You may be
looking for an effective way to get rid of crabgrass from your lawn. Many products prior to 2012 contain MSMA in
products like Weed Hoe, or Trimec Plus.
Well, you won’t find it on the nursery or garden center shelves now and
probably never again. As a professional
lawn care operator, we have until the end of 2013 to use MSMA and then we must
find other alternatives. There are
several products for homeowners now on the market for post-control of crabgrass
and they all contain Quinclorac (“Drive”). I have not had success at all in the
Central Valley of California getting any significant control using this. Maybe
you will be lucky and make it work, but my guess is that it will not, and you
will be out the time and money you have invested.
What are
your alternatives? 1) Cutting it out. 2)
Ignoring it and letting the frost take it out in November. 3) Hiring a lawn care company that still
has some on hand to selectively remove the crabgrass.
What is the
future of crabgrass control? There are
some products in development and a few that could be useful in certain
cases. There is a product called
Tenacity that has some decent post emergent control on crabgrass, but it will
only be recommended for cool season turf, as bermuda will turn temporarily
white following application. There is
some hope that the use of Dimension plus MSO at 2 pints/Acre will provide some
respectable post emergent control of crabgrass as well as very good preemergent
control.
My hope is
that the EPA will be open-minded and see that our industry has no great
alternative to MSMA for crabgrass and even more so for dallisgrass control and
that MSMA registration for use on turfgrass would be reinstated. I have heard it suggested that the data
supporting a ban on MSMA was flawed, but I can’t say for certain.
