Keeping check on chickweed

By Don Davis
Published: September 9, 2008

A green tide of chickweed has begun its annual infestation of local lawns and gardens. There was mass germination of chickweed seeds when the rain came last month, and now there are billions of new chickweed seedlings.

This is common chickweed, a weed that arrived in America centuries ago with the European colonists. Here are some options to consider for the chickweed plants in your yard:

—Do nothing at all. Let the chickweed form a dense mat of stems and leaves, and be prepared for it to die at the end of spring.

—Eat the chickweed. It is edible and quite tender in the seedling stage. Enjoy it cooked lightly or as a raw salad ingredient.

—Pull it up. This approach is preferred when chickweed is growing among valuable plants that could be injured by cultivation and weed killers.

—Cultivate your garden and cut off the root of chickweed. Hoes, rakes and other tools will do the job nicely. You can eliminate thousands of chickweed plants in a hurry with a rototiller.

—Spread a thick layer of mulch. Tiny chickweed seedlings will not survive for long under the smothering effect of wood chips or similar mulch.

—Spray with a weed killer containing glyphosate (Killzall, Roundup, etc.), if chickweed is in a garden of flowers and shrubbery. Be careful to avoid contact with desirable plants. These products are used—vegetable gardens only when there are no crops growing.

—Spray your lawn or apply a granular weed and feed product containing a three-way combination of ingredients such as 2,4-D, mecoprop and dicamba. This product controls existing chickweed without harming grass, if used according to directions.

—Consider pre-emergence weed killers, too. Although they do not control existing chickweed, they will prevent any further seed germination. Preen is used on ornamentals and pendimethalin is used on lawns.

—Organic gardeners could spray with biodegradable vinegar and herbicidal soap products. These are most effective now, while chickweed is soft and tender.

—Use chickens for biological control of chickweed. The weed is called chickweed because chickens like to eat it.

Lawn repair time
Soil and weather conditions are now ideal for lawn maintenance. The time has come to repair damage done by weeks and months of drought.

Most of the brown fescue, rye and bluegrass lawns in our area are putting up sprigs of fresh, green growth. You can encourage this trend by fertilizing. Use a product that is mostly nitrogen, unless you have a soil test report suggesting something different.

Fertilizing through the autumn will promote further growth of grass blades to achieve complete coverage of the ground. Three monthly applications of nitrogen will also build up your lawn’s root system and prepare it for next summer’s drought.

Many lawns have patches of dead grass where no new growth is showing. These will need to be replanted, if larger than a dinner plate. Smaller dead spots will fill in on their own, due to the spreading rhizomes of Kentucky bluegrass.

It is safe to spray for weeds a month before you plant grass seed. If you need to spray after planting, wait until the new grass has been mowed twice.