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 some alternatives. There are
several products now on the market for homeowners for post-control of crabgrass
and they all contain quinclorac. I have
not had good success at all in the Central Valley of California getting any
significant control using this or Drive as the trade name. Maybe you will be lucky and make it work, but
my guess is that it won’t and you will be out the time and expense 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
out.
What is the
future? 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.
My hope is
that 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 turf grass 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.
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