My yard is mostly weeds, clover, & crab grass. Is there a way to get rid of them w/o tearing it up?

MML Staff_Erin H EXPERT April 02, 2008

You have two good options:

1. Use a herbicide.

You can spray it with Roundup, which is a non-selective herbicide that kills weedy grasses such as crabgrass and broadleaved weeds such as clover. As herbicides go, it's pretty safe: it's bound up in soil so there's no risk of it draining into the water table -- just don't use it on sand or gravel.

You can buy it as a concentrate to mix with water, which is the most economical option, or as a ready-to-apply spray with a built-in spray handle (tip: unless you have a tiny yard, your hand will get sore from squeezing the built-in spray handle).

Spray when the weeds are actively growing; that way, they more quickly move the herbicide into their roots. Wait 10 days or so to see how effective the first application was and reapply if needed.

Here's a tip: If you apply a herbicide after a few cloudy days, it's more effective -- in sunny weather, plant leaves produce a waxy coating to protect themselves from drying out; that coating also makes it harder for the herbicide to penetrate the leaf. That coating breaks down after a few cloudy days.

2. Smother it.

Cover the whole area with something that blocks light. That could be black plastic (which tends to get brittle and slimy over time), old carpeting, cardboard, newspaper covered with bark chips, a few dozen napping cats, sheets of plywood -- whatever. If you can't stand the look of the light-blocking barrier, cover it with mulch.

How long you have to wait for the weeds to die depends on the weeds. Annuals such as crabgrass give up pretty quickly. Perennial weeds that store carbohydrates in their roots -- think of that long taproot on dandelions -- take longer to kill. I'd give it 6-8 weeks.

An option I DON'T recommend is tilling the the area, because it brings buried weed seeds to the surface where they can sprout AND it chops up the underground stems (called rhizomes) of some weeds, which then grow into new plants.