January is a good month to control those pesky, winter weeds if you haven’t already. I have a lot of hop clover that is coming up in some bare spots in my lawn along with some vetch that is sneaking in from somewhere. Both of these weeds are winter annual weeds that die off in the summer and germinate again in the fall. Because there are so many of them coming up, I’m going to use a lawn weed control product that hooks to a garden hose and simply spray those weeds away.

To properly use this product, I’ll need to wait until the temperature is going to be above 60 degrees. Hopefully, there will be a rain event a day or two before the temperature is right so I won’t have to water the lawn before spraying the weeds. The weeds need to be actively growing and they won’t be growing if the soil isn’t moist. When applying the herbicide, I need to keep moving across the lawn in a sweeping motion, making sure to wet the leaves without soaking the soil.

I also have a few perennial weeds including pennywort, which should be killed by the lawn weed control product and some wild garlic. The wild garlic is coming up in a few patches in the lawn, so I think I can pry it up with a shovel and pull most of the bulbs out of the ground. If some of the leaves break off and leave the bulbs in the ground, I’ll need to make another try. I’m not going to count on the herbicide to control the wild garlic. Getting up and down while pulling this weed should count as exercise.