Even expert gardeners can find it hard to know how to attack weeds in the lawn and garden. However, preventing weeds is essential to keep your lawn grass and garden in good health.

Common Broad-leaf Weeds

Catsear

This is similar and often confused with dandelion. It’s a perennial weed with upright yellow flowers, and its presence in the lawn often indicates a lack of nutrients in the soil.

Clover
Is a perennial weed that is low-growing and found in most lawns. Regular watering in the summer months helps weaken the weed.

Onehunga - Prickle Weed
Onehunga is an annual weed with yellow flowers and prickly seeds. Once plants have flowered (in October generally), they have set their seed for next year. The only way to eventually eliminate this weed is to spray before they flower and then again in November for two years in a row.

Oxalis
This type of oxalis is a bulb and hard to kill. The problem with oxalis is that once you spray the plants, they drop their baby bulbs, which start to grow. You must respray when you see the oxalis starting to reappear; otherwise, you give the baby bulbs time to grow and have more babies, which takes you back to the start.

Creeping Oxtails
This oxalis is a hard-to-kill perennial weed with small yellow flowers.

Hydrocotyle
Can cause a significant problem in the lawn, especially since many weed sprays won’t kill hydrocotyle. Incorporating lime fertiliser once a year is essential and will help when combined with a spray program.

Convolvulus 

A creeping and climbing weed, sometimes referred to as bindweed, with arrow shaped leaves and trumpet-shaped flowers, up to about 80mm in diameter. To kill, cut the stem close to the ground and remove the cut foliage and stems. The fresh-cut stump must be liberally swabbed with a wood vine weed killer such as Yates Woody Weedkiller.

Grass Weeds

Couch Grass
You may also know couch as twitch, dog grass or summer grass. It will go dormant over the winter with the cold but will resurface in the warmer months

Poa
A common annual grass that appears as clumps of a different colour in the lawn.

Paspalum
Causes problems in lawns all over New Zealand, especially in summer when it produces its large seed heads. Paspalum can easily grow to 30 cm in lawns even when it has been mowed. It also grows best in the summer and becomes almost dormant in the winter

Treatment

Now that you've identified your problem weed, pop into one of our stores and talk to one of our team members to learn how to best kill and control the problem.

After Care
After treating and clearing the area, use Weed Weapon Preventer granules to hinder the regrowth of bulbils, particularly effective against oxalis. Avoid disturbing the soil for the next 6 months, but if the soil is disturbed, reapply the Weed Weapon Preventer. While seeds won't sprout in the treated zone, it's suitable for planting other plants, apart from edibles.

Long Term Solution
If you are looking for a more long-term solution for patios, paths, and driveways, consider Weed Weapon Long Term as a suitable option. This product not only eliminates sprayed plants but also remains active in the soil or on surfaces, preventing regrowth for up to 365 days (depending on conditions).
Note: Weed Weapon Long Term is a non-selective herbicide, meaning it can eliminate any plants it comes into contact with or those present in the treated soil or surface for the 12month active period.