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Learn to Properly Identify Weeds

Winter and early spring are the best times to start cracking down on weeds in your lawn and garden. This is because many weeds sprout much earlier than other plants, and they grow much faster. By getting a head start on weed control, you’ll make your weeding that much easier in the spring, summer, and fall.

Learn to identify your garden plants and grass type firstdreamstime_xxl_40166053

There are literally thousands of weeds that can pop up in your lawn and garden. It’s not necessary to be able to identify weeds individually—you only need to know which plants you want growing where, and which plants you don’t. It’s really as simple as that. Once you can easily identify the plants in your garden (for example, what string beans look like when they begin to sprout), then you can get to work removing everything else that doesn’t belong.

There are several clues that can help you identify weeds. If you planted your garden in tidy rows, then the plants will grow in tidy rows. Everything else is a weed. If your lawn’s grass is still dormant from winter, but a few plants are starting to sprout up in random spots, then you’ve just identified the weeds.

As long as you are familiar with your lawn’s grass type and what it’s supposed to look like, then you can tell where weeds have started to take hold. While almost anyone can tell what a dandelion looks like, other weeds might be more difficult to identify. By taking a closer look, the differences between weeds and your regular grass will start to emerge.

Weeds will typically fall into 3 categories:

  • Woody Weeds: identifiable by their woody stems and shrub-like appearance.
  • Grasslike Weeds: longer leaves, parallel veins, and typically without any flowers (that you can notice)
  • Broadleaf Weeds: often produce flowers, and usually have broad leaves

When to go hunting weeds

As noted above, winter is an ideal time to start keeping a lookout for leaves. Some species of weeds can even stay active under a blanket of snow, and by the time you’ve started planting in the spring the weeds may have already started reproducing.

The absolute best time to get rid of weeds is when they are young and before they’ve begun to reproduce. Weeds are hardy plants that can spread like wildfire.

Identifying weeds is the easy part—actually getting control over the weeds in your lawn and garden is a whole other animal.

If you find yourself losing control of the weeds in your lawn, contact WeedPro today!