Skip to main content

Changing My Weed Management Approach

Lately I have begun to change the way I approach weeds in the landscape. In my experience over the past decade I have seen a lot of weed management failures, not just on the golf course but also on people's home lawns. I have noticed a few things and here is what I have got.

The principle is this: Instead of focusing on the pest, focus on the desirable species. It might sound easy but it is really a hard thing to do. 

Take dandelions in your home lawn for example. When dandelions sprout on most people's lawns their first reaction is "what do I apply to kill these dandelions?" While this is a fantastic short term solution it really solves nothing over time and not after long the lawn is usually plagued with more dandelions. Instead of focusing your energy on the dandelion focus on the needs of the turf. The dandelions aren't the issues. The turf that is weak and unable to out-compete the dandelions is the real issue. I am often approached by members telling me I better cut the seed heads and flowers off the dandelions before the seed blows onto the fairways. I have never done this because I grow good grass. Twelve years on the job and no increase in weed populations. Dandelions aren't going to grow where good grass is growing plain and simple.
Brown un-irrigated area is mostly dandelions
get over it.
Areas where we can grow good grass there are virtually
no weeds.
Another common weed issue I see on people's home lawns is moss. For some reason people hate moss on their lawns and I just can't figure out why. It's green and requires virtually no maintenance so what's the problem? Most people's attempts to kill the moss actually do more harm to the turf than the moss. Liming and applying high levels of iron can help with the moss but do little to help the turf perform well enough to compete with the moss. It seems that the harder you fight the moss the more moss you end up having. The moss isn't your problem here, your crappy grass is!
This isn't a moss problem, it's a lousy grass problem.
I am constantly asked by the public what I use to control weeds on the golf course. My answer is "we haven't used a herbicide on our fairways in 10 years!" and they are always surprised because in their view there are very little, if any, weeds on the golf course. The truth is that there are lots of "weeds" on the course they just don't notice them because there are very few weeds for the size of the turf area. We employ sound turf management practices and don't strive for perfection. Perfection when it comes to weed management is sometimes achievable but no one really notices, or cares. Instead we focus on the big picture and do whatever we have the resources to do to make our grass out-perform the "weeds." If we can do this we can easily keep control of the weeds using manual removal using hand tools.
White clover barely affects play and most people
don't even notice it especially from a distance.
There are some areas of the course that are mostly weeds. These areas are typically on steep slopes that aren't irrigated, fertilized, or aerated because we simply just can't on that terrain. Of course I could spray these areas to kill the dandelions but why? So more can grow back? The only time I would use a herbicide to control a weed is if I was able to correct the underlying issues that permitted that weed to exist in the first place. If you can't grow good grass in that location there is absolutely no point in trying to kill the weeds, right?
Un-irrigated rough, yep this is all I can expect.
This kind of thinking is what many turf professionals do every day even if we don't realize it at first. For me this simple change in thinking has really helped my efforts to grow good grass and stop killing the weeds.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Turfgrass speedo is still my most important tool for managing turf growth after 4 years.

It wasn't the easiest year for growing grass , but the conditions were still pretty good. Almost 4 years ago exactly, I came up with the idea of comparing actual clipping yields to the "ideal" clipping yield or the clipping yield adjusted using the Growth Potential Model . Since then, it has proved to be a much more useful tool to manage growth than I originally thought .  It has been almost a decade since I started making observations on plant health and playability and how it relates to the clipping yield. I have been constantly searching for ways to get the growth rate right as often as I can and this tool seems to be the best way I have seen so far, and might ultimately, be the best way going forward. To prove this point I will discuss in a future post, the success I've had with pest control in the past few years (for the most part (Not withstanding the times where I think my greens are dead but they actually aren't...thanks T)). Never needed less There are ...
Read more

Do you have enough?

I recently discussed how we can use fertilizer ratios to simplify how much fertilizer we apply to help us keep above the MLSN guidelines . When we get a soil test done it is a static amount of nutrients found in the soil. Even if you are above the MLSN guidelines at the time of testing, it doesn't guarantee that you will remain at or above the guidelines as the grass grows and consumes nutrients. There is math that you can use to determine exactly how much nutrient you need to apply to ensure that you remain at or above the MLSN guidelines. For many, this is much too complicated. For that reason I made a quick cheat sheet to help you determine how much of each nutrient you can expect to use each year based off a few different annual nitrogen rates. Nutrient use is based primarily on nitrogen use so the left 2 columns are a few different nitrogen rates. The columns for each nutrient are in PPM and are designed to help you look at your current soil test PPM (mehlich 3) and determin...
Read more

How to quantify nutrient content in liquid fertilizer

In a recent post, I discussed how it was actually cheaper to spray soluble vs granular fertilizer. What about if we use pre-mixed liquid fertilizer? How do we even figure out how much nutrient we are applying with pre-mixed liquid fertilizer?  Before I learned that you could simply dissolve soluble fertilizer in water and apply it in a sprayer, I was a big user of pre-mixed liquid fertilizers. One of the issues I initially had was figuring out exactly how much of each nutrient I was applying. The math wasn't as straightforward is it was with granular fertilizers. It turns out, it's actually not that difficult but requires an extra step.  First, we need to convert the liquid volume into a mass. Many products will have the product density displayed on the label or you can look in the Safety Data Sheet (SDS) for that information as well. No SDS? Should you be using products without an SDS? Even if this information isn't included on the label it is very easy to figure out. All ...
Read more