At the risk of sounding like I'm going in a different direction I have a few questions.

How often do you water? or get rain this year?
How high do you mow?
What grasses are in Pennington Premium?

It could be no matter what Scotts Lawn Service did, you set up the lawn for weeds.

You could round up the area and start over. It is getting late in the season, though, so get ready and do it. Now is the time, not next spring if you can help it. If you water and mow properly you should not have much problem next year.

Why not just use a pre-emergent that kills crabgrass next spring? This year's crabgrass will be dead soon, and only the seed it set this year will try to sprout in the spring. If you only have a crabgrass issue, that should do the trick.

I set my mower to it's highest level during the summer.
Pennington Premium is a tall fescue.
I do not subscribe to the notion that I am causing this by my watering lack of watering, or mowing heigth. If that were the case, my entire lawn would have the problem, not just the areas where I started Scotts lawn seed 4 years ago.

It seems that pre-emergence never works no matter who does it, myself or Scotts lawn service.

Even if the crabgrass dies at end of year, don't the same plants start growing again in spring? By "dies" do you mean lays dormant? Or do brand new ones start and old ones never come back?

Crabgrass and foxtail are annuals. they live one year, then die. it's the seed they made this year that will come up in the spring. so if you use a pre-emergent that is made for them, you'll solve the problem.

>"just the areas where I started Scotts lawn seed 4 years ago. "

Could you pictures of the crabgrass?

here it is

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:117699}}

OK alan93, it's a little hard to be 100% sure, but I do not think that is crabgrass. It looks like 'foxtail' to me.
http://www.weedalert.com/weed_pages/wa_yellow_foxtail.htm

If it is foxtail, no wonder the company could not eradicate it for you as there is no selective herbicide for it other than Glyphosate (Round Up) which kills anything and everything.

Problem #2 - How often do you mow. In order for that foxtail to grow that tall and form those seed heads, it must have been a long time between mows. Why? Cultural practices are VERY important to preventing weeds.

I would recommend making sure you have complete spring and summer pre-emergent coverage. I think most pre-emergents last about 2 months. Do a 2nd application after that time to cover the rest of summer. If your lawn is thick, I can only assume your summer annual seed load is high or you cultural practices are questionable as mentioned above.

I agree that you will probably need to hit it twice with pre-emergent to take care of your issues. If you want you can overseed now in order to help "crowd" out the weeds as well, but I would not kill everything out if you don't have to.

Ok thanks but not exactly sure how to proceed except applying tons and tons of pre-emergent next spring+summer?
Here is a pic of the area (about 100-200 sq ft)
And it is sparse.
I may have gone a long time between mowings but no more than a week or 8 days. So you are saying it needs to be kept short so it doesnt seed?

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:117701}}

I agree that is not crabgrass. That weed could be plucked out with a Weed Hound.

Weeds can appear in spots before you know it. If you get a fungus or insect problem, then before you even realize you have a problem the thin spot can happen and the weed seeds germinate.

Annual plants live for one growing season and then die. When they die they never come alive again. These types of plants propagate by dropping seeds. Those seeds germinate and sprout at the next opportunity (which involve temperature, moisture, and hours of direct sunlight).

ok, thanks, but i'm not sure why I want to pluck them out if they are going to die. Unless it's because I need to make room for grass seed? Because when they die they are still taking up room in the soil right?
I'm guessing that if I do this one by one it will take me about 4-5 hours though.

I agree with dchall, i did just taht last year with crabgrass! Get a weed hound and take them all out. Sounds like hard work but it's worth it plus you wont be bending over it anyway you just stamp the weed hound into the weed then disgaurd it, easy. Then just put down some seeding soil in the holes with some Pennington seed and water til they grow. Next year that should crowd out any new weeds from growing.

something to consider:

I would not be certain of why you were getting the summer annuals (crabgrass, foxtails) and perennial weeds in that area without using a soil probe. Any chance the soil is thinner or rockier there? My first and best diagnostic tool has always been a soil probe.

If you have a dense stand of turf and mow at an appropriate height, quite a few summer annuals will be suppressed due to the lack of sunlight reaching the soil where the seeds lay in wait. For this reason, I always recommend mowing at the HIGHEST possible settings in late Spring and throughout Summer. Often, one mowing the wrong time and at too low of a height can invite summer annuals into your lawn. In a wet year (like we had in the Northeast), summer annuals can persist in germinating right through the summer even as your pre-emergent fails. Breakdown is due to sunlight warming exposed soil. This and the heightened soil microbial activity that is brought on by an unduly wet Summer and made worse by close mowing. Rocky soil can also contribute as it heats up easily which stresses the grass, exposes the soil and causes an early breakdown of your pre-emergent If turf density is adequate and your mowing height is (higher)appropriate, I'd expect a much better lawn. If, indeed, the soil is thin and rocky you may be limited by that. You would also normally notice that the turf in those areas shows up as stressed earlier in the season or more easily than the rest of your lawn.

By the way, Halts (Pendimethalin) was great stuff for lawns for years in the 80's. It lasted 6-8 weeks and when applied at the right time was the best thing going for summer annual control. At some point in time it became obsolete (to me at least). I'd not use Halts today if they were giving it away for free. Many products are available with dithiopyr (Dimension) which not only offers POST-emergent control on summer annuals (you can be somewhat late and still get good control -- actually up until the second tiller stage) but it functions for as long as 12 weeks as a pre-emergent. In a wet summer...it will make all the difference in many lawns. And...it's always cheaper where I buy it than it's 'nationally' advertised competition.

As for your lawn, core aerate the ker-app out of it (5-6 passes) and then spread a half-rate of whatever seed you favor. Wait as late as Possible to apply your 2010 application of pre-emergent (see above). I always apply in early May (about 3 weeks after the frantic masses here in central PA have applied their Pendimethalin).

Thanks for all the tips though it seems alittle overwhelming as there seems to be no silver bullet for this.
I started raking some of it out. The foxtail comes out easy in big clumps but there is a stringer denser grass weed that is hard to get out. It reminds me of the bermuda grass I saw in FL when I lived there.

I put some grass seed down in the bare spots and plan to cut grass higher next spring and do multiple halts applications.

Here's another plan I have.
Since the area is a little shallower than the surrounding yard (because it used to be brush before I cut it out and had a bobcat hit it) I was thinking of adding a load of top soil on top of whats there and reseeding next spring.
It would level it and cover everything there and be like starting from scratch.
Will deeper soil discourage those weeds?

Well after treating my area of foxtail with Scotts halts twice this spring and spraying ortho crabgrass killer on it, I have a brand new bumper crop of foxtail coming up just like in the previous 4 years. Nothing stops it.

I'm done with trying to post-treat this so I am going to kill it all now , roto-tiller it, and reseed this fall.

Now that the EPA has banned MSMA, does anyone know of a reasonably priced herbicide that will kill crabgrass? I am aware of Bayer Acclaim but it's $131 a pint. Lawn is a mixture of KBG, TTTF and ryegrass.

Alan,

I just posted about "Bayers Bermudagrass Control for Lawns" on another thread. The label (see below) says it controls foxtail. May be worth a try to save trying to roto-till, level / regrade and reseed.

Best of luck,

Gags

Here is a link that might be useful: Bayer Bermudagrass Control Spray

thanks i'll try that.
I am trying every possible combination of chemicals in the hope that at least one will work.
I tried ortho weed b gone with crabgrass killer and it seems to turn the foxtail yellow after about a week.
I am also trying Bayer Lawn weed and Crabgrass (see link).

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:117704}}

I recommend either Drive 75 DF, or their newer product, the Drive XLR8. Both are selective killers, which means you can apply to the entire lawn and if done properly, you won't have to worry about killing off all the good grass.

The Drive 75 DF isn't made anymore, but I looked around a found a place that is still selling it, looks like a great price too, plus they sell the XLR8. You will need a surfactant with the DF, the XLR8 has an adjunctant (spelling??) in it already. I'll put the site link in for you.

Here is a link that might be useful: Offers for Drive 75 DF and Drive XLR8

>"The Drive 75 DF isn't made anymore, but I looked around a found a place that is still selling it, looks like a great price too,"

liqcentral:

When is the last time you had a grown man tell you that you were full of feces?

Garyinchicago - what's wrong with you???

BASF has stopped making Drive 75 DF because they now have Drive XLR8 - pretty easy to check out before you make childish comments.

Here is a link that might be useful: Drive XLR8 Replaces Drive 75 DF - BASF No Longer Manufacturing Drive 75 DF