Re: CULT: Preemergent

Here's my reply from Keith Keppel when I asked him about pre-emergents
recently:

In my California days, I rarely used pre-emergents.  There was enough
dry weather you could hoe or hand-pull and take care of things.  Not
here.  You hoe in the morning and the weeds have re-rooted by nightfall
if you don't pick up every scrap.  Took me about two years to give up
and join the pre-emergent crowd.

What has worked best for me overall is Ronstar-G (by Chipco).  Rates are
ca. 2-1/4 to 4-1/2 pounds per thousand square feet....I aim for 4
pounds.  Put on in the fall after replanting and watered in, it does a
good job of controlling almost all winter weeds.  And, I've never had
any problems with the iris, altho Paul Black seems to think baby
seedlings are somewhat vulnerable...especially if you OD.  Stands to
reason.  I've used it on seedlings in spring within days of setting them
out and not had any obvious problems, but I do try to go easy.

The one thing that Ronstar does NOT faze at the rates I use is anything
in the Caryophyllaceae...the pink family.  This means that after several
years of using Ronstar, I've an almost solid mass of common chickweed
(stellaria), mouse-ear chickweed (cerastium), and pearlwort (sagina).
It's these little weeds that go to seed within a short time, and are so
easy to miss, that are the bane of the garden here.  Kevin Vaughn
suggested switching to Snapshot:   Snapshot 2.5 TG (Dow).  Tried it last
winter for the first time, and it did do a good job of suppressing the
above mentioned trio (also at the 4 pound rate), and it also gets the
"other" weeds as well.....tho am not sure quite as effectively as
Ronstar.  Whatever, the thing is to switch off if you do start getting a
build-up of chickweed.

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