You may have started seeing our technicians applying fertilizer and pre-emergent for crabgrass control and wondered, how does it work?

Check out these 3 reasons to get a pre-emergent application:

 

• Crabgrass is an annual grassy weed which grows from seed each year.  In the fall, it drops new seeds which then grow into new plants in the spring.

 

• Pre-emergent is applied in late winter through early spring and rainfall waters it into the top layer of soil.

 

• As soil temperatures climb later in the spring, unwanted crabgrass seeds that were dropped in the fall try to germinate.  The pre-emergent barrier is there to prevent this from happening.

 

If you are going to seed your lawn, we recommend doing it in early fall so that the spring crabgrass control does not affect the germination.  If you have thin areas due to shade, we suggest seeding in the spring not applying pre-emergent at all.  This allows sunlight to reach the ground before the leaves emerge on the trees and improves the germination rate.