OOPS here this pic!! The pink isn't part of it!

This post was edited by sorie6 on Sun, Nov 10, 13 at 18:56

Henbit?

I do think it looks like henbit. We have millions of these tiny plants right now....they have been sprouting for almost a month. Most people consider it a pernicious weed and, if I lived in an urban or suburban neighborhood where everyone is expected to have perfect weed-freee lawns year-round, then maybe I'd feel the same way......but I don't. I live in an extremely rural neighborhood where weeds greatly outnumber the lawn grass in most yards, and I love henbit. In fact, I love, love, love, love, love it. We have oodles and oodles of bees, and even butterflies and moths, out flying around searching for food all winter long, though you see more of them on warm, sunny days and significantly less on very cold, cloudy, windy days, and the henbit, which often blooms in our yard from December through April, is a big food source for a lot of the little flying insects. So, in our location and with no nearby neighbors giving us dirty looks because we're letting weeds grow and bloom, it is one of my favorite winter plants. That's just me though----ensuring that all the wild things on our property have what they need to survive is important to me.

If you don't like it, you can kill it with broadleaf weedkillers labeled to kill henbit, or you can put out a pre-emergent next fall before it begins sprouting.

Dawn

Dawn, thank you for giving permission to grow henbit. Now I will only feel guilty about the ground ivy and chickweed.

HaHa Helen. I don't think it is henbit. Henbit is usually the first of the Spring weeds here, but I don't see it this time of year.

Sorie, wait and see if a purple flower emerges, then you will know for sure if it is henbit. Our daffodils are sprouting leaves. They don't seem to know it's the wrong time of year - maybe your henbit is confused, too!

Here is a link that might be useful: henbit photos

I thought it looked like ground ivy but the round leaves on the ends don't look like my ground ivy.

To me it looks like creeping charlie - an invasive ground cover that I once thought was so pretty till it tried to choke out everything else in the bed. If it is cc you can usually just pull it out fairly easy or a hard freeze will kill it out.

Its Henbit, I've been pulling them for the last couple weeks like I start doing every year starting about this time. Its coming up thick next door both to the east and west and they like to jump over here. Dead Nettle is coming up too, they are both cool season annual weeds. The leaves are a bit different on the Dead Nettle but they look very similar when young.

Hmm....does it have square stems?

Sorry i haven't gotten back sooner. No it doesn't have a square stem.
They are very small leaves. Are growing taller.

I believe henbit is a mint and has square stems. It is usually very dark green and the leaves form like collars around the stem and it's blooms are small and purple, and the bees love them. It's considered a winter annual. Again, I don't think the picture is henbit.

Its henbit that is still in the seedling stage.

Ok how do I get rid of it? Is it to late in the fall to spray? The frost sure didn't kill it and it got to 20 here one night. It's still growing! Thanks

Henbit is better than ground ivy. It goes away in summer. If it is crowding small plants you can pull it up then read Dawn's post again and relax. It won't hurt your Bermuda.

If Henbit was worth anything I would be a millionaire. I till it, hoe it and pull it, and still have more than I need. I do a pretty good job of keeping it out of the garden and flower beds, but I just let have every thing else. My biggest complaint is that I think it stinks.

Do you have a pic of the weed now that it's a little bit older/more mature? Also, this link might help, although if there isn't a square stem (which may be more easily identified on the more mature weeds) it's not applicable at all.

Here is a link that might be useful: Three common weeds

Its a cool season annual, freezing temps do not kill it. It usually comes up in fall, winters over and then it takes off, flowers and makes seed in early spring. It then dies back around late spring or early summer. It needs cool temps to germinate, that is its cycle.

I just pull them and anything else that crops up. Its easier to pull when its more mature but don't wait until it goes to seed. Mulching beds or using a spade in the area will help keep both cool and warm season weeds in check. If you have henbit, you will probably have other cool season weeds cropping up now or later on. Weeding is just a regular, unavoidable part of yard/garden maintenance especially in fall and spring.

If you have thousands coming up, obviously there were many last year and this is last years seed germinating. You can pull or cultivate out the ones in the bedding areas and then mow the ones in the lawn when they get tall enough but before they make seed to prevent this years crop from seeding for next year. Be sure to bag and dispose of the clippings.

Or, you could get on a regular program of pre-emergence and broadleaf herbicides to prevent or kill the annual weeds invading the lawn but you will have to stay on it each year because once you stop, they will return. Henbit is among the group of extremely common broadleaf weeds that invade every yard, every year, its not that important to make an exact ID. There are many professional companies who work on a contract basis making timed visits to spray or you can go to Home Depot and stock up on chemical arsenals and DIY.

Personally, I don't advise or like the idea of chemicals being used year after year in this way. :(

This post was edited by GreatPlains1 on Tue, Nov 19, 13 at 14:01

Corn gluten meal might work applied at the right time. That is not a harmful chemical but I think I remember worrying that my dog might eat it. What I got last time was from the feed store and not what they sell at a high price. I only tried it once. I have lots of weeds and the winter weeds don't bother me. I even think dead nettle blooming in the "lawn" is pretty and sort of hate to mow it. Ground ivy is my worst creeping weed. My sister from CA thought I had planted because it is attractive but it will smother small plants and bulbs and does not go away in summer.

Helen, I am fond of any plant that helps the butterflies survive, and often in December through February or March, henbit is the plant here on our property that is simply covered by tons of little flying insects, particularly butterflies. It is a particular favorite of the swallowtails, and we always have tons of swallowtails.

Carol, In our earliest years here, I never saw henbit until about February, but in recent years (roughly since 2010 or 2011) it has sprouted in early to mid-fall as soon as rain begins falling again after a very hot, dry summer. I've wondered if the extreme dryness of the last three summers has somehow 'primed' the henbit seeds in the soil to sprout more readily when moisture returns in the fall.

At the present time, y'all, we have billions of little henbit plants everywhere, and I don't mind them at all. Anything that is green in winter and that blooms in winter and provides a food source for little flying critters is welcome in our yard.

And, for anyone who wants to use pre-emergents, whether synthetic or organic in origin, you have to apply them before the seeds sprout and that can make their use tricky in the autumn. This year, I would have had to apply pre-emergents prior to mid-September, because as soon as rain started falling in mid-September and the temperatures fell just a little bit from their summer levels, the cool-season grasses and forbs immediately started sprouting. Back in the "olden days", which means anything prior to 2009 at our place, you could put out pre-emergents in October or earliest November and that would keep most of the cool-season weeds from sprouting. Sometimes you could put them out as late as early December. This year, that October to December time frame would have been too late.

We had dandelions spring up in late-September or early October and they've been blooming for weeks now. The henbit was only about a week behind the dandelions in terms of when I first noticed the plants had sprouted, but those plants haven't bloomed yet....maybe because Tim keeps mowing the lawn, which cuts them back and keeps them short. They could have been there longer and I wasn't paying attention. Self-sown hollyhocks and Malva 'Zebrina' sprouted a week or two after the henbit. After struggling to keep anything alive all summer, I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I love the henbit.

Sorie, I don't use chemicals and could not even begin to suggest any sort of chemical that will kill the henbit, but I do not think that winter weather will kill it. It often is in bloom at our house sporadically from November or December through the end of February, and from February onward, it is heavily-laden with flowers and there are so many butterflies visiting it that you don't even notice the weeds---just the butterflies. Someone who lives near me told me that butterflies and bees are 'dormant' here in winter, but I beg to differ. As long as I have anything at all in bloom, the bees and butterflies come out and feed, so I feel like henbit is important to their survival. When nothing is in bloom, the bees visit the hen scratch and seem to feed somehow on the corn, but the butterflies aren't out much when nothing is in bloom. We don't have many winter weeds that survive the ice and snow, but henbit might be one that can. I know it can in southern OK but am not sure what snow and ice will do to it in northern Ok. Here, it might even freeze back to the ground during some exceptionally cold weather, but it pops right back up out of the ground as soon as the weather warms up a little.

I am not a huge proponent of using pre-emergent chemicals in grassy areas because I don't like using chemicals, but if you want a weed-free yard, they're your best option. In order for them to be effective, you need to apply them in late winter/early spring (the timing of your application depends on when warm-season weeds start sprouting in your area) to prevent the germination of warm-season weeds, and need to be applied in early to mid-autumn to prevent the germination of cool-season weeds. In some parts of OK, cool-season weeds may sprout over a long period of time from fall through early spring, so multiple applications might be needed. Corn gluten meal would be the pre-emergent of my choice since it is organic in nature. However, the timing of its use is really tricky since it also is a form of nitrogen fertilizer. If you apply CGM too late and the seeds already have germinated (even if you don't see green growth above the ground yet), then the CGM feeds them nitrogen since it is too late to keep them from sprouting and that feeding gives you big, lovely weeds.

If you want to get rid of the ones that have sprouted in your planting beds and don't have time to hand-pull them out of the ground, you could place cardboard on top of them to smother the young plants, and put several inches of mulch (grass clippings and leaves chopped up by the lawnmower are my favorite mulch for this purpose at this time of the year) on top of the cardboard. Wet down the cardboard and mulch as soon as you apply it so they all don't blow away.

In our garden we now have verbena bonariensis, dill and yarrow sprouting from self-sown seed, and while I haven't even been in the garden this week, I bet if I went out to it and looked closely, I'd find Laura Bush petunias sprouting as well. The cold will get some of these plants, or at least will temporarily freeze them back, but others will survive. While we often think of most outdoor plants being dormant in winter, there really are lots of native grasses and forbs that sprout in autumn and stay very small and close to the ground. Periodic warm spells can cause them to grow, but the relatively cool weather keeps them small. Then, when temperatures hit exactly the range that is right for them, they start growing like mad and it seems like you 'suddenly' have big, tall cool-season weeds everywhere when, really, they were there all along but just were so small they escaped notice.

When you see lots of weeds in your lawn grass, that indicates a problem with the grass....it lacks vigor. Normally, bermuda grass can outcompete almost any weed that sprouts in it during the warm growing season. So, if you are seeing weeds sprouting up in your bermuda grass year-round, the ultimate solution is to work to improve the health of the bermuda grass via proper fertilization, watering and mowing. Once the bermuda grass lawn is in better shape, it will be lush and aggressive and will crowd out the weeds that are attempting to share space with it. If bermuda grass is not growing aggressively enough to crowd out weeds in the warm season, correcting the issues with the bermuda grass also reduces the weed issue. If your bermuda grass gets too much shade from trees and shrubs, then it will grow too sparsely to crowd out weeds and that is something you cannot change. If that were the case, you'd need to select a more shade-tolerant grass for those areas.

Dawn

We have NO shade in our yard!!! I'll see about fertlizing in the spring. I'm not going to use a chemical on them. I don't like doing that either. I'll just leave them and pull what I think needs it.
Here's a pic of the week today. i did put it in a new post today also.
Thanks everyone for you help.

Technically speaking, applications of nitrogen fertilizer on a lawn is applying chemicals. Commercial nitrogen lawn products are manufactured and sold by chemical companies and they cause pollution of water sources.

Here is an interesting article about a study being conducted by the Rodale Institute about the effectiveness of the use of chemical nitrogen as compared to safe natural solutions.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.mariasfarmcountrykitchen.com/organic-vs-chemical-lawn-care-which-one-leads-to-healthier-grass/

This post was edited by GreatPlains1 on Wed, Nov 20, 13 at 16:51

I've begun placing little compost piles all over my front yard (covered in creeping charlie). Dawn is right. It works. Yet, grape hyacinths exploded with sprouts instead of grass.

I think I can settle for them, though. In the spring, if I have time I'll toss some worm tea around. See if that helps.