Weed Control · Colorado
How to Kill Creeping Charlie and Wild Violet in Colorado
Creeping Charlie and wild violet shrug off standard three-way weed killer for two different reasons. Both answer to triclopyr — and to October, not spring.
Regional Hub
Colorado Lawn Care
Lawn care built for Colorado: Kentucky Bluegrass maintenance, regional weed and disease control, and a season-by-season calendar for USDA zones 4b–7a.
Dominant Grass
Kentucky Bluegrass
USDA Zones
4b–7a
Soil
Alkaline clay loams along the Front Range; sandier and shallower out on the eastern plains and the Western Slope
Humidity
Very low — semi-arid, with intense high-altitude sun and drying wind rather than muggy heat
Weed Control in Colorado
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Weed Control · Colorado
How to Get Rid of Crabgrass: Timing Beats Chemicals in Colorado
Crabgrass is a timing problem — but one pre-emergent pass is not a whole season. UF/IFAS: season-long control takes a second application 6–9 weeks later.
Weed Control · Colorado
How to Get Rid of Nutsedge: One Pull Does Nothing in Colorado
Nutsedge ignores ordinary weed killer because it is a sedge. UC IPM: one pull does nothing — but pulling every 2 to 3 weeks drains the tuber underneath it.
Weed Control · Colorado
Kill Dandelions Without Killing Grass — For Good in Colorado
Killing dandelions without killing grass comes down to the taproot: the selective herbicides that reach it, and the month they actually work.
Weed Control · Colorado
Spring Weed Control: Soil Temp, Not the Calendar in Colorado
Spring weed control is decided by soil temperature, not the calendar — a pre-emergent applied two weeks late does nothing at all. The trigger, and the plan.
Lawn Diseases in Colorado
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Lawn Diseases · Colorado
Voles in the Lawn: The Runways Fix Themselves in Colorado
Melting snow reveals the runways, and the voles usually left with it. Illinois says the lawn regrows by summer — the damage worth acting on is on your trees.
Lawn Diseases · Colorado
Lawn Disease After Flooding: What Follows the Water in Colorado
Flooding moves the pathogen, stresses the plant and leaves the leaf wet. The hour thresholds that trigger Pythium and brown patch, and why nitrogen cuts both ways.
Lawn Diseases · Colorado
Dollar Spot Treatment: The Disease Nitrogen Fixes in Colorado
Dollar spot is the one lawn disease caused by too little nitrogen, not too much — the exception to every other fungus guide here. The hourglass lesion confirms it.
Lawn Diseases · Colorado
Armyworms and Sod Webworms: Which Ate Your Lawn? in Colorado
Green to brown in two days means armyworms; closely cropped patches mean sod webworms. Both are caterpillars — which rules out most grub products.
Lawn Diseases · Colorado
Chinch Bugs: How to Confirm Them and What Kills Them in Colorado
Chinch bugs: two species, two grass families, and a float test that confirms them in five minutes. Plus the documented resistance nobody prints on the bottle.
Lawn Diseases · Colorado
Lawn Grubs: How and When to Kill Them in Colorado
Most lawns never reach the grub treatment threshold, so count before you buy — and curative products only work from August through October.
Lawn Diseases · Colorado
Brown Patch Treatment: Fungicide Alone Won't Fix It in Colorado
Brown patch treatment needs two things: the right fungicide, and the summer nitrogen habit that caused it. Fungicide alone buys you a repeat next July.
Lawn Diseases · Colorado
Snow Mold Treatment: It Grew Under the Snow in Colorado
Snow mold treatment is mostly about the autumn before: gray and pink snow mold grew under the snow, so what you see in March is already finished damage.
Grass Types in Colorado
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Grass Types · Colorado
Buffalograss: Weeds Mean You Are Doing Too Much in Colorado
Buffalograss lawn care inverts the usual advice: K-State says weeds are a sign it is overmanaged, so the fix is less water and later feeding, not herbicide.
Grass Types · Colorado
Fine Fescue Lawn Care: The Grass That Wants Less in Colorado
Penn State lists high nitrogen among the conditions fine fescue is not adapted to — beside heavy traffic. It is the one lawn grass you can spoil.
Grass Types · Colorado
Perennial Ryegrass: The Fastest Grass, and Its Price in Colorado
Penn State: it germinates in 5 to 7 days and is very competitive with other turfgrasses. Both halves decide what care this lawn costs you.
Grass Types · Colorado
Kentucky Bluegrass Care: It Repairs Its Own Damage in Colorado
Kentucky bluegrass repairs its own damage and browns in August for the same reason — rhizomes. Mow at 3 inches, feed in autumn, count the dormancy weeks.
Grass Types · Colorado
Tall Fescue Lawn Care: Deep Roots, No Self-Repair in Colorado
Tall fescue lawn care is one trade-off: the most heat-tolerant cool-season grass, but it never repairs itself and brown patch waits every summer.
Grass Types · Colorado
Growing Grass in Shade: The Two-Hour Minimum in Colorado
Growing grass in shade has a hard floor: fine fescue is the most shade-tolerant lawn grass and still needs two hours of direct sun. Below that, no seed works.
Fertilizer in Colorado
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Fertilizer · Colorado
Winterizer Fertilizer: Right Idea, Wrong Bag in Colorado
Purdue backs late-fall nitrogen and faults the bags: rates run too low, the potassium needs a soil test to justify — and warm-season lawns should skip it entirely.
Fertilizer · Colorado
Lawn Soil pH: When to Lime, When to Add Sulfur in Colorado
Lawn soil pH decides whether lime or sulfur is the fix — and the right answer inverts between Georgia and Arizona. What the soil test number means.
Fertilizer · Colorado
When to Weed and Feed: Two Bags Often Beat One in Colorado
Weed and feed does two jobs on two different calendars, so one bag rarely times both right. The month it works, and the lawns the label forbids.
Fertilizer · Colorado
When to Fertilize: Autumn Matters More Than Spring in Colorado
When to fertilize a lawn: autumn matters more than spring for cool-season grass, the reverse for warm-season — plus the state laws that close the window.
Fertilizer · Colorado
Why Is My Lawn Yellow? 9 Causes, Not Just Nitrogen in Colorado
Your lawn is yellow and nitrogen is only one of nine causes — feeding the wrong one wastes a season. Diagnose by pattern, blade and timing first.
Lawn Care Guides in Colorado
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Lawn Care Guides · Colorado
Dormant Seeding: The Backup Window After You Missed Fall in Colorado
Purdue's data: dormant seeding beats spring and trails September only slightly. The rule is cold enough not to germinate — Thanksgiving through March, not October.
Lawn Care Guides · Colorado
Lawn Recovery After Flooding: The Clock Starts Underwater in Colorado
How long turf survives underwater, why the damage shows up days later, the 1-inch silt rule, and the survival percentage at which replanting beats rescuing.
Lawn Care Guides · Colorado
Lawn Ruts After Storm Cleanup: What Repairs, What Doesn't in Colorado
Shallow ruts take a ¼-inch topdressing; deep subsoil compaction from heavy equipment on saturated ground is, in Penn State's words, practically permanent.
Lawn Care Guides · Colorado
Waterlogged Lawn: Test It Before You Fix It in Colorado
Water standing after every rain has four possible causes and they need different fixes. A 15-minute hole test tells you which one you have before you spend money.
Lawn Care Guides · Colorado
When to Stop Mowing the Lawn: Watch 50°F, Not the Calendar in Colorado
Cool-season grass stops growing when daytime highs stay below 50°F — that's the last-mow trigger. Too tall into winter invites disease; scalping is worse.
Lawn Care Guides · Colorado
Winter Lawn Care: The Damage Happens in February in Colorado
Penn State: crown hydration is the most common and destructive winter injury, and it happens in late winter after thawing and freezing — not in the deep cold.
Lawn Care Guides · Colorado
Summer Lawn Care: What Helps and What Hurts in Colorado
Summer lawn care inverts by grass type: feeding a warm-season lawn is routine; feeding a cool-season lawn is the classic mistake.
Lawn Care Guides · Colorado
Fall Lawn Care: What to Do, and in What Order in Colorado
Fall lawn care is the one season when doing more genuinely pays — for cool-season grass. On a warm-season lawn, autumn is mostly about stopping.
Lawn Care Guides · Colorado
How to Aerate a Lawn: Spike Tools Make It Worse in Colorado
How to aerate a lawn, and when not to: spike tools compact the soil they punch through, core aeration pulls plugs out, and most lawns need it rarely.
Lawn Care Guides · Colorado
How to Fix Bare Spots in a Lawn — Or Leave Them in Colorado
A bare spot smaller than your fist closes on its own. The bigger ones are a symptom — and the shape of the spot tells you which cause to fix first.
Lawn Care Guides · Colorado
Lawn Mowing Height: Your Deck Setting Is Lying in Colorado
Your deck setting is not your lawn mowing height — measure it once and most people find they cut lower than they think. The real number by species.
Lawn Care Guides · Colorado
Should You Bag Grass Clippings? It Costs Nitrogen in Colorado
Bagging grass clippings throws away up to a quarter of your lawn's nitrogen — and clippings do not cause thatch. The three times bagging is still right.
Lawn Care Guides · Colorado
Spring Lawn Care: Do Less, and Do It Later in Colorado
Most spring lawn damage is done in March by people being helpful. Spring lawn care runs on soil temperature, not the calendar — and the order matters.
Lawn Care Guides · Colorado
When to Overseed Your Lawn — and When Not to Bother in Colorado
When to overseed: late summer beats spring for cool-season lawns, most warm-season lawns should not be overseeded at all — and pre-emergent blocks your seed.
Lawn Care Guides · Colorado
How Often to Water Your Lawn: Twice Beats Daily in Colorado
How often to water a lawn: twice a week beats every morning, and one inch a week beats guessing. Measure your own sprinkler — the timer is not telling you.
Product Reviews in Colorado
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Product Reviews · Colorado
Best Weed Killer for Lawns: Match It to the Weed in Colorado
There is no best weed killer for lawns, only the right one for your weed: the seven chemistries that matter, what each kills, and the one that kills grass too.
Product Reviews · Colorado
Organic Weed Killer for Lawns: The One That Works in Colorado
The organic weed killer that works on lawns is iron — it burns broadleaf weeds and moss in hours without harming grass. What it won't do: kill the roots.
Colorado Lawn Calendar
What your Kentucky Bluegrass lawn needs, season by season.
Spring
- First nitrogen mid-March to April at 0.5–1 lb per 1,000 sq ft
- Pre-emergent late April to early May on soil temperature
- Mow at 2.5–3 inches — CSU's preferred height for every species grown here
- Core-aerate the Front Range clays; they crust and shed water
Summer
- No nitrogen July to early August on bluegrass — CSU leaves that slot empty
- A high-quality bluegrass lawn may need up to 2.25 inches of water a week in hot, dry, windy weather
- Watch for Ascochyta blight after a cool wet spell turns hot — patches straw off almost overnight
- During an Ascochyta outbreak mow LESS often and higher, with a sharp blade, and never when wet
Fall
- Feed 1 lb mid-August to mid-September, then 1–2 lb early October to early November
- Seed or sod mid-August through mid-September
- Keep watering into autumn — dry winters kill more Colorado turf than cold does
- Sulfur, never lime, if a soil test says the pH needs moving
Winter
- Water once or twice a month on warm dry spells; winter desiccation is a real loss here
- Stay off frozen turf
- Watch for mite damage on south- and west-facing strips
- Plan next season around CSU's five-slot nitrogen calendar
Official Colorado resources
Three things every guide here eventually sends you to do — and all three answers are specific to Colorado rather than national: test your soil, read your own land-grant programme, and check whether the state has added anything to a product's federal label.
Soil testing
The land-grant lab that tests soil for residents here:
CSU Soil, Water and Plant Testing LaboratoryAround $45 a sample, which is at the expensive end nationally — and about 60% of the lab's roughly 6,000 samples a year come from homeowners, so the queue is people like you. On Front Range soils the salinity and sodium numbers in the full package matter more than they would elsewhere, which is part of what you are paying for.
Why the number matters more than the bag: soil pH in Colorado.
Turfgrass research
Every guide here defers to your own land-grant programme somewhere. This is it:
CSU Extension turfgrass guidanceColorado State University Extension
CSU's dedicated turf-program site was unreachable when we checked (an expired certificate on one host, a 410 on the other), so this points at CSU Extension's own turfgrass guidance instead. CSU Extension also runs Lawncheck, a paid lawn consultation service — unusual among the states here.
Where their advice and a national rule of thumb disagree, follow theirs — they trialled it in 4b–7a.
Pesticide regulation
Pesticide authority sits with the state department of agriculture:
Colorado Department of AgricultureDivision of Plant Industry, Pesticide Programs
Restrictions we found printed on labels: Colorado product restrictions.
Municipal Watering Restrictions & Microclimates
Hyper-local drought regulations and watering schedules for major metropolitan areas in Colorado.
Lawn Health Newsletter
Seasonal lawn reminders, on time
Pre-emergent windows, disease alerts and fertilization schedules for your region — one short email, right when your lawn needs it.
Free forever. Unsubscribe anytime. US lawns only (for now). This season's companion: the printable summer checklist.