How to establish a lawn without germinating weed seeds
Following seeding instructions requires clearing dead plant matter to reach bare soil, which risks triggering decades of dormant weed seeds waiting in the ground. Once these fast-growing weeds germinate, they block the dirt and quickly overgrow the new grass. Because pulling or mowing them is ineffective, this overgrowth forces people to scrap the entire project and wait until next year to restart.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
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How to establish a lawn without germinating weed seeds
- 1Burning the dead plants and seeds with a propane torch.Did this help you?
- 2Using mesotrione during seeding, which prevents weed seeds from sprouting but allows grass seed to grow.Did this help you?
- 3Using a tow-behind dethatcher to work up weed seeds and applying pre-emergent.Did this help you?
- 4Following a multi-year routine of pre-emergent, spot treatments, and fall seeding.Did this help you?
- 5Pulling the weeds out by hand or mowing them downDid this help you?
- 6Scrapping the entire yard and restarting the seeding processDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“The things I need to address: \-Weeds. Pictured is hopefully a few good shots of the non-grass that has been over growing the new grass.”source ↗
“But the parsley-like plants grow really fast, and block a lot of the ground”source ↗
“Definitely working on the weed ID. It seems to be pretty much everywhere on our property. It out or mowing it down doesn’t do too much.”source ↗
“So, essentially scrap everything, and restart? At that point wouldn’t I just need to wait until next year?”source ↗
“I killed the bindweed in my yard with glyphosate back in September. However, there was a lot of it, and now there's a ton of seeds on the ground”source ↗
“My question is, how do I go about establishing the lawn without allowing the bindweed to germinate?”source ↗
“Also, all the instructions for seeding say to seed over bare soil- how do i go about getting the dead plant matter out/off of the ground?”source ↗
“So you're telling me glyphosate was just the opening act and now I've got a 40 year sequel waiting in the soil.”source ↗