Q. I live in North Tacoma and I seem to have acquired a weird grass in my lawn. It never turns green and the top is long and if you pull it up it has very long brown roots and is easy to pull up, but how do you get rid of it. I have only had the problem the last year but the grass (weed) seems to be spreading. How would I get rid of it without killing the rest of the grass? Would thatching help this problem? And after thatching would I then reseed? Please help as I used to have a nice lawn and I would like to see it that way again. Please help! Thank you, Julie Metzger – Tacoma, WA
A. From your description I believe you may have a weed called Velvet Grass (Holcus lantana). You said it never turns green but you didn’t indicate what color it actually is so this is just a guess. Velvet Grass stands out in a lawn because it has many hairs on its surface making it look more silver-gray than the vibrant green of our normal lawn grasses. This is even more pronounced after rain or watering since the water particles glisten on top of the plant hairs. The plant spreads by seed and can root from the nodes on the rhizomes which are probably what you described as the “long brown roots” that were easy to pull up. They are weeds of pastures as well as lawns. Within lawns spreading by seed is usually not a problem since Velvet Grass is mowed with the lawn so the primary means of spreading is from the rhizomes. Since they are grasses chemical treatments that will kill Velvet Grass will also kill the lawn. Velvet Grass is a perennial so it won’t die off at the end of the season. Thatching would not control the problem. A combination of hand pulling and nonselective herbicides may be necessary. If the infested area is only a section of your lawn you could either dig up the turf and replace it with sod or reseed. Alternately you could also treat the area with a nonselective herbicide (spot treatment) and again reseed or use a piece of sod. The advantage of using sod is that if there are any seeds in the soil of the Velvet Grass they will be covered by the sod and not germinate as they might in a new grass seedbed.