Bindweed is notoriously difficult to combat. The seeds remain viable for decades, and the roots spread so much that bindweed that you see coming up in your lawn may be an offshoot from a plant quite a distance away. So even pulling it all out won't get rid of all of it. If you're following an organic approach, your two choices are hand pulling and bindweed mites. Bindweed mites are not available everywhere, but they're small mites that eat only bindweed, so they kill teh bindweed without affecting anything else. If you're not opposed to using chemical weedkillers, your best approach will probably be to use diluted glysophate in the fall. The reason for diluting it is that if you use it full strength it will kill the top growth and leave the roots alone. If you dilute it, the plant will die slowly and bring the poison into its root system. This is more effective in the fall because that is when the plant is storing food for the winter in its roots. The approach I read was to take a jar and dilute the glysophate to 1/3 or 1/4 strength. Partially bury the jar so it doesn't spill and kill the surrounding plants. stick part of the bindweed plant into the jar and leave it there. One word of warning. Don't try to kill it by tilling. If you till it, you create lots and lots of little roots, each of which can grow into a new plant.

Crabgrass is a warm season annual grass. It will sprout around April. You can use a pre-emerge herbacide on your lawn BEFORE it sprouts. Ferti-loam makes a weed and feed for crabgrass. Make sure you mow any crabgrass before it can put out seeds for next years. Not knowing where you live, I can't make any grass recommendations. In Arkansas/Missouri we can grow either cool season or warm season grasses. In Arkansas warm season ones work better. Choices include bermudagrass, zoysia, centipede, and st. augustine (not reliably winter hardy north of Central Arkansas). Bermuda is easiest grass to establish if you have good sun. Zoysia can take some shade, and Centipede and St. Augustine can take more shade. No grass will grow well in deep shade. Cool grasses include turf type tall fescues, ryegrass, and bluegrass. Some people in north Arkansas/Missouri have some success with fescue, but it must be well watered during the summer to stay green, and usually re-seeded every fall. Ryegrass is an annual grass that will die out when summer gets hot. I don't know much about bluegrass as it doesn't do well in Arkansas. Bermuda can be sodded anytime, or seeded in May and will establish if you keep the water on your lawn. Ryegrass, bluegrass, fescue are sown in October. Zoysia, St. Augustine, and Centipede are usually laid as sod. If you have dense shade, I recommend ground covers instead of grass.

Hi again! I'm back with an update on how my lawn has done this year and some questions on what to do next. I did the recommended amendments in the spring, and things greened up and filled in pretty nicely. We had a ridiculously dry summer and early fall, and I don't have irrigation, so things didn't stay totally green all summer, but mostly looked okay (except for a patch near the street - more on that in a minute.) I've been a little behind schedule on the amendments this fall, but here's what I've done: -around 8/15: milorganite -around 9/26: milorganite, encap lime (front only), overseeded part of front and back w/Pennington Sun & Shade mix -10/11 and 12: encap lime (back only), potassium sulfate (front only) I ran out of lime on 9/26 and had to order a new bag, so that's why only the front got done then. That put me behind schedule on the back yard, but I'll do the potassium sulfate on that in 2 weeks. I know I'm late overseeding, but it was so dry in Aug/Sept and I knew I couldn't keep up with the watering, so I decided to wait. I only overseeded some sections that were pretty bad that I felt like I could keep watered this fall. We also, luckily, got some significant rain this past couple of weeks after I got the seed down. Here are some pics of how things look now. This is the good part, closer to the house (most of it looks like this): This is the part we're still having problems with, right next to the street: Most of what's there is actually crabgrass. I just overseeded this section and have been keeping it watered, but germination is sparse (another area up by the house has much better germination). This also happened last year when we seeded and this area just didn't take. Some questions: It occurred to us that part of the problem in this area might be road salt. If that is the problem, is there anything we can do about it? I didn't get in 3 rounds of milorganite this fall. Should I do another one, or just skip it and winterize at some point? If so, when? I saw that Espoma now has a winterizing product. Can I use that? Anything else I should do this fall? Since irrigation is a problem for overseeding the whole lawn, I was thinking I might try dormant seeding this winter. Is this a good idea, or a waste? Thanks so much for your help!!

Easy - seriously. Your lawn is in rather good shape compared to mine. I moved to a weed patch with about 10 square feet of real grass in 2014. Now there's upwards of 1,000 square feet of real grass. I'm going to give you the plan to convert this to 100% St Augustine over time. If you want something in a hurry, let us know and we can get you on a different plan. If you want an immediate lawn for a January wedding or something, the best grass is grown on grass farms in Wharton - just a hop, skip, and a jump from you, so it will be as fresh as can be if you want to go that way. Water it deeply about once a month starting now. Put out some cat food or tuna cans and time how long it takes your sprinklers to fill the cans. That's how long you will be watering from now on, so write down that time. My time is 8 hours, but I use extremely slow sprinklers (turbo oscillator). Yours might be as little as 20 minutes, so keep an eye on the cans. I'll put more about watering at the bottom of this reply. Proper watering is the most important part of having a good looking turf, so pay attention to this. If you want to have a St Augustine lawn, then raise your mower all the way to the highest setting. You have it on the lowest now. You can mow the weeds off in March and the St Augustine will catch up in April. For next spring I would not spray any weed control. Just having something green is much better than bare spots where the herbicide killed off the weeds. Some time about late March the grass will awaken. Once that happens it will leap out of the ground like it's on rocket fuel. Let that happen. Keep after the mowing on a weekly basis. After a few weeks it will slow down to normal growth. At that point, I usually back off to mowing St Augustine every 2 weeks. That allows it to get taller than the surrounding grasses. The tall coarse bladed St Aug will provide too much shade for the grassy weeds like bermuda to take hold. By July the parts where the St Aug is doing will will become very dense. St Augustine will spread about 15 feet per year in all directions, and uou have enough now for it to take over in one season. At this point I would use an organic fertilizer. I'm assuming you have not been on an organic program. Call your local feed stores to get their prices on corn meal, corn gluten meal, and alfalfa pellets. If they have corn meal for less than $10, use that. If they have corn gluten meal for less than $20, use that. If they have alfalfa pellets for less than $12, use that. Those come in 50-pound bags. The application rate is 15 to 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. I would apply by hand rather than a spreader. If you miss some spots you can always add more with organics. You likely won't see anything happen this year no matter what kind of fertilizer you use. This application is for next spring, but do it now. In the spring don't fertilize until Memorial Day. Trust me on this. It will cause more issues if you fertilize early. Really after this fertilizer drop now you don't have to do anything but water and mow in the spring until Memorial Day. On Memorial Day you can use just about any fertilizer you want. I like organic, but it's up to you. Watering: Deep and infrequent is the mantra for watering. This is for all turf grass all over the place. Deep means 1 inch all at one time. Put some cat food or tuna cans around the yard, and time how long it takes your sprinkler(s) to fill all the cans. Memorize that time. That will be the time you water from now on. My hose, sprinkler and water pressure takes 8 full hours to fill the cans. Your time will likely be less. I like gentle watering. As for watering frequency, that depends on the daytime air temperature. With temps in the 90s, deep water once per week. With temps in the 80s, deep water once every 2 weeks. With temps in the 70s, deep water once every 3 weeks. With temps below 70, deep water once a month. Note that you have to keep up with quickly changing temps in the spring and fall. This deep and infrequent schedule works in Phoenix and in Vermont, so it should work for you. The reason for deep and infrequent is to grow deeper, more drought resistant roots and to allow the soil to dry completely at the surface for several days before watering again. If it rains, reset your calendar to account for the rainfall.