Lawn questions

[SMDhorn]

I'm still rather new to this whole lawn thing, but I have a couple of questions that I'm hopeful someone on here can help out with.

I've noticed recently some brown spots on the blades of grass in parts of my lawn. Here are some photos:

I have recently fertilized (I used that lady bug stuff), and I put down some corn gluten per the advice of both Horn Fans and the guy at my local hardware store. I was fortunate enough to get a nice rain afterwards, so I didn't do any additional watering.

It looks like the lawn is starting to recover from this summer, but these spots are a new thing.


My other question is, what the heck are these guys popping up:

I'm just curious more than anything. I've been pulling weeds the last several days, and there is quite a bit more yard to go.

Thanks, for the help!

 

[brntorng]

The brown spots are most likely a fungus which is common during cool wet weather. With the drought it hasn't been much of a problem until recently. It can be controlled with a fungicide. My lawn had an outbreak this fall, too, and I used Scotts Lawn Fungus Control with Thiophanate-methyl available at HD. Stopped the fungus in its tracks. You need to repeat the application a few weeks later if the conditions are still conducive to fungus growth. Your grass will recover just fine in the spring.

The grass-like weeds are nut sedge. When the soil is moist, try to pull out as much of the plant and root as you can. Doing this repeatedly, if necessary, will eventually eliminate it. You can also apply Round-up to the individual plants to speed up the process. I've done it by wearing a rubber glove with a cotton glove over it and dipping the thumb and index finger into Round-up and running the wet fingers up the plant. Whatever you do, don't spray the Round-up because it will kill grass, too.

 

[apd183]

As family, I offer these helpful tips:

1. Burn it all.
2. www.wildflower.org/nativelawns/
3. Get a weed-eater

 

[TheFied]

The last stuff is nut sedge / nut grass. I have pulled out quite a bit of that myself. I have a corner of my yard that has that crap.

 

[7Titles]

That nut grass is a perennial, it will take a couple years of pulling it out manually to remove it if it has been there a while. For about a 1000 square foot area that I had it in it probably took about 8 hours a year for 3 years of pulling the grass out. Be sure the soil is damp when you do it to get as much of the "nut" and surrounding roots out as possible. The grass spreads by underground shallow root shoots and not nearly as much by seed.

There are chemicals that say they will kill it, but I dont thikn its worth the damage it will do to the lawn. Trying to get roundup on the grass seems like more effort than pulling the grass, but thats just me.

 

[brntorng]

Doing the RoundUp thing per plant as I described above is actually much faster than pulling them out. They die within a week or two and never come back. Since RoundUp is systemic and many of the plants are connected underground, it may weaken all the interconnected plants, too. No risk to lawn grass, either. Don't mow for at least a few days after applying the RoundUp to allow time for it to work its way into the plant.

 

[valencia]

Do to all of the rain we have had I was advised to apply a second treatment of corn gluten during November or as soon as this rainy spell is over.