For a proud Pensacola homeowner, a lush green lawn is truly a thing of joy and a matter of pride. It's the first and last thing anyone sees of your house and a place where we spend hours struggling to get the upper hand in a war on weeds.
Weed control is a frustrating, ongoing struggle that, more often than not, ends in an embarrassing defeat to both us and our lawns. Weeds are incredibly prolific, designed by nature to be tuff and resilient, and seem to adjust to our weed elimination tactics with lightning speed.
Let's take a quick look at how to control weeds in your lawn, which lawn weeds you have to worry about in Pensacola, and what options you have when it comes to Pensacola pest control.
Common Types Of Weeds That Invade Lawns In Pensacola
High humidity, no winters, and beautiful sunshine; it's what makes just about every plant, including weeds, grow, well, fast as weeds. Below are some common weeds found in our Pensacola area yards and some common treatments:
- Yellow woodsorrel can be controlled relatively easily by hand pulling before seeds develop.
- Quackgrass is controlled by keeping your lawn free of disturbed ground.
- Dollarweed can be treated with homemade treatments such as boiling water or sprinkling the plants with soda combined with pulling roots by hand.
- Matchweed (frogfruit) is resistant to most chemicals once fully grown.
- Nutsedge prefers moist, compact soil, so avoiding overwatering and aerating the soil in your garden is the key to keeping it away.
- Florida pusley is best treated by keeping turfgrass healthy and full to avoid bold spots that attract this weed.
- Goosegrass and crabgrass can be pretty effectively removed by digging up the fibrous roots.
- Dandelions can be controlled by digging up the roots and with weed sprays.
Weeds will exploit any damage to your turf grass and quickly take over the ground. Weed control becomes a lot more complicated once they grow to maturity. If you're starting to see signs of weeds in your lawn, it pays to act quickly to get your lawn back under control.
How Weeds Drain The Life Out Of Your Lawn
All of the above weeds share one common characteristic; they grow very quickly and easily overpower all varieties of lawn grass.
The problem with trying to control weeds in an area you've designated for Bermuda or Bluegrass is that turf grasses are bred to have a certain look, feel or climate adaptability. In most cases, they need you to water, feed, and care for them to survive.
On the other hand, weeds go through a tough natural selection designed to develop a single trait; their ability to dominate the environment they're in; survive heat or cold, survive in bad soil, survive lack of water, produce seeds fast, and multiply.
On their own, our beautiful backyard grass does not stand a chance against weeds in Pensacola and will get pushed out quickly.
Why DIY Weed Control Can Be Costly And Time-Consuming
As a homeowner, our first instinct is to roll up our sleeves and fix the problem on our own when dealing with weeds on our lawn, but that might be a mistake.
Pulling up weeds by hand will work with some weeds, but others will regrow from pieces of roots left in the ground. Store-bought chemicals are dicy; one weed variety will react great to the ones you've bought, while others will shrug it off as nothing. A lot of weeds have developed a natural resistance to chemicals like Roundup.
A weed control professional has the advantage of experience here; a DIYer will have to try solution after solution, costing time, money, and the risk of ruining your lawn.
A lot of weeds in Pensacola grow and mature very fast (dandelions, for example). If you don't get the problem under control within a few days, you have to deal with hundreds of their seeds floating around, establishing new weeds for you to deal with.
Let The Professionals Keep Your Lawn Weed-Free
When it comes to getting your lawn back under control fast and without damaging your turfgrass, it pays to get a professional involved. An experienced pest control professional will evaluate your yard, determine the weeds invading it, know how to kill weeds in your lawn, and take care of the problem to help you keep your lawn weed free in the future.
If your yard needs lawn care in Pensacola, get in touch with EnSec Pest & Lawn today!