Creeping Charlie Taking Over
I got an email about creeping Charlie. It says, “help! Creeping Charlie is taking over my backyard. What should I do?”
We have got a tough to kill weed chemical here, ‘Oxalis, Clover and Chickweed Killer’ that will work on the creeping Charlie. It does a little bit better of a job than the other weed killers. It won’t hurt the grass. It just kills those broad leaf weeds. For the tougher to kill weeds, that chemical is going to be more effective. It is actually a blend of two or three different chemicals.
That’s what I use on my yard. I have got some creeping Charlie in my yard as well. It does take more than one application to kill it. You want to spray it about every seven to 14 days, about once every week to two weeks you put an application on it. If you can spray at night, the pores of the leaves open up at night’s drink in the dew. The chemical will be more effective if you apply it later in the evening than if you apply it midday.
We’re coming up on the time to start addressing the broadleaf weeds. That’s your dandelions, your clover, your chickweed, oxalis. There’s a couple hundred different varieties of broadleaf weeds that have a tendency to get in our lawn. If a neighbor isn’t treating, their seeds blow over. Even if you didn’t have them, sometimes they surprise pop up in your yard.
It is the time of year to start addressing those. Those plants are starting to draw down into the root system. In the spring, they flush this big growth out of the support energy in the roots. And then they draw back down and make the roots grow bigger. And that’s the best time to apply that weed killer for the most effective till of the root system. And again, a lot of these weeds you may have to make a second application.
Certain weeds, like dandelions, have a really large leaf. They’re easier to kill than, like, a creeping Charlie or a clover. Clovers, a lot of times, have a real fine hair on the leaf. So, when you spray it, the chemical beads up and drops off. It has to stick to the leaf to work, so we recommend a teaspoon of dish soap per gallon. It’ll mat down those fine hairs and make the chemical stick and be more effective. We always recommend spraying in the evening. The wind dies down that time of night. You’re less likely to get drift on the things that you don’t want the chemical on. The leaves are opening up, so they’re going to drink in the chemical more readily in the evening hours.
I know a lot of people, some people like to do things first thing in the morning. But if it’s best to wait until after dinner, that’s probably a good thing, too, just to make sure you plan it out. A little bit more effective morning would work as well. But when you spray midday, the chemical dries on the leaf. The sun degrades that. Now the dew rewets that chemical at night. And the plant does drink it in, but at what concentration? We know that when we put it down in the evening, we’re getting the full effect of the chemical.
If you just have a little bit of the weeds, we sell a trigger sprayer bottle. It’s called ready to use and you just spray that on. If you have a lot of it to do, then we have a concentrate that you can mix into a pump sprayer and spray a larger area. I will say this as well, with the plastic sprayers that are out now, I’ve got one at my house for roundup, and that’s the only thing that goes in that sprayer. I’ve got one for broadleaf weed killers like your dandelions, clovers, creeping Charlie. And I’ve got a third sprayer for my insecticides and fungicides.
You would never want to use a sprayer you had roundup or weed killer in to apply an insecticide to a plant. That would be a catastrophic mistake because the plastic absorbs chemical and re-releases chemical at different temperatures. It’s always best to have a dedicated sprayer for what you’re doing.
