How do you control weed in your lawn

[Vinaya]

I have a lawn and it is infected by wild grass and weed. Until now I uproot weed and wild grass manually and it is very tedious process. How do your control weed in your lawn, do you use herbicides?

 

[mgmine]

My lawn is large so using herbicides is the only option. Even using them I still have a lot of hard to kill weeds such as wild violets and creeping charlie.

 

[marlingardener]

For us, with seven acres of grass of all sorts, the "lawn" is on its own. For the flower beds and vegetable gardens, we manually weed or squirt broadleaf weeds with vinegar. After a few years of regular mowing, we have more grass and fewer weeds, but it still isn't "manicured."
Our lawn and veg/flower beds are about two acres, so the rest, minus the one acre pond, is pasture. That we let grow, but remove bloodweed, sunflowers, and mesquite tree seedlings.

 

[Beth_B]

I'm probably not going to be much help here.

I do nothing, zip, nada. My lawn is very lush, green and almost zero-maintenance. Creeping charlie, wood violets, clover, dandelions and I assume other perfect lawn "violators" abound but I don't care one bit. As long as it is kept short and stays green I, and it, am happy.

Serious question for "perfect" uniform lawn people. Why, exactly, is it so important? Is it because societal pressure, HOA rules, personal preferences (then, why) what? I totally do not get this.

If it is green, and healthy, what more do you need from grass? It's grass, filler in of blank spaces, for shits sake.

 

[MaryMary]

My "lawn care" is exactly the same as Beth_B. I do nothing to my yard. It gets mowed, it is soft to walk on with bare feet, it stays green. When the violets come up in spring, I think they are very pretty scattered through the yard. In big enough bunches, they smell good, too.

There is a white violet that grows at the edge of my yard that I intend on transplanting into my flower bed next spring. (I have to wait for it to bloom so that I can find it again!! ) I am going to plant it inside a small bucket to try to prevent it from taking over.

I added weeds!! This past spring I scattered Dutch white clover seeds to help the grass get greener.

Serious question for "perfect" uniform lawn people. Why, exactly, is it so important? Is it because societal pressure, HOA rules, personal preferences (then, why) what? I totally do not get this.

I wonder about this, too.


@marlingardener, just curious, but why do you remove the sunflowers? (Seriously, no snark intended.) I got American Goldfinches in the yard this year after I had a volunteer sunflower come up from my bird feeder. I'm going to plant it on purpose next year. If there's a reason I shouldn't, I'd like to know before I buy seeds!

 

[marlingardener]

MaryMary, you don't need to remove sunflowers, or have any reason to not plant them.
Here in Central Texas we have an invasive form of sunflowers that is the bane of corn fields, vegetable gardens, and don't get me started on what they do to an asparagus patch! They are small headed, 7' tall, deep rooted weeds. I have yet to see any bird feeding on them. I tossed a couple of heads into the chicken coop, and the ladies gave me that "what are we supposed to do with THAT!" look.
And that is why I remove sunflowers.

 

[MaryMary]

Here in Central Texas we have an invasive form of sunflowers ...(snip)... I have yet to see any bird feeding on them. I tossed a couple of heads into the chicken coop, and the ladies gave me that "what are we supposed to do with THAT!" look.

Ok, I gotcha! Texas has different sunflowers. I wouldn't want them either!! (Thanks!)

( Your ladies make me laugh.)

 

[remnant]

Sometimes I travel for some time due to work obligations only to find our lawn overgrown with weeds. I use a machete to slash everything to the base. Weeds can't regenerate but grass has the potential to grow again through underground stems to produce a tidy lawn. Otherwise, hand picking is a good option but it requires consistency.

 

[Corzhens]

We have not used herbicide yet and have no plans. Controlling the growth of weeds is not that easy and as the thread starter said, it is tedious. But that is the safest way to eradicate the weeds. I use ice pick, that tool with t pointed metal stick. It helps when uprooting the weed. It's no use when you don't uproot the weed because it will just grow back. By the way, I am lucky that we have 2 housemaids who could help me with that chore of uprooting the weeds in the backyard garden. We do it once a month as part of my exercise.