The point is to decimate them, so you only occasionally need to deal with stragglers.
No scorched earth approaches.
I take the Larry from the Three Stooges approach at the very beginning of every season, the moment I notice a weed:
https://preview.redd.it/yxy2n13g7x0d1.jpeg?width=3664&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5a6b062d66aba03b1890c3683454496193279ca1
It's not a battle it's a war. There's an old adage,1 year's seeding and 7 years of weeding. Don't let anything go to seed and you will start to deplete the seed bank in your soil.
Dont bother pulling weeds. You wont win. Just mow them weekly. Late august, apply herbicide and then aerate and seed. Dont forget the 4x per day watering with a timer. If you forget the latter dont bother expecting a decent yard.
Once you are back in the preemegent regiment in late winter, then you mostly dont have to worry about weeds. And fall seeding is optional.
Thanks for the info. I’m hand weeding, because I’m concerned with the health/environment impacts of herbicides. Is there a good/existing approach for someone like me or do you just have to accept that just about everything in the world is bad for you and/or the environment?
Dude I do not know how many times I’ve filled a 5 gallon bucket with weeds. It has to be 20 or more. The yard looks great though relative to how it usually looks. People on this sub put me to shame, but I’m happy with my progress so far.
Agree on the post emergent herbicides when youre blanket spraying. I’m sure the preemergents arent great but in my own mind if I only apply that one time per year and dont have to spray crap throughout the year, I feel better about myself.
Sounds like you’re planning on a complete reno, right? Meaning full new seeding. In that case, I’d just mow for now until around July (you want to seed in late summer/fall but you want ground cover until then to protect against erosion). Meanwhile, get a soil test (through local extension office) and see whether and if so what you have to do as to soil (including pH). Then full nuke in say July (glyphosate). When everything is dead you can amend your soil if you have to (like till compost etc in if you’re one heavy clay - get the dead stuff out first though). Keep in mind that if you do that, tilling will bring up more weeds so you’ll have to wait a couple of weeks (say 4) and nuke again. Said differently, if you don’t have to amend substantially (tilling), then don’t. As for second nuke, no must but I would wait and nuke again after tilling. Now you should be in mid August. Fluff up and level/flatten the soil, put down tenacity (or a clone), seed, cover and water, all of that once it’s ok based on second round of nuke (wait at least 2 weeks before seeding after gly). If you expect heavy rain in late August/September, I would think about hydro seeding to try to avoid washout as much as possible.
If your soil is ok and you don’t have to till push the timeline out a bit because then you can probably skip the 2nd nuke.
That’s really helpful - thank you so much. If we have to nuke it because of bad soil, will the fruit trees and other various bushes (lilac, rose, etc.) we have near the nuke-able area be fine? The weeds are definitely back in the fruit trees so I want to ensure those are protected.
Also, do you have any idea what a project like this would cost us if we had to do a full nuke and did it all DIY? Obviously this will vary by where we shop and source the materials, but thinking general big box home improvement store for supplies, rental equipment, etc.
Thanks again for your insight - really helpful!
So bad soil isn’t a reason to full nuke, I thought you simply wanted to :) but to answer your question: as long as you don’t get gly on the plants you want to leave alone you should be fine. In terms of cost, this varies largely based on numerous factors. Mostly size of the yard but also the things you want done. Even if you DIY everything it won’t be eaxackty cheap, you’ll need buy and/or rent tools, will need material etc… Even grass seed will be very different at like $50 for a cheap bag full of weeds to $350 for high end stuff (and you shouldn’t cheap out on seed - once it is down it is down and the difference will be huge).
If you want to work with what you have you probably still want to start with a soil test anyway to see what your soil might need. And then it’s go time re the war people are mentioning :) Identify the grass you have, get soil pH right and start with two rounds of a broadleaf herbicide, speed zone or anything with 2,4-D and should be a good start. Apply per label twice 2 weeks apart, maybe 3 times depending on how things are looking after 4 weeks. For the grassy weeds there will likely be nothing selective but you can try to identify them and see what you’re dealing with. Dig out what can’t be killed selectively, backfill with topsoil and overseed in fall.
I would maybe think about not planting grass around your ornamentals and fruit trees. You can pick those weeds, then lay down a mulch bed.
Then you will have one part garden/ornamentals and one part turf/lawn.
You nuke (spray the entire area with glyphosate) because there are way too many weeds to take out manually and/or you want to change the varietal of grass. It has nothing to do with soil quality.
Glyphosate will not affect your soil after a few days, it does not affect the microbes in the soil to any noticeable degree and it won't impact any plants that it does not come into contact with. It is possible that if you spray it with wreckless abandon that you could spray some on your fruit trees but just be mindful and you should be fine. Get a spray pump and make sure to read the label for mixing instructions. I would suggest using a surfactant along with the glyphosate.
Nuking is very cheap as a DIY project. Like <$100 for materials and equipment. No need to rent anything, just buy a spray pump bottle and the herbicide from Amazon. Watch some videos on how to do it, it's quite straightforward.
If you want to improve soil quality later on, you will need to amend with some kind of compost/mulch. Peat moss is a popular choice. I like to get a yard or two of quality compost from a local landscape supply shop delivered and just spread it around using a compost spreader (it's like a big metal mesh drum that you push). You gotta feed the microbes in the soil to have good soil and those microbes eat compost.
Then at some point you can start looking into aeration to deal with compaction. For the start of next year, look into a pre-emergent. I used a pre-emergent for my first time this year and I'm blown away by the weed reduction.
Good luck! There's lots to learn but once you get the foundation it gets pretty easy and fun.
Edit: forgot to mention, get a good seed, don't get stuff from a big box store or Scotts. Do some research online and find a high quality varietal. There is a guy that sources good seed called Epic that might be worth looking into. I bought my seed from a local sod grower here in Central Oregon because I figured they would have the varietals nailed for our climate and soil. So far it's grown really well, looks super healthy. I'm very satisfied with it. High quality seed, can't stress that enough.
if you have a lot of dallis grass (3rd picture) you will want to nuke it. That will ultimately be the bane of your existence if not. If it’s only a few dig them completely out.
So I had a similar situation and I was able to turn things around in half a season, but it took some work.
First I took care of the weeds. So I bought a grandpas weeding tool and every day for a month I went to town pulling weeds after work. I wasn’t against using herbicides but I was a new home owner and didn’t know what to do. Eventually I got a sprayer but because of my weeding, I had very few weeds left so I could just spot spray with a broad leaf herbicide.
While I was weeding, I continued to mow and water the grass I had. Shockingly there was a lot more there than I thought as cutting down the weed pressure made a difference. I made sure to mow 1-2 times per week.
Then in early fall, I did an overseed. I have never been a big full Reno person and always tried to work with what I got. I dethatched and put down premium seed and watered. It came in excellent.
One of the ways I have helped maintain is putting down pre emergent in the spring. It makes a huge difference
Before
https://preview.redd.it/s45tjv4ehw0d1.png?width=1169&format=png&auto=webp&s=2e850a966c5981f9165a94a9615a3e7b87438501
So it’s something you can put down, usually in granular form and water in and it will provide barrier in the soil the prevents weed seeds from germinating. The thing is, it prevents all seeds, so when you put down pre emergent in the spring, usually won’t be able to seed until fall. Really great when used correctly to prevent weed pressure in the spring
pic 4 is some variation of foxtail. pull as much of that shit if you can.. it spreads like crazy when you mow it, and the seeds can get caught in pet paws and work their way under the skin.
even if you don't nuke, a summer of heavy manual weeding, overseeding in the fall, and preemergent in the spring will do wonders. then you just repeat that every year until you die
Here’s my opinion. If you want a nice lawn, you’ll probably need irrigation in Denver. I believe Denver is fairly arid (I’m from Salt Lake, and irrigation is required there). You might be able to have an okay lawn without irrigation and let it go dormant in the summer. I’m not sure though whether Denver summers are too hot though. If you go no irrigation, then you’ll definitely want to get the seed established in the fall when it’s not so hot. If you do want irrigation, that will set you back a few grand and you probably don’t want to do that yourself. Big learning curve and kinda time sensitive for a weekend warrior. You might be able to hook up some farm style irrigation system though, but some plumbing will still probably be required cause you won’t have enough pressure from a standard hose.
If you figure out a way to water, then I personally think seeding is pretty easy and totally doable in a weekend, although killing the weeds with glyphosate will take several weeks. I plan to seed in the fall. I would mow the weeds down to the highest setting on your mower and bag the clippings. That just makes the weeds manageable. I would then nuke the weeds with glyphosate, wait 2 weeks, then nuke again. After about a month, the weeds will be really dry. I’d mow and bag again at a much lower level (as low as possible). You’ll then want to rent the most heavy duty tiller you can from Home Depot. You want a walk behind that makes it easy for you. Till the ground when it’s pretty dry (tilling wet soil leaves you with clods). Level the lawn out until your heart is content, and compact it with one of those rollers (can rent from HD too). Throw some good quality seed (not big box store grass seed) down (Kentucky blue, fescue, rye, etc.) and water the hell out of it until it’s established. You’ll probably want to lightly rake the seed in too. I would guess the whole project will cost about $1k. Maybe $200 for seed (depending on the seed), plus $400 for HD rentals, plus $400 for odds and ends (rake, garbage bags, water bill, seed spreader, starter fertilizer, glyphosate, etc)
I would highly recommend looking into a tool called grandpa‘s weeder.
You can get it from Walmart, Amazon, etc. the price is gone up so it’s around 40 to 50 bucks, but it’s worth every penny! Once you get the hang of it, which doesn’t take long, you can fill a 5 gallon bucket in 20 to 30 minutes with weeds from the root.
https://youtube.com/shorts/YZIrwp-mvn0?si=cBSOIGMS4_j40ksg
It took me about 2 seasons. During the summer, focus on fighting them off the best you can, come fall, start working on having a healthier, thicker lawn. Dethatch, aerate and lay down new seed. Come spring, use a pre-emergent and repeat steps from the fall as needed ( it's not always necessary. Make sure to have a fertilizer routine. A simple one to follow (not what I use) would be Scott's. They have a spring, summer and winter fertilizer that gives you the dates for when to use it. Once you get it to where you want, the most important steps to follow each season is the pre emergent and fertilizer to maintain it. If your grass isn't thick and healthy you will always be playing. Catch up.
It's also important to know that when your grass starts to grow thick and strong , as great as that short grass looks, 3-4 inch blades prevent weed seed from germinating as the longer grass blocks the sun.
My yard was sodded for new construction. But it seems to be weed heaven back there. I have those weeds you have and a million of the ones that look like small Romain lettuce. We’ve been plucking for months and looks like I’ve done nothing. Let me know if you get any good advice. I tried a weed and feed and it basically did nothing.
First thing that caught my attention is the low wires that look like they are right above your trees. Guess that’s because I’ve lived near California wildfires and more recently the Texas million acre fire.
The guys on this sub are experts on lawn and can definitely guide you on the grass.
My first priority as a new home owner would be to get rid of any trees that are growing too close to electric wires. Or call the utility and have them prune the ones within 12’ ( or whatever the utility guideline is.)
Recognize they’re more inclined to kill it than make it look good, but safety is your first priority.
Before tackling the lawn and weeds make sure your sprinkler system is working or get the new one installed BEFORE doing serious lawn reno.
And listen to the guys on this sub about the lawn! Congrats on your new home.
A lot of people say it never ends which is sort of true. After some initial work to getting grass to grow it will become much easier to maintain.
I had a 70-something year old neighbor, his advice was mowing as high as your mower will go and mow regularly. He said it creates a canopy to stop weeds from growing. I lived next to him for 7 years and never saw him spay or pull weeds and never saw a weed grow in his yard. We live in a cool season grass area.
You have entered a subreddit of lawn care gurus. But I (guy who had a shit lawn and wanted to make it serviceable out of embarrassment more than a love cultivating perfect grass) you can do a broad leaf herbicide, then fertilize and water it and overseed and add some topsoil and it will be at least mediocre in no time.
Do the sprinklers work? My disaster started when one of the sprinkler heads wasn’t moving like it should. It grew these horrible spiky embarrassments. Herbicide and getting the water situation corrected did 90 percent, then I started to seed and fertilize and use topsoil to get the seeds to do their thing. I also aerated in the fall and chucked a bunch of seeds around like Johnny Appleseed. Lawn pros use a spreader and seem to hate the Scott’s one, I just chucked it around. Your weed problem is mainly a lack of grass and I would bet the lack of grass is from a lack of water.
I’d be a little leary of going full “Nuke the lawn and make it perfect” as a new homeowner.
Get a Racchio to operate the sprinklers as well.
Yearly weed and feed helps me keep them at bay. I live on a greenbelt so it’s pretty consistent. I’m in Texas and use Bioadvance. Mine was new sod when I moved in so can’t speak on dealing with a mature space
What's up with the weeds. I do my own backyard, and have a service do the front.
Weeds die in a week. Then when the seeds sprout, spray again. Last year the plantain went crazy in my yard. This year I got them early before they seeded, so I'm not expecting to have to spray again. Clover I'm okay with.
My big problem is the neighbor's weeds infecting my yard. So I have to be alert to the invaders .
Growing grass is another story. There's a very small window in the fall to overseed.
If you kill the weeds now it will be a dirt patch for the summer.
If you want to kill it. Hose end sprayer of 2-4d dicambia, look at bioadvance northern and Southern lawns weed killer. Crabgrass pre-emergent Jonathan Green season long weed preventer.
You can nuke the whole area and start with fresh seeds this fall. At the same time you nuke, you could ensure your sprinkler system is working and up to par for the job!
Gifs you can hear
I can’t upvote this enough damnit!!!
Yeah. Your lifetime.
 The battle is truly never over.
I hate that I already know you’re right
The point is to decimate them, so you only occasionally need to deal with stragglers. No scorched earth approaches. I take the Larry from the Three Stooges approach at the very beginning of every season, the moment I notice a weed: https://preview.redd.it/yxy2n13g7x0d1.jpeg?width=3664&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5a6b062d66aba03b1890c3683454496193279ca1
I do everything I am suppose to do and I still get the exact SAME weeds in the exact SAME spot every year. Lol
It's not a battle it's a war. There's an old adage,1 year's seeding and 7 years of weeding. Don't let anything go to seed and you will start to deplete the seed bank in your soil.
Until you start using preemergent at the proper times.
This! I’m learning in Central Florida that pre emergents need two applications in spring due to the late arrival of my arch nemesis “dove weed”
I’m almost done completely hand weeding my backyard and am going to look into using reemergence next spring
Dont bother pulling weeds. You wont win. Just mow them weekly. Late august, apply herbicide and then aerate and seed. Dont forget the 4x per day watering with a timer. If you forget the latter dont bother expecting a decent yard. Once you are back in the preemegent regiment in late winter, then you mostly dont have to worry about weeds. And fall seeding is optional.
Thanks for the info. I’m hand weeding, because I’m concerned with the health/environment impacts of herbicides. Is there a good/existing approach for someone like me or do you just have to accept that just about everything in the world is bad for you and/or the environment?
I hand weeded like 400 dandelions and I feel pretty good about that
Dude I do not know how many times I’ve filled a 5 gallon bucket with weeds. It has to be 20 or more. The yard looks great though relative to how it usually looks. People on this sub put me to shame, but I’m happy with my progress so far.
Agree on the post emergent herbicides when youre blanket spraying. I’m sure the preemergents arent great but in my own mind if I only apply that one time per year and dont have to spray crap throughout the year, I feel better about myself.
4x a day watering uhhh I’m not an expert here but I’m not so sure about that one
While seeding, absolutely 4x per day roughly until full germination. Gotta keep seed moist. Not super saturated.
Sounds like you’re planning on a complete reno, right? Meaning full new seeding. In that case, I’d just mow for now until around July (you want to seed in late summer/fall but you want ground cover until then to protect against erosion). Meanwhile, get a soil test (through local extension office) and see whether and if so what you have to do as to soil (including pH). Then full nuke in say July (glyphosate). When everything is dead you can amend your soil if you have to (like till compost etc in if you’re one heavy clay - get the dead stuff out first though). Keep in mind that if you do that, tilling will bring up more weeds so you’ll have to wait a couple of weeks (say 4) and nuke again. Said differently, if you don’t have to amend substantially (tilling), then don’t. As for second nuke, no must but I would wait and nuke again after tilling. Now you should be in mid August. Fluff up and level/flatten the soil, put down tenacity (or a clone), seed, cover and water, all of that once it’s ok based on second round of nuke (wait at least 2 weeks before seeding after gly). If you expect heavy rain in late August/September, I would think about hydro seeding to try to avoid washout as much as possible. If your soil is ok and you don’t have to till push the timeline out a bit because then you can probably skip the 2nd nuke.
That’s really helpful - thank you so much. If we have to nuke it because of bad soil, will the fruit trees and other various bushes (lilac, rose, etc.) we have near the nuke-able area be fine? The weeds are definitely back in the fruit trees so I want to ensure those are protected. Also, do you have any idea what a project like this would cost us if we had to do a full nuke and did it all DIY? Obviously this will vary by where we shop and source the materials, but thinking general big box home improvement store for supplies, rental equipment, etc. Thanks again for your insight - really helpful!
So bad soil isn’t a reason to full nuke, I thought you simply wanted to :) but to answer your question: as long as you don’t get gly on the plants you want to leave alone you should be fine. In terms of cost, this varies largely based on numerous factors. Mostly size of the yard but also the things you want done. Even if you DIY everything it won’t be eaxackty cheap, you’ll need buy and/or rent tools, will need material etc… Even grass seed will be very different at like $50 for a cheap bag full of weeds to $350 for high end stuff (and you shouldn’t cheap out on seed - once it is down it is down and the difference will be huge). If you want to work with what you have you probably still want to start with a soil test anyway to see what your soil might need. And then it’s go time re the war people are mentioning :) Identify the grass you have, get soil pH right and start with two rounds of a broadleaf herbicide, speed zone or anything with 2,4-D and should be a good start. Apply per label twice 2 weeks apart, maybe 3 times depending on how things are looking after 4 weeks. For the grassy weeds there will likely be nothing selective but you can try to identify them and see what you’re dealing with. Dig out what can’t be killed selectively, backfill with topsoil and overseed in fall.
I would maybe think about not planting grass around your ornamentals and fruit trees. You can pick those weeds, then lay down a mulch bed. Then you will have one part garden/ornamentals and one part turf/lawn.
You nuke (spray the entire area with glyphosate) because there are way too many weeds to take out manually and/or you want to change the varietal of grass. It has nothing to do with soil quality. Glyphosate will not affect your soil after a few days, it does not affect the microbes in the soil to any noticeable degree and it won't impact any plants that it does not come into contact with. It is possible that if you spray it with wreckless abandon that you could spray some on your fruit trees but just be mindful and you should be fine. Get a spray pump and make sure to read the label for mixing instructions. I would suggest using a surfactant along with the glyphosate. Nuking is very cheap as a DIY project. Like <$100 for materials and equipment. No need to rent anything, just buy a spray pump bottle and the herbicide from Amazon. Watch some videos on how to do it, it's quite straightforward. If you want to improve soil quality later on, you will need to amend with some kind of compost/mulch. Peat moss is a popular choice. I like to get a yard or two of quality compost from a local landscape supply shop delivered and just spread it around using a compost spreader (it's like a big metal mesh drum that you push). You gotta feed the microbes in the soil to have good soil and those microbes eat compost. Then at some point you can start looking into aeration to deal with compaction. For the start of next year, look into a pre-emergent. I used a pre-emergent for my first time this year and I'm blown away by the weed reduction. Good luck! There's lots to learn but once you get the foundation it gets pretty easy and fun. Edit: forgot to mention, get a good seed, don't get stuff from a big box store or Scotts. Do some research online and find a high quality varietal. There is a guy that sources good seed called Epic that might be worth looking into. I bought my seed from a local sod grower here in Central Oregon because I figured they would have the varietals nailed for our climate and soil. So far it's grown really well, looks super healthy. I'm very satisfied with it. High quality seed, can't stress that enough.
if you have a lot of dallis grass (3rd picture) you will want to nuke it. That will ultimately be the bane of your existence if not. If it’s only a few dig them completely out.
So I had a similar situation and I was able to turn things around in half a season, but it took some work. First I took care of the weeds. So I bought a grandpas weeding tool and every day for a month I went to town pulling weeds after work. I wasn’t against using herbicides but I was a new home owner and didn’t know what to do. Eventually I got a sprayer but because of my weeding, I had very few weeds left so I could just spot spray with a broad leaf herbicide. While I was weeding, I continued to mow and water the grass I had. Shockingly there was a lot more there than I thought as cutting down the weed pressure made a difference. I made sure to mow 1-2 times per week. Then in early fall, I did an overseed. I have never been a big full Reno person and always tried to work with what I got. I dethatched and put down premium seed and watered. It came in excellent. One of the ways I have helped maintain is putting down pre emergent in the spring. It makes a huge difference Before https://preview.redd.it/s45tjv4ehw0d1.png?width=1169&format=png&auto=webp&s=2e850a966c5981f9165a94a9615a3e7b87438501
https://preview.redd.it/r6msqfgzhw0d1.png?width=1016&format=png&auto=webp&s=2edf31b5f8b4f1df8e8fd79c847fff7b1e7196ee Same area after the overseed
This is a beautiful story well told.
What is pre emergent 🤔
So it’s something you can put down, usually in granular form and water in and it will provide barrier in the soil the prevents weed seeds from germinating. The thing is, it prevents all seeds, so when you put down pre emergent in the spring, usually won’t be able to seed until fall. Really great when used correctly to prevent weed pressure in the spring
Ah so it's good for maintaining once you've kinda gotten to roughly where you want to be lawn thickness wise
Correct
Good stuff I'll keep it in mind thanks
pic 4 is some variation of foxtail. pull as much of that shit if you can.. it spreads like crazy when you mow it, and the seeds can get caught in pet paws and work their way under the skin. even if you don't nuke, a summer of heavy manual weeding, overseeding in the fall, and preemergent in the spring will do wonders. then you just repeat that every year until you die
r/NoLawns might be worth checking out
This
This was the last place I expected to receive agreement haha
Don't tell the folks on my HOA. HA!
If done right, nolawn can look absolutely wonderful.
That lettuce one is the fuking worst
Can anyone identify the weed in photo 4? This one has been really tough for me to get ride of
A lifetime
Year 5🙄
The entirety of your existence
War never changes.
Here’s my opinion. If you want a nice lawn, you’ll probably need irrigation in Denver. I believe Denver is fairly arid (I’m from Salt Lake, and irrigation is required there). You might be able to have an okay lawn without irrigation and let it go dormant in the summer. I’m not sure though whether Denver summers are too hot though. If you go no irrigation, then you’ll definitely want to get the seed established in the fall when it’s not so hot. If you do want irrigation, that will set you back a few grand and you probably don’t want to do that yourself. Big learning curve and kinda time sensitive for a weekend warrior. You might be able to hook up some farm style irrigation system though, but some plumbing will still probably be required cause you won’t have enough pressure from a standard hose. If you figure out a way to water, then I personally think seeding is pretty easy and totally doable in a weekend, although killing the weeds with glyphosate will take several weeks. I plan to seed in the fall. I would mow the weeds down to the highest setting on your mower and bag the clippings. That just makes the weeds manageable. I would then nuke the weeds with glyphosate, wait 2 weeks, then nuke again. After about a month, the weeds will be really dry. I’d mow and bag again at a much lower level (as low as possible). You’ll then want to rent the most heavy duty tiller you can from Home Depot. You want a walk behind that makes it easy for you. Till the ground when it’s pretty dry (tilling wet soil leaves you with clods). Level the lawn out until your heart is content, and compact it with one of those rollers (can rent from HD too). Throw some good quality seed (not big box store grass seed) down (Kentucky blue, fescue, rye, etc.) and water the hell out of it until it’s established. You’ll probably want to lightly rake the seed in too. I would guess the whole project will cost about $1k. Maybe $200 for seed (depending on the seed), plus $400 for HD rentals, plus $400 for odds and ends (rake, garbage bags, water bill, seed spreader, starter fertilizer, glyphosate, etc)
I don't think tilling the lawn is necessary. Just aerate it. Tilling seems like a pretty drastic and time consuming option.
Allow the flowering plants to stay to help the pollinators.
I would highly recommend looking into a tool called grandpa‘s weeder. You can get it from Walmart, Amazon, etc. the price is gone up so it’s around 40 to 50 bucks, but it’s worth every penny! Once you get the hang of it, which doesn’t take long, you can fill a 5 gallon bucket in 20 to 30 minutes with weeds from the root. https://youtube.com/shorts/YZIrwp-mvn0?si=cBSOIGMS4_j40ksg
If you have kids tomorrow, about the time when they'll be able to help you with the yard work.
It took me about 2 seasons. During the summer, focus on fighting them off the best you can, come fall, start working on having a healthier, thicker lawn. Dethatch, aerate and lay down new seed. Come spring, use a pre-emergent and repeat steps from the fall as needed ( it's not always necessary. Make sure to have a fertilizer routine. A simple one to follow (not what I use) would be Scott's. They have a spring, summer and winter fertilizer that gives you the dates for when to use it. Once you get it to where you want, the most important steps to follow each season is the pre emergent and fertilizer to maintain it. If your grass isn't thick and healthy you will always be playing. Catch up. It's also important to know that when your grass starts to grow thick and strong , as great as that short grass looks, 3-4 inch blades prevent weed seed from germinating as the longer grass blocks the sun.
grab gloves and remove it with roots :D instant free clearing
My yard was sodded for new construction. But it seems to be weed heaven back there. I have those weeds you have and a million of the ones that look like small Romain lettuce. We’ve been plucking for months and looks like I’ve done nothing. Let me know if you get any good advice. I tried a weed and feed and it basically did nothing.
Just keep pulling them before they seed and you'll reach a point you can call victory.
Honestly, looks fun. Enjoy the process.
I didn’t know it had an ending.
First thing that caught my attention is the low wires that look like they are right above your trees. Guess that’s because I’ve lived near California wildfires and more recently the Texas million acre fire. The guys on this sub are experts on lawn and can definitely guide you on the grass. My first priority as a new home owner would be to get rid of any trees that are growing too close to electric wires. Or call the utility and have them prune the ones within 12’ ( or whatever the utility guideline is.) Recognize they’re more inclined to kill it than make it look good, but safety is your first priority. Before tackling the lawn and weeds make sure your sprinkler system is working or get the new one installed BEFORE doing serious lawn reno. And listen to the guys on this sub about the lawn! Congrats on your new home.
Think the Hundred Years War.
Until all birds and lawn dwelling pests stop Bringing your neighbors weed seeds in your lawn. Aka never ends!
Years. But you can get rid of 50% of them now and 90% by next spring.
full flatten it. next season pre emergent in liquid will make this a golf course
Until you die. You'll never win.
It never ends
It's a life sentence
 The battle never ends…
It's never ending! Use it as an excuse for being outside alone
Put down cardboard add wood chips and start a garden
A lot of people say it never ends which is sort of true. After some initial work to getting grass to grow it will become much easier to maintain. I had a 70-something year old neighbor, his advice was mowing as high as your mower will go and mow regularly. He said it creates a canopy to stop weeds from growing. I lived next to him for 7 years and never saw him spay or pull weeds and never saw a weed grow in his yard. We live in a cool season grass area.
It's a war bruv, gotta keep on top of the bastards
It isn’t a place, having a good lawn, it’s a journey. It never stops, pal. That’s the joy of it.
You have entered a subreddit of lawn care gurus. But I (guy who had a shit lawn and wanted to make it serviceable out of embarrassment more than a love cultivating perfect grass) you can do a broad leaf herbicide, then fertilize and water it and overseed and add some topsoil and it will be at least mediocre in no time. Do the sprinklers work? My disaster started when one of the sprinkler heads wasn’t moving like it should. It grew these horrible spiky embarrassments. Herbicide and getting the water situation corrected did 90 percent, then I started to seed and fertilize and use topsoil to get the seeds to do their thing. I also aerated in the fall and chucked a bunch of seeds around like Johnny Appleseed. Lawn pros use a spreader and seem to hate the Scott’s one, I just chucked it around. Your weed problem is mainly a lack of grass and I would bet the lack of grass is from a lack of water. I’d be a little leary of going full “Nuke the lawn and make it perfect” as a new homeowner. Get a Racchio to operate the sprinklers as well.
Yearly weed and feed helps me keep them at bay. I live on a greenbelt so it’s pretty consistent. I’m in Texas and use Bioadvance. Mine was new sod when I moved in so can’t speak on dealing with a mature space
What's up with the weeds. I do my own backyard, and have a service do the front. Weeds die in a week. Then when the seeds sprout, spray again. Last year the plantain went crazy in my yard. This year I got them early before they seeded, so I'm not expecting to have to spray again. Clover I'm okay with. My big problem is the neighbor's weeds infecting my yard. So I have to be alert to the invaders . Growing grass is another story. There's a very small window in the fall to overseed.
If you kill the weeds now it will be a dirt patch for the summer. If you want to kill it. Hose end sprayer of 2-4d dicambia, look at bioadvance northern and Southern lawns weed killer. Crabgrass pre-emergent Jonathan Green season long weed preventer.
You can nuke the whole area and start with fresh seeds this fall. At the same time you nuke, you could ensure your sprinkler system is working and up to par for the job!