Other Names: Chickenwort, craches, winterweed, and maruns

Type: Weed

Appearance: It has small white flowers and elongated petals. The large, egg-shaped leaves have pointed tips.

Risk: This weed thrives in fertile soils that are moist and rich in nitrogen.

Timing: It emerges in the late summer, becomes dormant in the winter, sets seeds in the springs, then dies in the early summer.

Outlook: The flowers quickly turn to seed pods that spread around your lawn, making quick work of infesting a large area.

Uses: Chickweed is edible and commonly consumed by both livestock and humans.

How to Control Chickweed

Prevention

Like many other weeds, the best way to prevent a chickweed outbreak is to take care of your lawn because your grass roots won’t leave space for this weed to establish. Essential lawn care practices, including:

• Watering Well: Your grass needs adequate water to thrive. It prefers long soakings about two to three times weekly instead of daily watering, depending on the rain levels from the week.
• Reseeding patchy spots: Grass roots go deep into the ground and take up a lot of space, taking away the valuable real estate weeds need to thrive.
• Aerating Your Soil: Soil compaction keeps air and water from reaching the deeper levels of soil where grass roots grow, so only plants that grow nearer to the surface, like weeds, can thrive.
• Checking Your Lawn’s pH Level: If your soil’s pH level isn’t neutral (about 7.0), your grass doesn’t have the right environment to thrive, but weeds might. To balance the pH level, your soil may also need applications of lime.

Be mindful of the amount you are using when caring for your lawn because chickweed thrives in nitrogen-rich environments.

Treatment

Continuous weeding can help a chickweed infestation, but will not likely take care of your chickweed problem for good. A herbicide treatment will likely be necessary to ensure the weed does not return again next year. As always, refer to the manufacturer’s instructions for proper herbicide use.

Shades of Green Lawn & Landscape knows just how to care for your lawn to prevent and remove weeds. And, if you’d like to have your best lawn year-round, we have a lawn care package for everyone’s needs and budget. Call us today at 765-771-9998 for a free quote.

Need Help with Chickweed?

Call Shades of Green Lawn & Landscape today at 765-771-9998 and let's talk about how we can help you with Chickweed and other Indiana lawn weeds.

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