any way to get rid of perennial ryegrass in front lawn?

Last year, I killed off my front lawn completely, and reseeded it with several types of creeping red fescue. (mostly epic and boreal) I usually don't spend much time on the lawn, and don't even water it, but I did end up spending a good amount of time and money on it. (including about $100 a month watering it to help it get established)

The main point was to create a low growing, low maintenance experimental lawn that would supposedly only need mowed half as often as our others.

While the creeping red fescue does seem to be meeting this criteria, unfortunately, I did not notice that the "shade mix" grass seed that I used had PERENNIAL rye in it, not the annual rye that I thought it had. I was thinking that the rye would dye off, and the fescue would fill in during subsequent years through the rhizomes.

Instead, what I ended up with is maybe 20% of the lawn that is fast growing, light yellow-green coarse blades that are almost twice as high as everything else in a week. In effect, it looks a lot worse than the lawn I had before I tried all of this.

Is there anything I can do to kill off the perennial rye that is mixed in, without killing off all of the red fescue? I really don't like the perennial rye, but also don't want to completely start over again. Help!

Reply to
Ohioguy
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Ohioguy wrote: ...

i think you're stuck with hand weeding, but i'm not a herbicide expert. at 20% that's not too bad. you should be able to clear a few square yards an hour. you'll need to spot weed as the seeds are not all sprouted yet, but as times goes on there will be less and less as the other grasses crowd out the easy spots.

waiting longer for the rye to get even more established will make it harder, so the earlier done the better.

good luck.

songbird

Reply to
songbird

I was thinking that if the rye really is growing at 2x the height/rate of the fescue, wouldn't that make it much easier to get at the rye by rigging up some kind of adjustable-height, paint-roller kind of herbicide applicator?

Reply to
Nelly W

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