Campbell Vaughn: Tips to help keep the weeds at bay in your lawns

With the extremely nice temperatures over the past couple of weeks, I love getting home from a day of talking landscapes to spend a couple hours of time in my own yard. The fertilizer I applied has the grass dark green and growing fast, and the perennials and shrubs are really jumping.

Another thing that is thriving in my home oasis is weeds. Not only do the plants l pamper like this mild climate, but also do the ones I don’t prefer. The weeds aren’t only in the shrub beds, but also in the grass. I have some theories to why weeds are a little “extra” this year.

Most of the winter and a full spring of warm weather is our biggest culprit for why weeds are so prevalent. Every year I say to get your preemergence out by March 1 and I got mine out March 5, but it really didn’t matter. We got a few light freezes in March that might have killed a few early sprouting warm season weeds, but the warm soil temperatures were well into the 60s by mid-February leading to lots of unwanted green visitors to my landscape and probably yours, too. Currently, I am keeping my grass mowed regularly and adding some light spot spraying to keep some of the weeds from spreading too much.

I learned something valuable this year. Before Masters, I spread pine straw throughout my beds. In all the running around trying to get kids done with school before spring break and getting on the road for some “get out of Augusta time”, I neglected to preemergence the new straw in the planting beds.

Fresh pine straw is beautiful, but it also is loaded with weed seeds. Like epically loaded. Lots of my evening yard strolls have been picking weeds from around all the pretty plants I have so painstakingly planted and cared for over the past years. This year the biggest pest was the elm, wild ligustrum and somewhere in the neighborhood of 36 million pine seedlings. I will not make that mistake again by not treating after strawing.

The vines have gone nuts, too. Virginia creeper, poison ivy, greenbriers and Chinese wisteria are seemingly growing about a foot a day. I have been on a wisteria eradication program since I moved in my house nine years ago, but they keep battling their way back in. I like to spot spray with a diquat and glyphosate mix to knock back invading grasses and any tender weeds in my planting beds, but those two chemicals don’t work well on vines, woody plants and brambles. This season I am focusing in on a technique that takes a little more time, but is worth the effort long term.

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I am using a pair of hand pruners, a pocket knife, a small sponge with a wooden handle (meant for painting) and an herbicide brush killer. The recipe is three-quarters herbicide with active ingredient triclopyr (60%), plus one-quarter part surfactant like Diesel oil. I seek a vine/shrub/tree sapling that needs to eliminated, cut off it off with hand pruners at one to 2 feet above the ground, slice some of the bark with my pocket knife and then use the sponge on a stick with my magic death potion to paint the fresh wound.

The oil surfactant will make the chemical stick to the plant and the triclopyr will penetrate into the vascular system and ultimately kill the weed down to the root. If the plant is too big to cut with the hand pruners, I will drill a small hole in a downward angle and fill the hole with the herbicide and let it sit. The plant will absorb the pesticide and it will die.

This cut and paint system has worked well for me in the past and I have started the 2023 edition this week. A couple of notes of interest, the greenbriers grow from tubers and this painting method will definitely weaken the vine, but it will come back from another part of the root system. Plan on repeating the application and it will eventually starve the tuber into submission. I promise poisoning the plant is easier than digging those tubers out of the ground because they can be huge. Like the size of a wheelbarrow.

This direct application method is also really effective for unwanted plants in the middle of a massing of shrubs like azaleas where if you just prune the weed it just makes it stronger.

Please be careful. These chemicals can be dangerous if you don’t treat them with respect. Follow the label, wear gloves and glasses. Now get to work.

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Campbell Vaughn offers tips on how to get rid of weeds in lawns