Care and How-To - Weeds
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Effective methods to get rid of ground ivy in lawns and gardens. Discover non-chemical options, herbicide recommendations, and lawn care tips to manage this persistent weed and maintain a healthy landscape.
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Effective weed management in vegetable gardens is important and involves using multiple methods, often together. Learn about the many different options for controlling weeds in your home vegetable garden.
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Learn effective weed management for your garden. Discover types of weeds, their impact, and tips for controlling them to maintain a healthy landscape.
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When Kentucky bluegrass and other cool-season grasses begin to green-up in spring, some home gardeners are dismayed to see brown spots in the lawn. In some cases, the brown spots are dead patch.
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Perennial broadleaf weeds die back to ground level in fall but send up new growth in spring. These weed species have leaves that are wider and often have a major vein running down the center of the leaf with secondary veins branching off of
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Poison ivy causes allergic reactions when you come in contact with it. Learn more about safely removing this weedy vine from your garden.
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Woody weeds are trees and shrubs that have woody plant tissue. Examples of woody weeds include tree of heaven, bush honeysuckle, and poison ivy.
These weeds can be particularly difficult to manage, especially if they grow large.
Keeping ahead of weeds and controlling them when they are small is essential for good weed management. This requires persistence throughout the entire growing season to remove weeds as they emerge.
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Perennial grassy weeds die back to ground level in the fall but send up new growth from the same root system in the spring. Keeping ahead of weeds and controlling them when they are small is essential for good weed management. This requires persistence throughout the entire growing season to remove weeds as they emerge. Cultivation, hand pulling, mulches, and herbicides are the primary means to control weeds in the home garden.
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Crabgrass is a warm-season annual weed that germinates from seed each spring and thrives throughout the summer if not controlled.
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Weedy vines can be some of the most difficult to control weeds in the garden. They are fast-growing, getting very large in a relatively short amount of time and often climb and cover other garden plants. These tenacious plants climb by
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Flame weeding is the use of intense heat, usually produced by a propane torch or other fuel-burning device, to kill weeds. This organic option for weeding causes the water and sap inside the plant cell to boil and expand rupturing the cell w
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Weed management requires persistence throughout the entire growing season removing weeds when they appear and preventing them from getting large, flowering, or setting seed.
There are many different techniques for weed management and effective control often comes from using a combination of different techniques.
Weeds can be divided into several major groups. Some species can be classified in one or more of these groups, and others cannot be classified in any of these groups. Understanding how the weed is classified will help with control as the management of weeds in each group looks similar.
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Annual weeds grow rapidly, flower, set seed and die in a single season.
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Wild parsnip, Pastinaca sativa, is a common roadside weed in Iowa. Wild parsnip is a non-native plant in the parsnip family that originated in Europe.
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In spring, the cool-season lawns common across much of Iowa turn a vibrant green. Occasionally, you will notice large "dead" patches of grass. Often the brown patch of grass seems to get larger every year. Upon closer inspection of the grass, one can see that there are no spots on the blades (from fungal fruiting bodies) or darkening of the roots or crowns (the part of the plant at the soil line). These brown spots are typically caused by a couple of different environmental issues.