How to Prevent Weeds in Your Sarasota Lawn and Landscape

If your plan of attack for weeds is to wander out once in a while with a spray bottle of weed killer, you’re doing it wrong. 

Why battle villainous weeds, sweating the whole time and working yourself into a rage, when you can help prevent them? 

How to get rid of weeds in a Florida lawn? First, try prevention. Some common Florida weeds need pre-emergent weed killer, which targets the weeds before they even sprout. A healthy lawn is a great defense, too. Weeds hate a thick, healthy lawn, struggling to take hold. And lawn care strategies like mowing tall can make a big difference. 

Read more about common lawn weeds in Florida, and how to prevent them, including:

First, What Are the Common Lawn Weeds in Florida? 

Next Up: The Beauty of Pre-emergent Weed Control 

How Does a Healthy Lawn Prevent Weeds?

Proper Watering

Regular Fertilizing

Keep Your Grass Tall

Prevent Weeds with Mulch

What to Do When Weeds Sneak In 

First, What Are the Common Lawn Weeds in Florida? 

If you lined these weeds up in a police line up, criminal style, you’d shudder. They’re all seriously bad dudes. 

Here’s the outlaw list: 

Crabgrass 

Spurge 

Sedge 

Dollar Weed 

Common Bermuda

Clover (Oxalis)

They each have their own unsavory characteristics.

Crabgrass produces millions of seeds. Spurge will grow anywhere, often sprouting out of sidewalk cracks and along walkways. Dollar weed spreads quickly, through both seeds and rhizomes, which makes it double trouble. Common Bermuda tolerates everything from heat to drought to foot traffic, which makes it nearly impossible to control. 

But if you can prevent them instead of attacking them, the battle against all these common Florida lawn weeds will be easier. 

The Beauty of Pre-emergent Weed Control 

How to get rid of weeds in a Florida lawn? Zap them before they know what hit them. Pre-emergent weed control creates a barrier in the soil that prevents weed seeds from germinating and growing. What a great idea, right? But the herbicide needs to be in the soil at the time of weed germination for it to be effective. 

Crabgrass, among the most common lawn weeds in Florida, is a great example. Prevention is everything with crabgrass, one of the most persistent types of weeds in Florida. The key is targeting those seed villains as they germinate and take root in the soil so they don’t become more seed-producing plants.

That means applying a pre-emergent herbicide to your lawn between March and June.

If you wait until crabgrass shows up, you’ll have a much tougher time getting rid of it. Also, you’ll suddenly be in a really bad mood. 

How Does a Healthy Lawn Prevent Weeds?

How to get rid of weeds in a Florida lawn? Keep your lawn healthy. Weeds love a patchy, struggling lawn. They hardly have to work at all to take hold. Bare soil? Woo hoo! Weed seeds can snuggle right in and sprout.

But a thick, healthy lawn? They hate that. Why?

• A thick, healthy lawn creates a dense canopy that shades the soil, making it difficult for weed seeds to germinate and grow. They need sun to thrive.
• A healthy lawn with strong roots competes with weeds for essential resources like water, sunlight, and nutrients. A strong lawn has a better chance of winning, limiting the space and resources available for common Florida lawn weeds to thrive. 

What can you do to help? 

Proper Watering is Key 

Watering deeply and infrequently encourages deep root growth in your grass, making it more resilient and better able to compete with weeds. Water too often, and your lawn will have shallow, weak roots. 

A lawn that’s too wet or too dry encourages weeds. Invest in irrigation maintenance visits to make sure you’re giving your lawn the right amount of water.  

Regular Fertilizing

Just like you as you’re ordering three double-meat pizzas, your lawn needs food to thrive. How to get rid of weeds in a Florida lawn? Give your lawn the important nutrients it needs through regular fertilization so it can outcompete those weeds. 

But our soil is sandy here so there’s a trick  to this. Sarasota lawn care means more frequent fertilizing, but with smaller amounts, so fertilizer has a better chance of feeding the roots than draining right through into the groundwater.  

While some Sarasota lawn care services visit four times a year to fertilize, Tropical Gardens visits once a month for 8-10 months of the season, visiting more often and applying smaller amounts of nutrients so they can really take hold. 

Keep Your Grass Tall

Taller grass helps a lawn grow thicker and healthier, crowding out common Florida lawn weeds. When you mow too short, the soil heats up, helping pesky weed seeds germinate.

Mowing tall is especially important if you have St. Augustine grass, so popular here in Florida. 

It needs to be kept at 4.5 to 5 inches tall, higher than other types of grass.

If you mow it at 3.5 inches, the grass blades aren’t tall enough to shade the soil. You want your lawn’s root system to stay cool and shaded on hot sunny days. 

And never remove more than a third of the leaf blade at a time when mowing, which is a good rule in general in Florida lawn maintenance. If you remove more than that, the grass will become stressed — and more susceptible to weeds moving in. 

Prevent Weeds with Mulch 

While common Florida lawn weeds hate a healthy lawn, they’re not too crazy about mulch, either. It cramps their style.

Hardwood mulch keeps weeds from easily sprouting, making them work too hard to poke through. But it offers handy bonus features, too — it holds in moisture to conserve water and as it decomposes over time, it adds nutrients to your soil. 
 
Oh, and it looks fantastic, too. Unlike weeds, which aren’t winning any beauty contests out there. 

What to Do When Weeds Sneak In 

Despite your best prevention efforts, some weeds are bound to take hold. Weeds are really rotten that way. 

How to get rid of weeds in a Florida lawn? Put pros on the job who know exactly when to apply the crucial pre-emergent herbicides to keep some weeds away, and how to quickly target others when they pop up. 

It’s actually a year-round battle.

Different common Florida weeds emerge at different times throughout the year, which means targeted weed control at just the right times is a crucial part of your landscaping services. 

Invest in pre- and post-emergent weed control treatments to keep your property weed-free throughout the year. 

Worried about weed control harming the environment? Here at Tropical Gardens, we don’t just blanket your lawn with herbicides. That actually stunts the growth of your grass and it’s terrible for the environment.

We use pre-emergent herbicides to stay on top of common Florida lawn weeds like crabgrass. 

Then we spray weeds each month as needed. As lawn technicians walk back and forth across your lawn, they’re on the lookout for weeds. If they see weeds, they spray a product that targets that exact weed. 

How to Get Rid of Common Florida Weeds? Talk to Us 

If you’re at the police station trying to identify Florida weed criminals, something went terribly wrong. 

Protect your lawn from invasive villains. 

Get on board with tailored lawn care services in Sarasota with perfectly timed fertilizer and weed control. Add attentive irrigation maintenance to help ensure a healthy green Florida lawn that’s thick and robust enough to help crowd out common Florida weeds before they can take hold. 

Tropical Gardens provides full-service lawn care services in Sarasota, FL and nearby communities that ensure your property gets the care it needs — including weed control — all year long. 

We can’t wait to get started. 

Give us a call or fill out our form today! Don’t let weeds put you in a bad mood. Let our skilled, attentive crews handle it. You rest easy.