Question
I live in San Diego, CA..  I have heard that chicken manure is a good way to help prevent weeds in  a hybrid bermuda lawn.  I have tried the "weed and feed's" but they don't do the job.  Mostly it is dandelions, but now I am getting a small ground cover with purple flowers.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you.

Answer
Hi Gary;
Chicken manure is high in acid, so not good for moast grasses.
I use sugar, yep, plain old table sugar.
See, weeds won't grow in fertil soil, they like poor soil.
fertilizers and all the junk we put on lawns kill out beneficial microbes that enrich soil.
If you use fertilizer (since I started using sugar, I no longer have to fertilize. I haven't fertilized in about 6 or 7 years) put down the fertilizer, then put down sugar and water them both in together.
The sugar will counter the killing the fertilizer does.
I use 1 pound sugar to each 250 to 300 sq.ft. of lawn.
You will see less weeds in a dew mowings, and a couple of mowings after that, you will see still less of them. they won't continue to thrive once the soil starts enriching. Next spring some will come back, but not as many, and those too will disappear after a few mowings. In 2 or 3 years, they just won't bother to even come up.
I put down the sugar in the spring and again in the fall.
Now that I have been doing it for about 7 or 8 years, I will start putting it down only once a year. My back wasn't up to me walking around the yard last year, so it got no sugar. My lawn is already coming un beautifully, and I see no sign of weeds.
Our whole lawn care program now, consists of. Sugar in the spring and fall. My husband sometimes top dresses with compost in the spring (mostly in his veggie garden) and he mows and edges, and I water when there isn't enough rain.
We have a gorgeous weed free lawn that is thick and dark green (part in St. Augustine and part in burmuda)
No weed pulling at all.
I use baking soda disolved in water to spray my roses and shruns for black spot mold and my other shrubs that are susceptable to powdery mildew.
It works much better than the fungicide I used to use.
I wish I had known 50 years ago what i know now, I might not have such a bad back and joints.
Since I no longer put poisons on my lawn, and let the toads, lizards and grass snakes take care of the bad bugs, i never see any of them. I used to spray my roses once a month with insecticide, and I still had aphid damage. I never see a bloom damaged by aphids anymore.
If you take all the time we spend working in our lawn and garden, including planting new things,for 12 months, it would average out to about 1 hour a week, because there are some months we don't have to do anything.
Charlotte