A Lawn Without Weeds

Featured Pro: Eric Stromer
Category: Home Improvement
Time: 2:31


ERIC STROMER: Hey, I’m Eric Stromer. There’s nothing more attractive than a beautiful, well-manicured lawn, and nothing more irritating than a lawn filled with weeds. Now, I’m going to show you how to eradicate all different types of weeds in a couple of quick and easy steps.

Keep in mind, there’s three different types of weeds. There’s crabgrass, there’s a broad-left weed, and then there’s also perennial grass. All of them, the best possible way to deal with it is to hand-pull them out as you go. But there are specific treatments for each particular type of weed. I’m going to show you how to do it.

Broad-leaf weeds, such as dandelions, respond well to broad-leaf herbicides. Use a one- or two-gallon Hudson sprayer to spot-treat these weeds. Perennial grasses, such as quack grass, do not respond to any targeted herbicides. Either pull them from the root or apply a non-selective weed killer such as Roundup directly to the blades of the weed.

The best way to eliminate crabgrass is to stop it from germinating to begin with. Apply a crabgrass preventer between the first and third mowings in the spring to keep the crabgrass seeds from taking root.

Another great thing for preventing weeds is corn gluten. Now, corn gluten is a great example of a weed-and-feed fertilizer. Corn gluten meal is a yellow powder created as a byproduct of milling corn. It both gives a small amount of slow-release nitrogen to nourish your lawn for the season and acts as a pre-emergent weed control for lawns.

The most important aspect to a weed-free lawn is to mow regularly and at the ideal height. Now, keep in mind that weeds grow faster than grass, so it’s important to keep that grass trimmed so the weeds won’t grow and then spread. A good rule of thumb is to cut the grass at least once a week. You want to make sure you mow the lawn at the right height. Warm-climate grasses tend to do better at a height of one-half to one inch, whereas the colder-climate grasses like bluegrass thrive at a height of two to three inches.

Now, the problem with mowing often is that it removes nitrogen and other nutrients from the grass. So if you have a mulch setting on your lawn mower, go ahead and set it to that setting, and then leave those clippings on the grass and they’ll reabsorb back into the lawn.

Finally, you want to make sure to de-thatch and aerate your lawn every spring and reseed once a year until your lawn is nice and thick. Check out my GMC Trade Secret on aerating your lawn for more detailed instructions on how that’s done.

After a few seasons of this kind of maintenance, your lawn will be healthy, lush and full and keep the weeds out all on its own. Now go out and enjoy that lawn of yours.

I’m Eric Stromer. That’s my GMC Trade Secret.