Besides the normal dandelions, which infest your yard when your lazy neighbor lets them grow one foot high and lets the wind blow their seeds all over the place, lately, there has been an influx of crabgrass!! That funny looking grass that you can't seem to get rid of despite all your attempts! I wonder if the grass seed companies are doing this on purpose! I know farmers love the stuff, so maybe that has something to do with it!!
Let me give you a brief background. I'm one of those neighbors that spends countless hours trying to perfect my green grass! But...then you have the neighbor stuck next to you, who thinks he is Martha Stewart's uncle and applies too much fertilizer and kills your grass, but that's another story.
In the spring, everyone tells you to buy the fertilizer that prevents germination of crabgrass. This year I bought Scotts which worked for awhile, up until last week as a matter of fact, after which the hellgrass was unstoppable.
As I was saying, I usually buy CIL products but I gave Scotts Turf Builder Weed Prevent Corn Gluten Meal Herbicide a try, this spring. In the surrounding Montreal area and beyond, that's the best we can do as far as chemical control.
In the spring, we usually want to plant or seed new grass. I have news for you, this germination prevention will also stop your new seeds from coming out. So hence the catch 22. You wait till your new grass grows in healthy, and you watch the crabgrass multiply before your own eyes, or you control the crabgrass and live with the ugly bald spots on your lawn, since by the time you start seeing new seedlings, it will be the end of summer.
After countless hours of hand de-rooting these culprits I have finally decided to look for other alternatives. I've had it. There must be a way!! Googling and Googling... I finally found something that sounds illegal here in Canada, through a company, via dropship to amazon.ca. You heard right Amazon.ca. That means you have it delivered to your door!! How convenient. It's the perfect week to apply the stuff as well, since weather calls for hot, hot, hot.
I'm sure we all thought about dropping into a Home Depot or Lowes in the United States buying the stuff, and smuggling it into Canada, our home and native land, but we are good citizens and would never attempt such a thing! right? I don't know about you, but I've smelled Killex weed killer on numerous well manicured lawns. :) Could be the same chemical used in other brands sold locally, like weed n feed, or weed b gone or whatever it's called, but I think not.
If you peruse through amazon.com, you will see the mixed reviews for this product, but I will take the chance anyways and report back to you in one weeks time. I should be ordering tomorrow, therefore should get it by Wednesday or Thursday.
Drum roll please, from the company that brought you Aspirin!
Product Features
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Steep, but what can you do when you live with crabgrass!
Go to the 32oz Version from amazon.ca
Go to the 1 Gallon Version from amazon.ca
I will certainly give this a try and let you know!
UPDATE: JULY 18, 2012 - I am still waiting for the shipment!
UPDATE AUG 08, 2012
After a couple of applications and weeks of watching grass
grow, I can reassuringly tell you, that if you are waiting for the crabgrass to
magically disintegrate and disappear after one application, you are mistaking.
I can tell you this though, if you are patient and willing to put some grunt
into it, it can happen.
Before every application, you should make sure that the grass
has had plenty of water the night and days before.
A few days after applying Bayer crabgrass killer, you will
notice that the crabgrass turns a dark red wherever it came into contact with
the product, which is a good indicator. If you have patience, scan your grass
and make certain that you see ample redness in your crabgrass. If not, I would
better aim for the root. Be careful however, not to over apply the chemical
since it may burn patches in your grass.
A week later, the crabgrass will start to look weak and
tired. That’s a good sign. Don’t water.
Wait another week.
At this point, the crabgrass was still there, but upon closer
inspection and manually pulling out one, I noticed that the root was very dry
and it came out very easily. This is what I meant by putting some grunt into
it. I didn’t have the patience to wait and eventually see what happens to the
crabgrass on its own, so I manually pulled out bags of them since I couldn’t
take looking at them anymore! Summer is short here in Canada. It actually
makes a big difference in pulling them out after using this product. You can
rest assured that you will not have any roots left in the ground which would
regenerate. However, do not wait too long since these guys are tough customers
and might start to recover if the product has not thoroughly killed
them.
This is what I can say about the product.
The good:
It seems to dry out the roots of the crabgrass, eventually
killing them.
Love the smell.
Love the smell.
The not all that bad:
If you apply too much, it also dries out your grass and you
may get dry patches.
For a quicker fix, you may have to pull out each and every dried out crabgrass with your bare hands.
For a quicker fix, you may have to pull out each and every dried out crabgrass with your bare hands.
Overall Rating 4/5
This product does work, but you have to get good coverage. I would use it again.
Thank you for good content scotts crabgrass preventer
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