Phil L wrote:
Lyndon wrote:
"K" wrote in message
...
Phil L writes
Rob Barrett wrote:
Lyndon wrote:
"Rob Barrett" wrote in message
...
I planted a new lawn last fall which has come in nicely.
Unfortunately,
one patch of maybe 15 sq meters is pretty infested
with what my wife has identified through some googling as
chickweed. Will regular mowing take care of this over time or
should I consider something more drastic?
Regular mowing should take care of common chickweed, but if you
have common mouse-ear chickweed mowing will not help. In this
case you will need to apply a lawn weedkiller to get the little
beastie
under control. The leaf is very different on the two. Mouse-ear
chickweed has a
hairy leaf.
Thanks for the help. Could you take a look at this picture and
help me with a positive ID?
http://coffeewithbarretts.com/blog/uploads/weed1.jpg

I'm afraid it has hairy stems and leaves....

If I have to use a selective weedkiller, any advice on the tradeoff
between abusing a new-ish lawn (from seed 8 months ago) and letting
the infestation continue until it is the recommended 12 months old?
I'm no expert, but that ain't any kind of chickweed I've ever seen,
mouse eared or regular.

It looked pretty chickweedy to me.
--
Kay
... and to me. But definitely not common chickweed..

Not sure how I'd handle it in such a new lawn. Perhaps someone else
can help? As you've probably discovered it can spread rather quickly.
It *is* fairly easy to control once you can get the weed-killer on
it. In the meantime I really don't know if you would be able to limit
the spread with a bit of hand weeding?

It certainly won't do it any good having clumps of it pulled out
between mowings, and I think this may be your best bet...lawn
weedkillers are not a good idea (that is to say, I would never use them)
given that they work on broad leaved plants like dock, danelion
etc.....enough harsh treatment by you and it will soon disappear.

Well, I used my study breaks this lovely afternoon to start pulling it
up -- fairly satisfying (even mildly addicting). The big clumps give
bang for the buck, while the new, little plants just pop easily out
(though there are soooo many of them). I'm surprised a periennial has
such a weak root system. The older plants with multiple stems do seem to
require working back to the main stem to keep from breaking pieces off.
If I do it this way, I'll have no lack of time-passing activity, nor
will I lack compost matter!

Any suggestions for how this happened to this one area of lawn and what
to do to prevent it happening again? This part of the lawn didn't come
in as well and the ground is certainly harder, so that may be the
problem. I'm planning on doing some additional seeding of it, though
that may interfere with the hand-pulling plan.

Just for completeness, I tried spraying Verdone on a little bit of the
worst place, just to see what would happen.