I called my local herbacide supplier this morning and found that Sedgehammer costs $106 for 1.75 ounces. Ouch! They told me that most people around here use Basagran to control it at $26 for 8 ounces. Of course, it doesn't matter if it is cheaper if it doesn't work. Do any of you have any experience using Basagran to control sedge, especially in St. Augustine grass? I've linked to a website that I just discovered that does a nice job of comparing yellow and purple Nutsedge and the their recommended treatments. Based on the pictures there, I have Yellow Nutsedge, which is supposed to be treatable with Basagran. They also mention the primary ingredient of sedgehammer, called halosulfuron, as being effective on both yellow and purple Nutsedge. Here is a link that might be useful: Some good pictures and information about nutsedge and treatment options

You can start now if you want. YOu can't really expect a miracle overnight though. When it gets bad, try weekly application for a month. At the worst, you're just helping improve the soil. Of course it won't work if you keep using synthetic fertilizer because they provide a lot of nitrate (when they get converted to nitrate from urea). It's a big difference between organic program and synthetic program. OK. I'm going to provide simple organic lawn program... 1) ONE TIME compost application - one cubic yard per 1000 sqft to re-introduce beneficial microoganism that were killed by synthetic chemicals. You just use wheelbarrow and dump in various spots and use your leafblower to blow them into grass till they disappear. 2)MOW REGULARLY- 3-4 inches mowing height for st Augustine. 2-3 for zoysia. 1 inch for bermuda. Dense turf prevent sunlight from reaching ground that weed seeds need to germinate. 3) WATER DEEPLY & INFREQUENTLY. Don't water all the time. Weed seeds want watering every day to thrive. One to two inches each time to really soak ground deep. Slow watering is best because they don't run off the lawn. Sometimes I use soaker hose and leave it at trickling but it takes a long time to cover the entire lawn. I move it down every hour or so. I use oscillating type whenever it's not windy which seems to happen all the time. I always use soaker hose for grass between sidewalk and curb. I always go by how my grass look. If 50% of the lawn looks wilted, it's time to water. It could be weeks before that happens. During the hottest part of the summer when it doesn't rain for a while, I usually water every 10-14 days. Yes that long for st augustine! 4)FERTILIZATION - this is useless if you don't practice number 2 and 3. My personal favorite is soybean meal at the rate of 20lbs per 1000 sqft. I get it cheap at animal feed store. Organic garden centers are ripoff. They seem to charge same stuff 2-4 times the price found at animal feed store. I use rotary spreader for it. Works perfectly. You will have to figure out the setting though. Do this every 3 months starting March 1st. They take 2-3 weeks to start working. Don't expect quick green up effect that you see from synthetic fertilizer. Do the same with with molasses spraying. After two years, you should see dramatic improvement at every level. Last year, we had terrible black medic outbreak and my lawn was pretty much untouched even though the park right across the street was ENTIRELY covered in black medic. It was unreal! Don't use pesticide, fungicide, herbicide, ANYTHING with -cide. To make ya'll understand it better... Imagine humans are microorganisms with different jobs. Certain -cide product kills off Postal Service. What happens? You don't get your mail. Another -cide product kills police. What happens? You get very high crimes. The more type of -icide products you use, the more type of "jobs" you kill. More chaos. You get the idea....

Search for 'surfactant golf course' in the journals. Every land grant university in the country has been doing those for decades. The reason golf courses need all the tools is because they absolutely have to have green grass every day of the year. They force feed and force water it. What happens is they develop a hydrophobic fungus growing on the surface of the grass and soil. When that happens they can water all day long and it just sits on top and evaporates. This is what I get from reading the journals I alluded to above. That sitting water promotes the hydrophobic fungus. In an attempt to break through that surface they tried spine aeration. The spines poke through the surface layer of fungus and allow moisture to penetrate. That works to the extent that the spines have a certain spacing. So the water enters the soil separated by the spine to spine distance. Another attempt to solve the hydrophobicity problem was to use a surfactant like Cascade Plus. That product seems to work in every study. The surfactant has the distinct advantage of breaking through the fungus everywhere so spine to spine distance means nothing. The surfactant has a side effect of softening the soil. We use it simply for the side effect. But if you would rather break your back bouncing around behind a $250, 500 pound, rental core aerator instead of spending 30 cents and getting a little wet, you go ahead. I'm not coming through the screen to grab you by the throat. I would hesitate to recommend to others anything outside of personal experience or studies from reputable Universities or professional organizations like the USGA or field turf organizations. That's great for you. We're not hamstrung by that self imposed restriction. Although I did believe the shampoo method of soil softening was bunk until I tried it. Now look at me shouting about it. I also advocate mowing most grasses at "the highest setting," rather than the university recommendation of mowing Midnight Kentucky Bluegrass at 2.65498256 inches and Chocolate Kentucky Blue at 2.65829683 inches. The point is not to mow it at 1 inch. It needs to be tall so just friggin' keep it simple for the homeowner who doesn't have a $5,000 lawn mower to adjust it to fractional inches. I also advocate watering deeply and infrequently. My land grant university in California taught us to water daily. But here in these forums there was a discussion (kind of a rugged discussion) about the benefits of watering daily versus deep and infrequent. I lost that one. The winner was a lawn care professional from Phoenix who convinced me that if he could water his clients' lawns once a week, that I should be able to do the same. Well whaddaya know, I tried it and he was right. It might be interesting to know that there is no university research to prove that plowing the ground has any benefits to farmers. People have been doing it for 10,000 years with no research. But there are those no-plow converts who swear up and down that they get better results than when they were plowing. Do you need the science when your pappy tells you it's true? Sometimes you do. Why not core aerate? Because the cores bring old weed seeds to the surface and sunlight giving them a new chance to germinate. Because removing the cores destroys the soil structure adjacent to the holes as that soil must melt away to fill the holes. Similarly the cores on the surface melt coating the surface with un structured soil. Because the soil microbes at 3 inches deep, now exposed directly to the air, will be destroyed simply because they bury themselves to get away from the air. Because if you're removing cores containing rye or fescue plants, those will not regrow to fill in where you removed them. For me the number 1 reason not to core aerate is because Mother Nature does not core aerate. If it was an important thing to do She would have created some creature somewhere that had hooves hardened in just the right shape to penetrate the soil and remove cores.

Are they going to die in the winter Yes, it will die soon, but it will be back when the soil temp hits ~55° in your area. You should look into a pre-emergent routine and start asap. Keeping a year round regimen is important to keep most weeds out of your lawn.