What is the difference between wiregrass and crabgrass?
A big difference is that wiregrass is a perennial that is practically impossible to control permanently when it invades a bluegrass or fescue lawn while crabgrass is a summer annual weedy grass that can be controlled in bluegrasses or fescues by making early spring and early summer applications of a pre-emergent herbicide to prevent germination of crabgrass seeds. Those seeds are needed for establishing the next crabgrass generation. The arrival of cold autumn weather kills all parts of crabgrass plants except for seeds. Those same temperatures will make wiregrass plants go dormant, not dead, until warm weather comes the following spring. Actively growing wiregrass can be killed in a lawn by applying a non-selective weed killer like Roundup that will kill good plants as well as the weedy grass. However, the injured wiregrass will come back in only a few years. Now in mid to late summer here in Roanoke, crabgrass seedheads can be seen as slender upside-down “crows’ feet” growing above l
