HelpfulGardener.com

I went all-organic last fall with my lawn and flower beds, and until recently, it had gone well. I've been having my lawn guy mow the Bermuda high (3" every 2 weeks) and it had been outgrowing most of the weeds nicely.

Well, first I was on vacation then the lawn guy was on vacation... he's finally mowing again this week, but now all these tall weeds have seed heads on them with millions of little black seeds.

I just spent the last hour carefully snipping off all the seed heads and collecting them into a plastic bag so that no more seeds would drop, but I'm sure many had already dropped onto the lawn... have I hopelessly screwed up? I guess now there's no way to keep these new weeds from sprouting all over? *sigh*

You could treat it with corn gluten meal. It is a corn derived organic product, which feeds the soil, but it works as a pre-emergent herbicide, keeping grassy weeds from sprouting. Here's an article about it:

https://www.extension.umn.edu/yardandgarden/ygbriefs/h531cornglutenmeal.html

It is recommended to be applied in spring and again in mid August, so timing is good!

Ooh, I didn't realize I could use CGM in summer... I thought I could only use that in the spring... PERFECT! I will do that (I'm also about to spread some corn meal as well, as an anti-fungal... I guess I can spread them around the same time with no ill effects?). The lawn guy mowed today and it looks sooo lush and pretty, I was sick at the thought of zillions of weeds popping up all over again! Thank you!!

I'm not sure what sort of grass we have, probably oat grass or something (from the pasture) and it grows like STINK! If it rains right after we cut it you can't even tell it was cut!

Anyway, we had a HUGE weed problem so I hand-weeded all the thistle and some of the more aggressive weeds, but we cut 3" once a week (mostly because we have to). I'm not sure about how fast Bermuda grows but cutting it once a week may reduce any unsightliness & still keep your grass high enough to drown out weeds.

Plus we never have an issue with weeds getting to a seed stage in a week, they don't even get to flowering. I was just out on our lawn & I can't even see anything except the half-dozen thistle I pulled out already today (that is a BIG improvement BTW).

The CGM article is very interesting though!!