- If you hate weeds in
your lawn, as much as I do, then you found the right video. Coming up, I talk about all
the products and techniques that I like for getting
rid of weeds in my lawn, talk about how to apply them,
the pros and cons of each, and I tell you the best way
to go about getting the weeds out of your lawn in a way
that doesn't damage the thing that we really love, our grass, right? Let's get started. (upbeat music) Hey, YouTube, Ron here with Project Golf Course
Lawn, season five. So how do we kill weeds in our lawn while not ruining our beautiful
turf grass in the process? That's the magic question, right? The holy grail of lawn
care is a weed-free lawn that's beautiful to look at. The answer is actually pretty
simple, believe it or not. The absolute best way to
control weeds in your lawn with minimal effort, is to
grow a really healthy lawn. So grow very healthy turf grass, cut it at the correct height. And that naturally is
going to do go a long way towards allowing your
grass to outcompete weeds for the nutrients and
the resources they need to be able to establish
themselves in the lawn. But now what if you're not there yet? What if you're in a
situation where, you know, you're just getting started
in your lawn care program and you need to get ahead of weeds in order to
kind of get to that point where your turf is
healthy enough to be able to outcompete the weeds for resources. Well, that's where some of these products can
really come into play. You know, there are really
two major categories when it comes to herbicides
that control weeds in your lawn. You've got liquid products
and then you've got granulars. Now kind of like when
it comes to fertilizers, the benefits of the liquid herbicides, is that they're gonna work a lot faster. Typically a lot of these herbicides, you put them down in your lawn and within two to three days, you're gonna start seeing results. When you're using more
of a granular product, like the Spectracide I have here. That is gonna take a little bit longer, typically seven to 10 days, or up to a period of two
weeks until the weeds that were treated with this are dead. So you're kind of giving
up speed for a product that's a little bit more safe. So let's talk through each one of these. First, let's start with Roundup. Now, Roundup is not something that I would ever recommend
that you apply on weeds, that's within your turf grass at all, ever, never do that. The reason being is this
stuff is like, literally, like dropping an atomic bomb on whatever plant you put it on. It's super effective, but it's not super effective
only against weeds. This stuff will kill the
weeds and it's also going to kill the underlying
grass around the weeds. I had a friend that applied this, he used this Roundup to spot
treat weeds in his lawn, and it took care of the weeds, but literally for an entire season, he had like brown spots in his lawn where you could see where
he sprayed this stuff. So really, Roundup, I would limit its use to only ornamental areas. So like beds where you don't
have plants or sidewalks or place where you're
trying to kill weeds, and you don't have any
other plant life around that you truly care about. That's a case where Roundup makes sense, but I would never apply
this product to any weeds in my lawn, it's just simply too harsh. Next up is a product that I'm
actually a pretty big fan of, it's called Image. So Image is a product
that I use in my lawn, typically only once per
season, to treat nutsedge. So if you don't know much
about nutsedge, you know, check out my video here in this card, where I talk about using
Image to get rid of nutsedge in my lawn, and the pros and cons of it. I guess, in a really high
level, nutsedge is a type of weed that loves wet areas. So any parts of your
lawn where water settles or water passes through all the time, that's a prime area for where
nutsedge is gonna wanna grow. So this product, again, I
use as a spot treatment, works very well for killing nutsedge. The downside is kind of like
with many other products of this type, is that it tends to discolor the grass slightly. So even though you put this down there at the recommended
rate, you're still going to suffer a little bit as far
as discoloration in your turf, if you use this product. So again, kind of getting,
moving up the harshness chain, we went with something
that was very, very harsh, something a little less
harsh, but very effective. And the downside is your grass color will suffer a little bit for it. Next up is a product that I really like, I'm a really big fan of, and that's this guy, is Spectracide. So what this is, is a granular product, whereas these other two were liquid. It's a granular product, and what this is, is both a weed killer and it has a pre emergent built into it. So what does that mean? What that means is that when
you apply this to your lawn, if you blanket the entire lawn with this, it's going to kill weeds
that are in your lawn, but it's also going to
absorb in to the grass and prevent new weeds from forming. So what that does is it kind of helps us reach our main goal, right? Which is to grow that healthy lawn and allow the lawn to
outcompete the weeds. So this is gonna allow
you to get ahead of weeds, you know, growing in your lawn and just having to always be chasing them. Whereas, as far as ease of application, Roundup is obviously super easy and that it's all self contained. There's a pump associate with the bottles. It's really easy to
spot spray your sidewalk or ornamental areas with that. Image is gonna require you to
attach it to a garden hose. Again, this is not something
that I would even recommend you blanket your entire lawn with. I would only use it to spot treat areas where you're dealing with
nutsedge, just, you know, just use this very, very sparingly, because it is going to discolor your lawn in the areas where you treat it. And then finally Spectracide. So with this product, you are gonna need a broadcast spreader. So once again, it's a
little bit more involved than these options, but in my opinion, it's the best option for eliminating weeds in your lawn, while also
doing the least amount of damage to your underlying turf grass. Now, the thing with Spectracide, to get the best results out of this, it does require, you know,
a little bit of planning. For best results, you wanna
apply this stuff to the lawn when the grass is wet, but also whenever you're
not gonna get rain, after you apply it. So, ideally, if you have
a forecast to where, you know, for 24 hours or so, there's not gonna be any rain, you'd wanna get up in the morning early when the lawn has,
there's a dew on the grass and apply this product. And then just don't, you
know, don't water the grass, obviously, don't water this in and allow it to dry on the turf. That's gonna give you the
best results for this. So that's the, that's
the only real, you know, thing you have to worry
about when it comes to using Spectracide. When you look at the
reviews of this product, you often hear people
say, "Oh, it didn't work, or it didn't work well." And a lot of those cases has been when people apply the product incorrectly. If you apply this to dry grass, it's just not gonna work as well, because it needs to stick to the leaf in order to begin that
process of killing them off. And then the herbicide, sorry,
the pre emergent component of it just will work as part of that. So it's, you can get to up
to five months of protection out of this, and this is
the one product I've used on my lawn that hasn't done damage to the turf grass. So as far as options, I really like this. Now, as far as where
to get these products, you can get, find all of
these in, at Home Depot. You know, they're all
pretty reasonably priced. Spectracide, you can also
get this on Amazon as well, but I think the price
at Home Depot is better. I mean, you can get this
for a little over $10 a bag. One bag treats 3000 square feet. And again, outside of having
to have a broadcast spreader, it's super easy to apply. All the rest of these,
again, you can also find them at Home Depot or on Amazon. And for those of you guys
that are just Amazon people, I'll put a link in the
description, down below, for all these products in
case you wanna pick them up. As far as applying this, it's super easy. With my Earthway spreader, the setting you're gonna wanna use is 11. That's gonna get you to
put this down at rate. And then on the back
of the bag, right here, this little yellow box here, is a, that has the settings for all of your most common spreaders. So it's very easy product to apply. If you have a Scott spreader,
an Earthway spreader, the calibration information is gonna be on the back of the bag. When it comes to using these products, One thing that's really
important is apply them at the recommended rate or less. Like, again, kind of like when it comes to like synthetic fertilizers, when you're putting
herbicides on your lawn, more is not better. Remember, the idea is
we wanna kill the weeds, we wanna stunt their
growth so we can get ahead with our turf grass so that we can naturally outcompete them. You know, so we can naturally to have not that natural weed control. We don't wanna have to rely on this stuff for healthy lawn. So use the recommended rate, it works perfectly at
the recommended rate. Do not go heavier than
what the bag specifies. So, guys, I hope you found this useful. If you guys are using any other products or to control weeds in your lawn, I'd like you guys to put
them in the comments below. I mean, this, these are
the products that I've used for different parts of my lawn, like sidewalks, nutsedge treatment. And then also as blanket, you know, weed control and as a pre emergent and I've had really
good success with them. But if there are other products
that you guys have used you've had success with,
definitely drop me a comment. Let me know, what the product
is and why you like it. And the kind of results you got with it. You know, this is a, it's
a collaborative effort. So while these products
work really well for me, if you guys have something
that's even better, I'd like to hear about it. And, you know, perhaps I
can update the description and let people that
watch this content know that there are other options
in addition to these. So again, guys, thank
you so much for watching. If you're not yet a subscriber,
please consider subscribing. I really enjoy making this
content and to, you know, to share my love and passion for all things lawn care with the world. So by you subscribing, you're
helping to support the channel and allows me to make
more of this content. So I really appreciate you
guys that have already done so, and I hope that, you
know, that this content will convince you guys that
have not yet subscribed, to consider doing that. Again, thank you guys
so much for watching. Have a great day, I will
see you guys next time.
