When summer starts winding down, it can be tempting to stop thinking about lawn care.
Your grass isn’t growing as aggressively. Warm-season lawns will soon begin losing their green color. Mowing slows down. And after months of worrying about heat, weeds, insects and everything else summer can throw at a lawn, fall can feel like the time to finally leave it alone.
But when it comes to weed control, fall is not the time to quit.
At Sprout Tech Turf Solutions, fall pre-emergent applications are an important part of helping protect warm-season lawns from weeds that can become a problem during the cooler months.
As Andy explains in the video below:
“Do not quit on us going into the fall and winter. This is a super important time to get your weed control down.”
Pre-emergent weed control is exactly what the name suggests: it is applied before targeted weeds emerge and become established in the lawn.
Rather than waiting until you can see weeds growing, a pre-emergent herbicide creates a treated zone in the soil where susceptible weed seedlings are controlled as they begin to germinate.
Andy puts it simply in the video:
“Pre-emergent puts a barrier in your soil so that when the weeds germinate, they hit that barrier and they die.”
That’s why timing matters.
Once a weed is already actively growing, pre-emergent isn’t designed to eliminate that established plant. That’s where post-emergent weed control may come into the picture.
A well-planned fall lawn treatment can therefore include both strategies when appropriate: pre-emergent to target weeds before emergence and post-emergent treatment for certain weeds that are already present.
This is where homeowners sometimes get tripped up.
Warm-season grasses such as bermudagrass, zoysiagrass, centipedegrass and St. Augustinegrass naturally slow their growth and eventually go dormant as temperatures fall.
A dormant warm-season lawn turning brown isn’t necessarily unhealthy. It’s part of the grass’s normal seasonal cycle.
But your grass going dormant doesn’t mean weed pressure disappears.
Cool-season and winter annual weeds can take advantage of the changing conditions. If they aren’t controlled, you can end up looking across a dormant lawn and seeing green weeds growing through the brown turf.
That’s exactly what we’re trying to prevent.
A properly timed fall pre-emergent application helps us get ahead of those weeds rather than waiting until they are already visible throughout the lawn.
One of the biggest targets of a fall pre-emergent program is annual bluegrass, commonly called Poa annua.
Poa annua is a cool-season annual grassy weed that can become particularly noticeable in warm-season turf during the cooler months. It can stand out as bright green patches against dormant brown grass and later produce noticeable seedheads.
Fall treatments can also be an important part of managing winter broadleaf weeds such as henbit.
Henbit is the weed Andy mentions in the video with the “nice pretty purple flowers.”
They might look nice somewhere else.
In the middle of your lawn? Not so much.
Henbit can become very noticeable during the cooler months and into spring, especially when its purple flowers appear above the turf.
The goal of a fall weed-control program is to reduce the opportunity for these unwanted plants to become established in the first place.
In the video, Andy shows Specticle FLO, one of the professional herbicides Sprout Tech Turf Solutions may use as part of its weed-control program.
And he doesn’t hide the fact that it’s expensive.
“Super, super expensive product. Gives you awesome coverage on fall and winter weeds.”
The important point isn’t simply that a product costs more. It’s that professional lawn care involves selecting an appropriate product, applying it at the appropriate rate and using it at the appropriate point in the weed’s life cycle.
Effective weed control isn’t about grabbing whatever bottle happens to be on the shelf.
Different products target different weeds. Timing changes throughout the year. Turf species matter. Existing lawn conditions matter. And the treatment that makes sense in September may be very different from the treatment your lawn needs in May.
That’s why Sprout Tech Turf Solutions approaches weed control as part of an ongoing turf-management program rather than a series of disconnected applications.
There’s another important takeaway from Andy’s video.
He says that during dormancy, “you want it to be brown and dormant.”
That might sound strange after spending spring and summer trying to create a beautiful green lawn, but brown isn’t automatically bad when we’re talking about dormant warm-season grass.
In fact, one of the easiest ways to spot winter weeds is when they stay green while the surrounding turf goes dormant.
The goal isn’t necessarily to keep warm-season grass green all winter. It’s to help the lawn move through its natural seasonal cycle while managing weeds that would otherwise compete with it and detract from its appearance.
Then, when temperatures warm back up, your turf can begin transitioning out of dormancy without being surrounded by a lawn full of established winter weeds.
Lawn care doesn’t begin when the grass turns green in spring, and it doesn’t end when temperatures cool in fall.
A successful turf program works throughout the year.
Fall pre-emergent is one piece of that strategy. By addressing potential winter weeds before they become established, we’re thinking beyond what your lawn looks like today and preparing for what’s coming next.
That’s why Andy’s message to the Sprout Tech Turf Solutions family is simple:
Don’t quit on your lawn in the fall.
Your grass may be slowing down, but there is still important work to do beneath the surface.
If Sprout Tech Turf Solutions is already caring for your lawn, keep your program working through the cooler months. Those fall applications have a purpose even when your grass isn’t actively growing the way it does during summer.
And if you’re tired of fighting Poa annua, henbit and other seasonal weeds every year, now is the time to think about getting ahead of them.
Sprout Tech Turf Solutions provides professional lawn treatment programs for homeowners throughout the Columbia and Lexington, South Carolina area, including West Columbia, Lexington, Chapin, Irmo, Ballentine, Gilbert, Pelion, Peak, Batesburg-Leesville and surrounding communities.
Don’t wait until winter weeds are already taking over the lawn. Get your fall weed-control plan in place and give your turf a cleaner start heading into the cooler months.
