At Reder Landcaping, beautiful lawns are our passion! So we are very excited to be offering a new service that provides a better solution to a common problem for lawns in this area – creeping bent grass.
Yes, this is the same bent grass planted for greens and tees on golf courses, and it works well for these purposes when subjected to the tight mowing heights and intense watering and fertilization of golf course maintenance.
However, for lawns in the Midland, Bay City and Saginaw areas creeping bent grass is an invasive perennial grass. And it’s a nuisance, as evidenced by the brown patches that are a common sight on lawns this time of year.
Creeping bent grass spreads through lawns by stolons (creeping stems) and by seeds. It first shows up in the spring and early summer as small circular patches of matted grass in your lawn. As the growing season progresses these patches expand as the stolons weave larger, denser mats that choke out desirable turf grasses (see photo above). As the temperatures rise later in the summer the bent grass mats become starved for water and browned-out areas appear. To make matters worse, the bent grass seeds are dispersed throughout the lawn every time it’s mowed, which allows it to spread easily.
The traditional way to treat creeping bent grass has been to kill it by spraying a non-selective herbicide (like Roundup) on the circular patches, and then reseeding the dead, bare patches at a later date. The problem with this approach is that non-selective herbicides kill off everything they touch, so the bare patches they create are significant and unsightly. Plus, this method does nothing to eradicate the young bent grass seedlings growing undetected throughout your lawn from getting a foothold and coming back the following year.
However, thanks to recent advances in herbicides, Reder Landscaping is now using a new product that kills only bent grass and not other desirable grasses! The prime times to apply this herbicide are mid spring and early fall, so we are entering the perfect season for using this approach.
This treatment involves two applications of the herbicide to the entire lawn, spaced 10-12 days apart. 30 days later, after all the bent grass has died, Reder Landscaping will return to slit seed the areas where the bent grass patches had been so the desirable turf grasses can re-establish.
There are two big advantage to this new approach versus the old way. The first is that, by killing only the bent grass, there is no unsightly collateral damage to the healthy parts of your lawn. The second is that, since the entire lawn is treated, the new approach also kills all the little bent grass seedlings that would mature to infest your lawn the following year.
We’re very excited about this new and improved approach to eradicating and controlling bent grass. If bent grass has taken control of your lawn, or if you’re interested in taking advantage of this ideal time of year to rejuvenate your lawn, give us a call today to speak with a Reder Landscaping representative.
Hi folks. I’m down in south central Indiana with a bent grass problem, well outside your service area I’m guessing (!) I don’t know anyone around here that treats for its eradication. I’ve gone the RoundUp route for 4 years now and I never get it all to permanently kill. Tenacity seems to be the traditional selective herbicide. Should I just go get some and treat the whole lawn or just a wide perimeter around each patch? Or can you refer me to any nat’l chain like TrueGreen that has a program for it?