieties of both bluegrass and fescue on the market today, which offer advantages over the older cultivars. For example, you can buy a mix of thermal blue, which is 10% bluegrass and the other 90% is made up of 3 different Fescue cultivars. It's highly drought tolerant and disease resistant. Either way, good luck and thanks for sharpening our skills with your question.

Make sure you are using the third address which is the HTML address and begins Then you have to give a title such as my pool ir flower beds or just link Welcome and you will soon be invited to a swap and then the trouble begins as you will go home with so many plants and you do not have to bring any as we gardeners love to share. You have found a bunch of enablers here who will have you reguesting dirt, mulch and plans or presents instead of clothes etc. Wait a minute - I always need clothes and jewels - yeah - clothing in the form of a gardening apron and clogs and a hat and jewels in the form of orchids and gingers and lilis and uh I think you get the picture. Welcome. Another plant you never want near your pool is bouginvilla. I had pineapples growing near mine and got to eat the fruit and dracanea with violas planted aound it ad they did not get into the pool. I just love plnats and enabling others to get more More MORE Linda

Vinca really, really likes warm conditions in order to sprout. You probably just need to exercise a little patience with them. They'll sprout in a week or two if the soil-less growing mix is kept at 65-70 degrees. If it is colder, it will take them a lot longer to sprout. With the lemon balm, mine get really huge by mid-summer---likely about 2' tall and 3' wide. I tend to plant them in a corner of a raised bed so they can overflow into the pathway. I cut them back relentlessly and they don't mind it at all. I use lemon balm (which is a perennial and will come back reliably if grown in well-drained soil) as a grasshopper indicator plant. If I watch my lemon balm plants, I'll know exactly when the grasshoppers begin hatching because suddenly they'll be all over the lemon balm eating holes in the leaves. When I see them, I sprinkle Nolo Bait or Semaspore all over the plant. It is an organic grasshopper control that only works when the hoppers are really small--between about 1/4-1/2". Before I started growing lemon balm, I never knew when the hoppers were first starting to emerge. Now, the lemon balm rats them out every year which gives me a chance to kill them before they get too big for the Nosema locuste to kill them. Be careful about letting the lemon balm go to seed in your garden, or you'll have a million lemon balm plants next year. Helen, I believe you're talking about winter sowing HOS (Hunks of Seedlings)?

Search pics of bahiagrass and see if that's your guy. Hesitant to suggest that though if you haven't seen blooms. They bloom so fast even the "good yards" around here get full of the tall flowers sometimes. The seeds form apparently overnight and get all over your legs, shoes, pants, feet...