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Can Weed-B-Gon turn a lawn yellow?

dtownjbrown
14 years ago

A little over a month ago, I noticed that my front lawn was riddled with dandelions so I purchased a bottle of Ortho's Weed-B-Gon Plus Crabgrass Control, attached it to the end of my water hose and sprayed until the bottle was empty. The dandelions have not returned but now my lawn has several "thinning" yellow spots scattered throughout (note: this is not the case on the little sidewalk lawn areas where I did not use the Weed-B-Gon). Is this common when using this product or might I have a bigger problem? What can I do to get the lawn to turn green again? Thanks in Advance :-)

Comments (7)

  • bpgreen
    14 years ago

    What kind of grass do you have? When was it planted? How many square feet is the bottle supposed to cover? How many square feet is the area you sprayed? If you sprayed the entire lawn, make sure you only use the lawn area, not the size of your lot (you need to subtract the house, gardens, trees, etc).

    There are a number of things that can cause the grass to turn yellow from WBG. We need to know which one or ones caused it in this case.

  • texas_weed
    14 years ago

    It sure will burn if over applied or applied to young grass.

  • dtownjbrown
    Original Author
    14 years ago

    bpgreen - Im not sure what kind of grass I have but I know its not all the same type....some areas are much thicker & more dense that other parts of the lawn and its usually the thick/dense area that gets taller faster and thus alerts me that its time to mow. I purchased the home only four years ago and have never planted any grass seed myself (I bought the house from a very elderly lady that I doubt did any grass seed planting herself). I dont know how many sqft the bottle covered but I remember that it was a 32 oz bottle. I threw the bottle away after I had finished the application but I just did an internet search for a use & directions label and found something that said 6.4fl oz per 1000sqft. The area I sprayed measures about 20'x50' on one side of the walkway and maybe 30'x50' on the other side (looks like I may have applied twice as much as I should have, if the use & directions label I found online is the correct one). Any suggestions on what I can do to "save" the grass if it turns out I over-applied?

    texasweed - The grass is at least four year old, does that take it out of the "young" grass category?

    Also, Im not sure if this might help with a diagnosis but......up until this past week, Cincinnati has had a steady flow of rainfall over the past several weeks (at least 2-3 days a week) with temperatures around the mid to upper 60's. However, this past week there was ZERO rain and the temps got up into the low 80's.

  • bpgreen
    14 years ago

    Ouch. You over applied it and that was followed by warm dry weather (preceded by plenty of rain).

    I'm not sure what you can do at this point other than hope for the best. Since it's well established, it's got a better chance of surviving, but it will probably at least be stressed this year.

    I wouldn't fertilize at all and would just keep it watered. It's too late to try to wash it off with water, so your best chance is that at least some of it will make it through and recover as time goes on.

  • dtownjbrown
    Original Author
    14 years ago

    Oh No..... I was hoping for a "home remedy" miracle cure like Epsom Salt or something. Do you think if I keep it well watered (for instance, leaving sprinklers on 2-3 hours each week regardless of rainfall) that I might have a chance for a greener lawn at all this year?

    What about mowing? Should I cut it back to once every couple weeks instead of the weekly cutting Ive been doing for the past month? Oh, and I forgot to mention that the lawn faces SOUTH (as if it wasnt bad enough already)

  • bpgreen
    14 years ago

    The grass you have probably needs about 1 inch of water a week, so give it that much, adjusting for rainfall.

    You've got a chance for a greener lawn. It just needs to recover from the WBG. It's probably not dead, just stressed.

    As for mowing, that depends on how fast it grows. You should probably be mowing it to about 3.5 to 4 inches. Mow so that you never mow more than 1/3 of the blade. So if you're mowing to 4 inches, mow when it gets to about 6 inches. If you mow to 3.5 inches, mow when it gets to about 5.25 inches. If you mow too infrequently, you'll stress the grass by cutting too much off.