Natural Ways To Prevent Crab Grass In Your Lawn
Many of you are getting the idea that natural lawn care is really the way to go, and that is pretty exciting to me. I don’t mean to beat the dead horse here, but natural lawns look better and last longer when cared for and handled properly: and I will continue to say that!
But there are always going to be problems that crop up in our lawns and we need to be mindful of how to work through them in a responsible way. One of those issues is CrabGrass! Crab grass is an annual weedy grass that invades lawns from seeds deposited in the soil by previous years plants. Since crab grass is an annual, a single plant lives one year and just before winter, it drops seeds, which grow the following spring.
So How Do We Control CrabGrass Naturally?
Most hardware and big box home improvement stores carry lawn products that contain pre-emergent herbicides that basically stop grabgrass seeds from germinating in the later spring. For lack of a better term, these crab grass pre-emergents form a barrier at the soil line that keeps the young seedlings from every seeing the light of day. These herbicides are very effective, but they are not natural.
Natural Organic Crab Grass Control
The only natural crab grass control that I recommend is Corn Gluten Meal. Corn gluten meal has been used since the early 1980s as safe, natural lawn fertilizer and crab grass preventative. It is one of those “wonder” products that provides many benefits to lawns. It is a source of very slow releasing, no burning nitrogen, inhibits mold and fungal growth in soil, deters some types of lawn invading insects, and most importantly, inhibits the growth of your crabgrass and weeds.
There are just a couple things to keep in mind if you plant to use corn gluten meal as your chosen crabgrass preventor.
1) because it is organic/natural, corn gluten meal must be spread at a very heavy rate. Natural and organic products require very large doses to be effective. I recommend you spread corn gluten (the one I recommend below) at a rate of 10 lbs or product per 1,000 square feet of lawn area. This means that a 5,000 sq foot lawn would require a 50 pound bag for a single application.
2) timing is everything with corn gluten meal. As a fertilizer, you can use it anytime during the year, but to get the benefits of its crabgrass inhibiting properties, you need to apply it pretty much as soon as the snow is gone in early spring. This way, as temps rise, the stuff will get into the lawn where we want it.
The final thing to remember about corn gluten meal as a crab grass preventer is that time is a factor. What I mean is that the more times you use it, the more its inhibiting properties will build up in the soil and you will get better and better control each year. natural lawn care takes patience!