My LESCO dealer advised NOT to use Dimension for my first Pre-M application as it only controls crab grass. Well I don't know that is quite true or not, he might of been trying to sell you something else. Dimension controls: Crabgrass (preemergence and early postemergence) Goosegrass Annual bluegrass (Poa annua) Barnyardgrass Ryegrass (annual and perennial) Kikuyugrass Chickweed Henbit Oxalis Spurge Now with that said he didn't outright lie to you either as AMAZE controls more, last longer, but more expensive, but Lesco does not carry AMAZE, they carry a similar product in a liquid form for commercial application. AMAZE contains Balan and Surflan.

Roger505, The great thing about Dimension is it will kill crabgrass post emergently up to five leaves, before it tillers. So, this gives you a larger margin of error when applying Dimension. That being said, if you keeps you up at night then go ahead and apply the Dimension it's not going to hurt anything. Preemergent timing, along with everything else involved in the care of your lawn, is going to have a learning curve. Use your meat thermometer and measure your soil temp at the same time everyday for three days and record the average temp. Apply your preemergent, then if you get some early crabgrass say in middle to end of April, then you know you applied your preemergent to late and next year you can apply at a lower soil temp. Also, it would not hurt to invest in the herbicide Acclaim herbicide, just in case you make any mistakes with your preemergent application. Acclaim is expensive, but it will last you years. As far as your fertilizer app. goes, I would hold on to the fertilizer that you just purchased and use it in the fall, if your soil test indicates that all the nutrients in the bag are not in the excessive range. Also, just for your edification that bag of "slow release fertilizer" is only around 30% slow release. So if you apply 1 pound of nitrogen per thousand square feet then .7 of a pound of nitrogen will be quickly available to the plant. This is ok in the fall, but in the spring you will be mowing your yard twice a week to keep up. A better option would be .25 to .5 pounds per thousand of ammonium sulfate or urea now. Then when you get your soil test back follow their recommendations plus add .75 to 1 pound of N per thousand that is at least 70% slow release. Henbit usually takes a couple of apps to kill, and herbicides take a little longer to work in the early spring because of the cooler temps.

I wonder where these ideas generate from. You have a mix of things going on. The time to apply any preemergent is prior to your yard reacting to the spring time weather. The forsythia is usually the first indication of the events of spring. Thus the earliest blooming of the earliest forsythia is the trigger. You are already late for this year. The "good news" is that crabgrass will germinate under proper watering and sun conditions all summer. Chemical fertilizer should not go down until you mow real grass twice. By waiting you will ensure that you are fertilizing your grass and not your weeds. When you apply has nothing to do with root or leaf growth. I'll tell you what has everything to do with leaf AND root growth, AND it controls your weeds to boot, is setting your mower to the highest setting. By growing longer leaves you will grow deeper roots. Deeper roots can get water deeper in the soil, so you can water more deeply and less frequently. Tall grass shades the soil keeping it cooler and less prone to evapotranspiration of the moisture, so you water less. You don't have to use a weed-n-feed. You don't have to do anything until you mow (tall) twice. Then use regular fertilizer. By then some of the winter annual weeds will be dead anyway. By letting your grass grow up tall, weeds like dandelions will die out. Why? Because the surrounding grass will force the broad dandelion leaves to point up and they don't get enough sunshine. The plant will die. Any seeds that blow off the dandelion will not be able to get down to the surface through the tall grass so no new ones will crop up. And if they did hit the surface, and you did water them daily so they would sprout, the tall grass will provide enough shade that the seedling dandelion will not get enough sunlight to take root. If you fertilize in a few weeks, many of the weeds will be gone by then. Then in two more weeks, a few more weeds will be gone but the remaining weeds will be healthy enough to absorb a spot spray like weed-b-gone. This is a less expensive idea than the weed-n-feed and seems to work better. But if you water infrequently and deeply, and mulch mow at your mower's highest setting, you should not have crabgrass this year regardless of your use of preemergents. Mother Nature can throw you a curve and apply enough water to germinate the crabgrass, but that is not the end of the world. The tall grass will severely curtail any spread and may choke it out. It needs plenty of sun to thrive.

Now is the right time to put out pre-emergent for summer weeds here. You will need to do it again in very early fall for the winter weeds that are in your grass right now.