Question
Greetings, I live near Philadelphia, PA. During Sring and Fall our lawn looks great. I expect our lawn to go dormant in the hot summer months, but for the last two years the lawn has been overrun by yellow nutsedge. Can you give me any advice on what I can use to treat this? I aerate annualy, use the Scotts 4 step program and mow frequently. We have a lot of clay in our soil. Any help would be most appreciated.
Thank you,
Herb

Answer
Good morning Herb:
Yellow nutsedge is very difficult to control. If you manually pull it it will leave tiny nutlets (or rhizomes)  that will break off of the roots and these nutlets will grow into more plants. Unfortunately this plant is a perennial and will come back year after year. You are doing a good job of keeping your lawn as you should. Make sure that you mow at a height of  at least 2 ?to 3 inches and mow frequently removing no more than 1/3 of the grass blades at each mowing. This will keep you grass dense and will discourage future weed growth. This November (about Thanksgiving day) put some winterizer fertilizer on your lawn. This will encourage good root growth and your lawn will green up nicely in the spring.

I am sending you two web sites that are very informative on the control of Nutsedge. Copy and paste them to your browser and hit "GO".

From the Illinois State University (Go to bottom of left hand column):
http://www.turf.uiuc.edu/weed_web/index.htm

From Ohio State University Plantfacts:
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/4000/4010.html

I hope I have answered your question.
Have a good lawn!
Floyd McMahon