I just finished treating my bermuda with baking soda for the crabgrass and YES it works well. It did brown my bermuda a little but that will recover easy. The trick is you need to mix a couple of teaspoons of soap in with the water to get the water to stick to the crabgrass leaves. I also added some molasses to it as well. Spray the crabgrass then take some pantyhose and fill it with the baking soda. Tap the pantyhose over the crabgrass to dust the leaves. It doesn't take much. It turns the leaves black within a day or two. Have fun and get rid of that crabgrass before it seeds.

will this do anything for tall fescue?

I have found a lot of anecdoatal information that does indicate that Baking Soda, "Sodium Bicarcobonate" will at least stop the current growth of crab grass. One web site sells a product that contains "Baking Soda" although that is listed as an inert ingrediant and supposedly cinnamon is what kills off the crab grass. Another "authority" is concerned that this "Sodium Bicarbonate" will so change you soils pH as to cause more problems then the crab grass. However it would take several hundred pounds of Baking Soda to do that so that point (this person had, as I recall, a product to sell) may be invalid.
Try some Baking Soda on some crab grass and some cinnamon on some different asn see which does what, and which is the less expensive if they both do the same.

ill try this in my garden rows, but will it kill other grasses in the lawn? it sounds.....selective???

It weakened my bermuda grass but did not kill it. I did try cinnamon alone and it did nothing to the crabgrass. Only the baking soda made an impact on it.

so what's the formula to use and how to apply?

Can anyone confirm that it works to mix the baking soda with hot water and spray it on rather than sprinkling dry powder on the wet blades?
Thanks

I don't think mixing the baking soda in water and spraying it will work since the water solution would just run down the leaves into the soil. But maybe I'm wrong and if this does work it would be interesting. I think I will experiment and try it out and I'll let you know.

even if you used soap to make it stick to the plant better?

Kimmsr, thanks for the info, sounds like I'm okay as I dont plan to use 100's of lbs of it!

Sunfire, I think west had a good idea adding soap...Please post your experiment results here, I'm right behind you!

"will this do anything for tall fescue?"

It'll probably kill it. But it'll also kill a lot of other grasses. Are you trying to kill the fescue or kill crabgrass in fescue?

Everything I have seen about this says that the Baking Soda was applied to the crab grass as a powder, not sprayed on after being mixed in water. Mixing in water might dillute the Baking Soda too much, but you would still need to pour it directly on each plant and could not apply this with a bigger sprayer. Mixing Baking Soda with water to apply it would involve much more time and energy than just sprinkling some powder on each plant.

I don't know... it took me quite a long time to hand spray water & soap on each plant with the squirt bottle, then thump the pantyhose with powder to cover each plant.

Even the slightest breeze carried most of the powder away from its intended target making it very frustrating for me. I may eat my words after I go back today to assess the impact - if it worked it will certainly have been worth it.

Well I am back with the results of my experiment using baking soda mixed in with water and soap. The conclusion is that it does not work. As Kimmsr stated I think it dilutes the baking soda too much. But dry dusting works like a charm.

"It'll probably kill it. But it'll also kill a lot of other grasses. Are you trying to kill the fescue or kill crabgrass in fescue?"

Trying to kill the crabgras in fescue. Sorry.

Not to hijackthe thread but what to do with some bermuda in fescue as well?

2 days after applying the baking soda and it appears that my Bermuda is hurting a lot more than the crabgrass :-(

Maybe what I thought was crabgrass is something else?
day 1

No its crabgrass it just takes more than one application to get the fully mature ones. Don't worry about the bermuda, it will bounce back.

"Trying to kill the crabgras in fescue. Sorry.

Not to hijackthe thread but what to do with some bermuda in fescue as well?"

I think baking soda will kill fescue, too. I wouldn't try it.

If you have Bermuda in your fescue, you can hit it repeatedly with glyphosate when it's green and growing. That will kill any fescue around it, but it will eventually kill the Bermuda. But it will take repeated applications.

Or, you can wait until winter when the fescue is green and the Bermuda is brown and spray all the green grass with glyphosate. The Bermuda will then fill in once it starts to grow.

Crab Grass is an annual, if you kill the plant now (before seeds develop and spread around) you will have fewer plants next year. The Bermuda, as well as the Fescues, are perennial and eventually new grass will grow into the spots where the Crab Grass was killed off.
Kill the Crab Grass off, and maybe some surrounding grass, and once that is done cover the area with some compost to encourage grass to grow back quicker.

Keep in mind that using any glyphosate product is anathema to an organic gardener. Why someone would come to an organic lawn care forum and suggest using a product that no organic gardener would use is beyond me.

I admit that glyphosate isn't organic, but I probably forgot that I was on the organic forum when I posted that. However, I doubt if you'll kill Bermuda with any organic approach.

I'm not really sure why I did post that, since I posted italmost exactly a year ago and I'm equally mystified why, if it's that horrible to mention, somebody would wait a year to react.

Here's a good link on using baking soda for crabgrass and dalligrass. Too bad you dont have St. Augustine because it seems to hardly impact it. The bermuda is indeed damaged.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJLN9BmRJ2o

I will have to try this BS formula, but my question I can't find any answers to is, "what's this black(mold like) powder that is only forming on the bloom(?) part of the crabgrass stem?"
It plasters your feet and ankles when you walk through it and leaves outlines of your feet on the carpet.
This is not oily like all other threads talk about, it only forms on what I would think is the seed heads of the plant.
It is crabgrass, it is extremely invasive, it is not causing irritation to skin but it is extremely hard to get rid of.
I have tried chemicals that state they are for crabgrass prevention and crabgrass killer but they seem to just make it spread, stronger and laugh at me!

Please if you don't know, don't give me any, "I think" answers, I've already spent $1000's on lawn products and can't afford more run arounds!
Thanks for any educated help.
John-

What I have seen over the years is that anything strong enough to kill Crab Grass will kill any other grass including Quack Grass. Baking Soda, dusted on Crab Grass (not mixed in water and sprayed), will kill that Crab Grass as well as any other type of grass also dusted.

I'm ok will killing my complete lawn at this point.

But does anyone know about the black dust I'm talking about? It doesn't seem to be a mold and more like a pollen because it's only when the crabgrass is in bloom*?

I dusted baking soda on crabgrass last night and unfortunately it starts to rain around lunch time today. Will the baking soda still be able to kill crabgrass? Thanks.

will this work for creeping charlie to or do you need some thing else for that

Probably if you covered the leaves well enough to keep them from getting the sunlight they need to make nutrients to feed the plant the Creeping Charlie would eventually die.

kimmq is kimmsr

How about mixing some bicarbonate of soda in a spray bottle, and reduce the spray to a squirt - then aim at the roots of the crabgrass stalk. Crabgrass propagates from its roots, so to kill it in a lawn one must attack the roots.

The activity of Baking Soda to kill plants is phytotoxic, ie. it stops the plants ability to photosynthesize which causes the plant to die because it cannot make the nutrients it needs to grow.

kimmq is kimmsr

Will this work on St. Augustine and Centipede grass? My father has a mix of these two and I'm killing myself trying to pull these on his 1 acre lot. If not, any suggestions on what will work?

Also looking for something to kill torpedo grass that hopefully won't kill the above grasses either if anyone has any suggestions. From what I read, this one might be harder. Thanks!

I got rid of the sod but of course the roots are still there. Blades of crabgrass started to come back, so we torched it using a blow torch. I thought that worked, but 1 week later it's coming back. I want to try baking soda now to rid it. But, I'm wanting to seed after wards or soon with Dichondra and other plants like Echinacea and Hollyhock. If I put baking soda down, will it essentially just ruin the soul for seeding?

Crab grass does not regrow from a few bits of root left in the soil, but it will grow from seeds that are in that soil. If you burned Crab grass with a torch it would not regrow, although if there were seeds in the soil they may well germinate. Crab grass is an annual thaqt produces one plant per seed and that one plant when killed is dead. If you did have new growth from any roots left in the soil or if a plant did regrow after being torched then you do not have Crab grass.