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chueh_gw

True-Green company???

chueh
15 years ago

I have been doing organic gardening and lawn care for 2 years. Although my lawn (bermuda grass) has not improved at all, I am still keeping my organic concepts. I have had 80% weeds in all seasons and at least 20-30 varieties of them in my lawn. I have used pre-germinating product such as CORN GLUTEN MEAL to prevent weed seeds sprouting, and other organic fertilizers to help grass grow greener. However, nothing changed. I have not known any organic products that are organic for the existing weeds. Am I missing something?

Today, a True-Green law care company guy came to knock my door. They charge $35 per month to keep lawn green in summer time. I asked the guy what type of weed killers do they use. He was not sure, but asked my phone number to call me back after he found it out.

The guy called me and told me that the weed killer mixture they use is not sold at any nurseries, HomeDepot, or Lowes. OK.... so I asked him what is it consist of. He told me one ingredient is something like 5-k...... Blah blah... To me, it does not sound like organic. As far as I know, organic products are expensive. I spent a lot of money on Corn Gluten Meal just to prevent the weed seeds from sprouting. I can not imagine that there are organic products I can get cheaply to KILL EXISTING WEEDS. Are there such organic products?

Comments (10)

  • dchall_san_antonio
    15 years ago

    I do organic gardening because I'm cheap and lazy...and it works great. Have you read the Organic Lawn Care FAQ? There are some suggestions in that for inexpensive organic materials.

    Watering
    How often do you water? Do you have an automatic system? How long do you water when you water?

    Mowing
    How often do you mow? Do you mulch mow? How high/low do you mow?

    Fertilizing
    What have you fertilized with? How often? Do you know how much you used?

  • lou_spicewood_tx
    15 years ago

    I would stay very far away from TruBrown. They will do ANYTHING to gain business. Google Trugreen complaints and you will get a lot of them.

    Have you watered deeply and infrequently at all? What exactly did you feed them? Bermuda are known to be high nitrogen hog so you'd have to feed soybean meal every month. It means nothing if you;re not willing to water deeply every week or two. Try and spray liquid molasses at the rate of 4oz per 1000 sqft whenever you fertilize. No soil testing required. None of senseless stuff Kim recommended. Waste of money. It only works for synthetic program. Totally different concept.

    I would ignore Kim's advice. Means nothing at all. I never did such thing and I turned out fine. It's a waste of time. Kim is living in a fantasy right now. pH testing? Worthless. you get what you get. My is probably 8.0 pH since I grow right on limestone rubbles. Ignore that. Doesn't matter. Soil test? HA! I have probably 80% rocks! I'd pay more attention to Dr Ingram's works to really understand how soil biology. http://www.soilfoodweb.com/03_about_us/approach_pgs/a_01_benefits.html and
    http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/concepts/soil_biology/soil_food_web.html.
    {{gwi:79083}}

    {{gwi:79084}}

    I've never used soil test of any kind. I don't see the point for organic program.

    There is no shame in using synthetic stuff if it gets too bad. I would at least use Lesco 0-0-7 pre emergent weed control from Home Depot or Lesco store to try and keep any more weeds seeds from germinating. I'm not sure but march 1st and 8 weeks later would control summer weeds. September 1st would control winter weeds. In the meanwhile, try and feed bermuda with soybean meal if you can find it. it has good amount of nitrogen. Mow 1-2 times a week. Water deeply every 1-2 weeks.

  • chueh
    Original Author
    15 years ago

    Thank you. In the previous one and a half year, I fed the lawn with soybean meals, cotton seed meals, gypsum, lime (to correct ph a little), epsom salt, etc. every month during growing season. Since it was not changing the condition, I got lazy doing all that this past half year. I also tried sugar method; not working either.

    I guess the problem is really the water part. I don't have an automatic system. Using a manual sprinkler is not helping too much. However, I will keep my eye on watering this summer.

    I pretty much hand pull weeds, yet my rate of pulling them is not competitive at all with the rate of the weed growth. I have not done finished pulling weeds, and the second batch has already emerged. I almost became a full-time weed puller. Still can't beat the rate of the weed growth.

    Ok.... so there isn't an organic thing to kill existing weeds....... as the True-Green guy was trying to come up with something to make me happy to hear yet couldn't.....

  • okcdan
    15 years ago

    I'll chime in here & agree with Lou & David. To add my 2 cents, I'll also say that for the purposes of weed control in bermudagrass, the best defense is a strong offense. In any stand of turfgrass, a good strong healthy stand of turf will crowd out & smother weeds. As David eluded to, good cultural practices also will ultimately do more for weed control than any product you could spread on your turf. The watering & mowing are the most important, then the fertilizing. If you do a good job with those three things, the weeds tend to go by the wayside.

    Like you, I hand pull all the weeds in my turf.... however, that usually consists of one nice warm sunny weekend afternoon in March. Right now, I have some weeds popping up in my dormant bermuda... Here in a few weeks, I'll go out in the yard with my weedhound for a couple hours & pull every one of them... roots & all. Then I'll scalp, dethatch, fertilize & water heavily.... setting my lawn up to be a very healthy, vigorous growing turfgrass that will crowd out the weeds. The photo below depicts what it looked like late last spring, and I fully expect it to look the same way this spring.

    {{gwi:108051}}

  • organic2009
    15 years ago

    Here is the deal with Tru Green. Many have described them as a marketing company disguised as a lawn care company. This is why the gentleman trying to sell you their program knew nothing about weed control. To me, this is very scary.

    Unfortunately there are no effective organic herbicides on the market. At least any that are cost effective. Corn gluten meal has to be applied at such high rates that it costs way too much. Not to mention it doesn't work very well and when you are applying it you are really cranking up the nitrogen.

    As somebody said above the best defense is a good offense and you can do that easily with proper cultural practices, meaning mowing and watering. Also, you NEED to have your soil tested to determine pH, micro and macro nutrient requirements and organic matter levels. The key to organic weed control is really patience. Once the soil becomes cleaned by using organic practices and applying organic products like humates.......the weeds stop growing.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Organic Lawns for America

  • dchall_san_antonio
    15 years ago

    Fertilizer is not a substitute for proper watering and mowing. You have to get those right first before you can really evaluate where you are and what else you might need. Chances are you will need very little except something to cause dark green color.

    I disagree that you "NEED" a soil test so I'm directing this question to organic2009. You seem to own an organic lawn care business. Kudos to you for that. You are not the earliest adopter of that business plan, but the other professionals are really late in joining that stampede. So my question is, since you have seen lots (hundreds?) of soil tests for your business, what difference does the test make? You already have a plan laid out for your clients, and I really like it, but what modifications do you make for each lawn as a result of getting the soil tested?

  • Kimmsr
    15 years ago

    Just like any other plant grasses will not grow well in soils without adequate levels of organic matter or a soil pH that is not in the 6.2 to 6.8 range, and the only way to know what your soils pH is is with a good, reliable soil test. The link below willtake you to an article from Ohio State University about good lawn care.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Natural Lawn Care

  • organic2009
    15 years ago

    kimmsr pretty much answered the question of why you need a soil test very simplistically. I suppose you could argue that you don't NEED a soil test but that it is a good idea as a starting point. Any basic lawn care program, be it chemical or organic, will cover all of the basics. Because there aren't many options with organic herbicides it is essential to provide perfect growing conditions for the turf. An acidic soil condition will promote many weeds to germinate and flourish. Many people automatically apply lime to deal with this but in most cases (at least in the north east) it isn't enough. To reply to your suggestion that I have seen hundreds of soil tests....your wrong...I have seen thousands! Most of the time, and I am talking about the Mid Atlantic and Northeast, you will find pH levels that are very very low. When you have pH levels in the fives you can't apply enough lime or calcium in one growing season to even begin to adjust the soil. When soil is that acidic the products that you apply (again, be they organic or chemical) simply will not be effective. And what happens then? You get in the habit of applying more and more which, in the case of chemical lawn care, just makes things even worse. I guess you don't NEED a soil test, I'm just saying that it is a good idea.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Organic Lawns for America

  • redvq
    15 years ago

    hmmm, I'm in Ga too. One thing I can think of is that you might have poor soil or better yet you might be a victim of a poor builder. I couldn't figure out why areas on my lawn were not performing and what do you know...Starting @ 2 inches into the soil and continuing down to over several feet, my builder buried window frames,glass, building bricks, and flooring in my yard. All this plus a couple 200 lb rocks an inch under the surface can do it. I didn't know it was so rocky here. But moving on, I would like to know more about your use of cottonseed meal. Did you have a million weeds before you used cottonseed meal? I want to know whether or not that has anything to do with the weeds.

    I say this because I only used soybean meal and alfalfa meal the past 2 seasons and weeds were sprinkled here and there, but mostly confined to the back right corner of my property where the big rocks/debris were/are. However for my last feeding in September 08', the store ran out of soybean and alfalfa so I used cottonseed meal. Well, as of right now I have weeds growing in sections that never had a weed problem before. Could be a coincidence, but I'm not sure. Maybe some weed seeds got into the cottonseed bag, I dunno.

    The pic below was taken at night last year before I applied cottonseed meal. Its one of the thickest sections of my lawn, however it now has a number of weeds after I applied that cottonseed meal.

    Also I.D your weeds if possible. Clover? They say weeds can give you hints to what element(s) your soil may be lacking.

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