Garden Pests, Lawns, Real Estate (Farm & Ranch Land)

Get Rid of Crabgrass in Your Lawn

Crabgrass is an annual grass with broad blades that are coarse, pointed and short. It doesn’t blend in with lawn grasses in color, habit or texture and can be very competitive. If left alone, it will invade your lawns, flowerbeds and gardens. So, it is important to get rid of crabgrass before it germinates.

Crabgrass is highly adaptable. It prefers full sun exposure but will grow even where the soil is nutrient poor, dry and compacted.

As this weed develops during the summer, it leaves plenty of seeds before it dies in the fall. Most often the seeds are spread by birds. Borrowing unclean lawn mowers is another common way of introducing crabgrass into your lawn.

How can you get rid of it!
Prevent it from growing: Apply a pre-emergent in the spring when soil temperature is around 50 degrees and crabgrass begins to germinate. Look for lilacs getting ready to bloom plants as an indicator that it’s time to apply a crabgrass preventer.

Types of pre-emergents to use: Synthetic formulas include Scotts Halts, Scotts Turf Builder Plus Halts, Scotts Step 1 of the season-long lawn care program, or Jonathan Green Crabgrass Preventer plus Greenup.

Leave it alone: Once applied, the pre-emergent will work by creating a barrier that stunts the development of crabgrass. Thatching, power raking or aerating the lawn will break this barrier, so do this maintenance before applying the treatment.

A second chance: There are post-emergent treatments available if you miss your opportunity to apply a preventer. To eliminate most mature crabgrass plants, use Bayer Crabgrass Killer for Lawns, Jonathan Green Crabgrass Preventer Plus Green Up or Ortho Weed B Gon Max + Crabgrass Killer. Otherwise, dig out large, mature clumps of crabgrass and reseed or sod the bare spots left behind.

Common crabgrass impersonator: If you’re seeing large, grassy weeds in May or June, they probably aren’t crabgrass. You generally won’t notice crabgrass plants until well into the middle of summer. They are likely something like bromegrass (perennial), foxtail, or quack grass.

Gardening & Landscape, Vegetables

Wide Row Gardening

Wide row gardening is a technique that I have been using for years. I got the idea from a book called the Victory Garden. Basically, rather than doing skinny row planting, you sow blocks (mine are about 2 ft by 2-3 ft, depending on the plant) with a thick covering of seeds. This works with crops like turnips, radishes, beets, lettuce and other greens, carrots, peas, etc. Depending on the size of plant, you do it a bit more thickly or thinly as needed (carrots a bit more thickly than peas, for example). This allows for fewer paths in the garden and less compaction.


No making lines to follow, no trying to separate individual seeds or carefully measuring out your plot. My method was to prepare the block of soil, grab the packet of seeds, try to distribute them evenly over the area, then cover with a bit of soil (Miracle moisture retentive garden soil). So easy!


More recently, the second benefit from wide row gardening I see is that even though I have done basically zero weeding, after the blocks are so full of plants that there isn’t a whole lot of room for weeds to grow. This has been especially true with my radish, spinach and lettuce. Carrots and parsnips take longer to get big and leafy tops, so that patch is certainly a bit weedier, as is my beet patch where there is poor seed germination and therefore very few plants. Overall, though, this technique definitely has its perks!

Garden Pests

The Right Bug Light

Bug lights, although most of us want to avoid attracting insects to our light bulbs for mostly selfish reasons (insects = annoying).

Overall, incandescent light bulbs pulled in the highest number of insects, followed by CFL, halogen globes, and cool-colored LEDs. The second best light was the ‘bug light’, and the winner, with the least amount of insects attracted, was the warm LED bulb.

So for now, stick to warm-colored LED bulbs to light your garden or porch this summer. Not only will it reduce the amount of insects hanging around, it’s also a lot better for the environment than traditional globes.