Quote:
Originally Posted by suginami
I don't think it is a good idea to kill your whole lawn and start over.
The problem is that eventually weeds like crabgrass are going to come back.
Controlling lawn weeds are a year-round, continuous program of keeping a healthy lawn, using a pre-emergent chemical to prevent this stuff from germinating, killing them as they grow, and then re-seeding in the spring and / or early fall to limit the amount of space where weeds can grow.
At the end of the day the only way to prevent crabgrass is asphalt or cement.
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If it's less than 50% weeds and crabgrass it can be brought back relatively easily without starting over. More than that really depends on how much time and effort the owner wants to put into it (or how much they want to pay someone else to do it) or how patient they are. The issue with starting over completely with rototilling is that you bring all of those weeds seeds up to the surface.
There is a seed bank of weed and crabgrass seed present in the soil (there are university studies showing that crabgrass seed can stay viable in the soil for 50+ years), just waiting for the right combination of sunlight and water to germinate. One way to combat that without chemicals is do build up your own seed bank of desirable grasses by continuously over-seeding. A lot of municipalities and sports field maintenance companies in New England have gone this route on their sports fields, over-seeding every two weeks while in play and having the cleats work the seed into the soil, since pesticides have been completely removed from their arsenal on any field that K-8 kids can play. And it's probably only a matter of time before they're banned on high school fields.
That's true for asphalt and cement as long as there aren't any cracks!
