QuestionI live a little North of Des Moines, IA. My front lawn was 75% crabgrass when we moved in. We've tried everything we can think of to get a nice lawn, but the crabgrass is just too thick. This year, we gave up. We used Round-up to kill the whole lawn. Then we tilled, put down starter fertilizer, and seeded with good grass seed. We got some grass seed to pop up, but for every grass seedling that germinated, about 100 crabgrass seeds germinated. So, we tried again: killed with round-up, seeded, watered & this time we covered with some straw hoping that it would work better. It didn't. Same results. Needless to say, the lawn is now 99% crabgrass. Is there anything short of sod that we can do to get a healthy crabgrass-free lawn? Will sodding even solve our problem? Need help!
AnswerCrabgrass seeds are most active in spring and summer. I recommend that you re-start the procedure in early fall (september) at which time crabgrass will be less prominant and grass seeds have better conditions.
You can buy starter fertilizer which has pre-emergent herbicides build in. The specific herbicide is tuppersan (siderun). This herbicide will prevent crabgrass from germinating but will allow grass seeds to germinate. NOt all fertilizers w/crabgrass prevent is based on tuppersan, so check around to make sure you get the correct product.
