The right time for pre-m is when the first blooms appear in anyone's garden in your neighborhood. Forsythia blooms are usually used as the trigger. If you are on an organic program, then you can apply your choice of organic fertilizers at 10-20 pounds per 1,000 square feet any time within three weeks of YOUR "last frost" date. For me that was back in mid Feb. For your thin areas, it makes a difference what your turf is. If you have KBG or bentgrass in it, then simply put some compost on top of the soil in the bare spots to try and prevent weeds from popping up. Those grasses are carpet forming types of grasses and will fill in the weak spots. If you don't have KBG or bent, then you probably have fescue. Fescue is a bunch grass which only spreads at glacially slow speeds. You would need to seed in those spots to fill with fescue. Unfortunately you will also get crabgrass sprouting at the same time. Oh and you cannot seed with anything and use a pre-m; the pre-m will suppress your seed along with the crabgrass. If you reseed the areas, just expose the soil, moisten it to an inch deep, scatter the seed, step on it to ensure good seed-to-soil contact, and dampen it. Don't cover it with anything. Water it like you did last summer for your new seed and you should be good to go. Really your best bet for controlling crabgrass is to water deeply and infrequently and to mow at your mower's highest setting. Next fall don't cut it short. The only reason to cut it short is IF you are reseeding. If you are not, there is never a reason to cut it short.

Quick question...Do any of you have any experience with getting rid of ground ivy?? Regrettably. It seems to require a flamethrower, Napalm, or Agent Orange, and none of those are completely reliable. Use Round Up, but expect that you'll likely have to hit it twice, a week apart, and even then you may get a little back. If you do, take care of it immediately or it spreads like a wildfire. If you keep tearing away the greenery or keep hitting it with Round Up, eventually it gets the idea and dies. It almost seems like the stuff can regenerate from the tiniest remaining root.

It is unfortunate that misinformation continues to be repeated about glyphosate. Denmark has not banned glyphosate, nor have "many European countries". Denmark at one point thought that some of the monitoring they were doing showed that glyphosate could move into agricultural field drainage water in autumn but once they looked at their data and related it to the methodology they used, they enacted no ban whatsoever. As the Danish Environmental Protection Agency specifically stated: http://www.egeis.org/home/main/Evaluation-GlyphosateDEPA.PDF "Against this background, the Danish Environmental Protection Agency believes that no unacceptable risk of pollution of the groundwater is associated with the currently approved agricultural use of glyphosate. The Agency thus does not consider that the updated state of our knowledge provides any technical grounds for the imposition of restrictions on the autumn application of glyphosate." Used properly, glyphosate will not pollute drinking water nor will it have adverse effects on humans. Once applied, it binds tightly to soil particles and is not herbicidally active. If it is applied to hard surfaces such as sidewalks it can move offsite of course. It can also move if there is active soil erosion carrying soil off site. It is of very low toxicity, and breaks down completely into natural constituents over time. It is of equal or lower toxicity than most household products such as detergent, soaps, shampoos, cleaners etc. and far less toxic than some of the "alternatives" often discussed such as bleach, kerosene, high strength vinegars and so on. There is so much misinformation being repeated on the web that it is difficult to get reliable information. This link provides an published overview of the available literature. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology Volume 31, Issue 2, April 2000, Pages 117-165 Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1401479

A "weed" is a plant you do not want growing where you do not want it growing. For some people that White Dutch Clover in a lawn could be a "weed" while others will think of it as a boon because it can supply Nitrogen. Crab grass is an annual that produces a lot of seed that will germinate and grow when the soil temperatures reach to low to mid 60's. Aside from spraying poisons around control of crab grass can be achieved by mowing as high as possible and maintaining a good healthy stand of the wanted type of grass. Other types of unwanted plant growth can be controlled, some, in the same way. A good reliable soil test is a start toward a good healthy lawn. kimmq is kimmsr