Just finished spraying the lawn with Expert Gardener Weed and Feed. This thing hooks right to the hose and automixes as you spray. All in all, it was really easy and in a couple weeks I will probably have some really nice, well fed patches of grass and a whole lot of bare lawn where the weeds were!
I got a nice sprayer on the way after my experience for applying anything else I need. My pre-emergence and fertilizers for instance.
I do like a hose-end sprayer for applying to smaller areas. Granular products while easier to obtain, are very tricky to get great results. Especially broadleaf herbicides. Spray is so much more effective!
So are most sprays! Fill a 300 gallon sprayer with mostly ....... wait for it...... water! I don't mind granular fert but for weed control and other treatments, spray is so much more effective. Trouble is, for the average homeowner doing more than a 1/2 acre lawn, the equipment is far pricier than granular. For most residential lawns, you can do a 4 step feed and treat program with nothing more than a cheap $30 rotary spreader. Hell I have the $70 "deluxe" model and that's still cheap compared to investing in a somewhat decent spray rig. But my total property is only 1 acre and I estimate that I'm taking care of roughly 1/2 acre of lawn.
I've got a nice spreader and I am looking to get a small tow behind sprayer because almost everything you want to put down is package with fertilizer too. Weed and feed isn't the best way when you want to put preemergents down at different times of the year. Even Scott's lawn service doesn't use their weed and feed granules. That should tell you something. I have about 17k square feet of grass. It's a slow rehab because the previous owners didn't take care of the lawn. I'll never use a cheap spreader again. They are throwaway. Even the Scott's pro sucks. Theres a push sprayer that I saw that's pretty cool but pricey. More than a smaller sized tow behind. Anyone watch the lawn care nut on YouTube? He's great. Dominate your neighbors lawn!
When I hear herbicide or insecticide, I want to run inside! I once treated my lawn with some weed and feed product. 6 years later, I plowed it up to use for garden. I planted tomatoes, The started out OK but then become very deformed. I called the extension service and had them look into it. They said my problem was from herbicide. I called the herbicide company. They said no way, their product degrades in one year. More research done. The herbicide does linger in the soil, and tomatoes are very sensitive to it. only way to ever get it out of the ground is to keep turning over the soil so the sun can degrade the product. I dug up one of the plants and washed off the roots. Then planted it in a bucket with new top soil. By the end of the season, the plant was growing new growth that was normal.
I was looking for some sort of herbicide to start getting the lawn in shape and this stuff was on clearance from last season for 75 cents a bottle, regularly about $18 so I thought it was worth a try. I put my pre-emrgence down a couple weeks ago so hopefully things will improve shortly.
Not bad. You're on the right track to focus on weeds/pests now, keep what you have as healthy as possible through summer. Aerate (pull cores) and seed in the fall, or as soon as it stops breaking 80 regularly. The most important fert app you will do will be in late Oct/early Nov!
Still need to thatch and aerate this spring, and maybe do some more spot killing/ replanting. Then let it be til fall.
What i did was buy a tank sprayer from TSC about 100 bucks, then I built a 10' boom from unistrut using the nozzles you can buy from TSC. The whole thing cost about 250. Made a mount for the tractor, no pull behind, can spray 4 acres in about an hour with refills.
You don't want to aerate until the fall. If you aerate in the spring you end up with a lot more weeds
He might be ok if he does a pre-emergent afterwards and it's just a solid tine or spike aeration, but I whole heartedly agree with aeration in the fall.
Went back and read that Grizzly Adam has already done a pre-emergent app. Def wait until fall on that thatch/aeration!
He said he wants to do some replanting. Preemergents will keep the new seed from germinating. You can aerate and seed at the same time in the fall. Best bet to set up for that is to take a soil sample now. Adjust pH now if needed. Continue weed control now and come the fall you can aerate and seed. Most of your broadleaf weeds will be gone or dead so the grass won't have competition. That's how I handled it last year and the difference this spring is night and day. I'd like to overseed again in he fall to really thicken up the grass from the lack of crabgrass this year but I have a lot of poa annua in my lawn that needs to be hit with Preemergents in the fall. I have to decide what's more important. Overseeding or getting rid of the poa annua.
I know on the golf course, we tolerated the poa to a certain point. Everybody has it, and you either spend a fortune getting rid of it or learn to manage it!
The seed heads on the poa are unbelievable. I have a really big patch and I'm considering doing a roundup and reseed come fall for that area and then a fall preemergent treatment for the rest of the grass. That still means I can't overseed the rest though. Really not sure what I want to do.
