corn gluton meal brings weeds?

[Doug Scoggins]

I used corn gluton meal last fall, in the spring and this fall to help control a plant identified to me as Dicondra. Now my yard is about half St. Augustine and half Dicondra and my chemical using neighbors are nice and green St. Augustine. Before then I used Bradfield.

What happened? Did I get Dicondra with the corn gluton meal?

How can I get rid of the Dicondra?

Thanks,

[Dirt Doctor]

I would rather have the dichondra than than the St Augustine grass. Doubt very seriously if it came from the CGM.

[Dchall_San_Antonio]

Dichondra is a really nice ground cover if you can keep it. The problem with it is it gets attacked every year by flea beetles and dies out before you can get the fbs diagnosed and under control. Dichondra can be grown at any height up to about 6 inches or so and always looks nice, until the flea beetles. For people growing dichondra as a ground cover, it is considered a fragile plant. For those where it is considered a weed, it is considered fairly aggressive.

Dichondra cannot be effectively pulled because of the web of runners it sends out from each rooting node. It is always throwing out seeds, so whatever your attack is, it always returns. The way it grows, it shades out the St Augustine and will leave you with patches of dichondra and no grass. Bummer big time! But at least when you have all dichondra in one place, you can very effectively spray it with vinegar. The best hope is to control it with flea beetles every summer and, when they strike, spray with the vinegar to kill off what the flea beetles miss and resod.

You might try setting your mower deck to the highest setting to try to shade out the dichondra. Dichondra will grow taller than most mower decks will go, so that might not work.