My pre-emergent doesn't work

Chamber bitter, or "Gripeweed." Good luck.

In the second photo, is that small purple-pinkish flowers associated with that weed? Does that area of the lawn have a tendency to remain wet at times? If so, could be Doveweed. As mentioned, 3rd photo chamberbitter.

Pre-emergents prevent most, but not all weed seeds from germinating.

Doveweed is best controlled with Specticle (indaziflam) pre-emergent herbicide. The upfront cost is high at $300 for a 18 oz bottle (Specticle Flo), but one can get 12 applications (4 years on 3 applications per year) on 10,000 sq ft of lawn. Equates to about $2.75 per 1000 sq ft per application. Indaziflam is a great overall pre-emergent herbicide, but it is pricey compared to the others.

Doveweed germinates at a soil temp of 70 F, so normally an application of pre-emergent is required in late April-early May (in south LA), b/c the late winter application (mid Feb) for crabgrass, etc will have lost its efficacy. You can adjust dates for your area of GA based on soil temperatures.

Woodsorrel (oxalis) is a perennial weed in the South, so pre-emergent will have limited affect on it as it also spreads by rhizomes in addition to seeds. Specticle should control violets.

There is a granular Bayer pre-emergent herbicide containing indaziflam for about $23 to 29 per bag that treats 4000 sq ft or $5.75 -7.25 per 1000 sq ft if you’d like try that as a cheaper upfront option for an application or 2 for a year to see how it works for you before committing to a $300 bottle.

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The flowers are from a nearby Crape Myrtle, not associated with the weed.

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AOK - not Doveweed. Hard to ID without seedhead.

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wood sorrel is a beneficial perennial that provides multiple benefits to your lawn health as well as pretty flowers. Also you can eat it if you lose your job or something

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I've made tea from it. It's actually really good. Similar to the flavor and aroma of hibiscus tea.

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Chamber bitter, or "Gripeweed." Good luck.

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this weed is devil spawn. Somehow made it's way into my flowerbeds and is the absolute bane of my existence. Spurge is piece of cake compared to this shite

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Chamberbitter needs a specific pre emergent I don’t remember what it is but honestly you’re not getting rid of it.

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Prodiamine is supposed to handle it but it doesn't seem to have done anything to control it in my yard/flowerbeds. I hate it.

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Is the first image not a type of crabgrass?

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Could be crabgrass - hard to tell from those photos.

OP - when did you apply the pre-emergent herbicide? In it the South, pre-emergent herbicide has an efficacy of about 3 months, regardless what says on the bag/container, like “works up to 6 months”.

And of course if you applied it more recently, but the weed seeds had already germinated, then you’d have the same result.

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Is the first picture not Dallisgrass that is not fully grown?

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I don’t think so. If ronk enters the thread he can weigh in.

So many grassy weeds look similar when immature, and when growing in the lawn where you only see the blade and not the base of the plant or leaf orientation.

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Craw, I’ve got some dove weed creeping in. It’s not much, would pulling by hand work? My 3 go to herbicides are Quinclorac, MSM Turf, and Sedgehammer, but none are labeled for dove weed. Celsius and Blindside would work but are kind of pricey. What would you do?

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It’s is an annual and only spreads-proliferates by seed, and it is easy to pull so you can clearly do that-give it a shot.

What do I do? I use Specticle Flo (Indaziflam) as a pre-emergent, applied in mid-April, before soil temp hit 70 F - germination temp for Doveweed seed. The other pre-emergent herbicides appear to have little efficacy on Doveweed. Indaziflam is great and is the biggest game changer for Doveweed control in my lawn. And for what I miss I use Celsius post-emergent. Doveweed in my lawn led me to those two herbicides, but of course they are great for so many other lawn weeds.

You can try the granular Bayer pre-emergent herbicide containing Indaziflam if you only need to treat a small area (see my earlier post in this thread) on the cost comparison. Celsius is expensive, but it last soooooo…long, seriously I still use a bottle I bought in 2018, and it’s effective on so many other lawn weeds. But I understand you have Bermudagrass and you can use Quinchlorac for that purpose other than for Doveweed. Never used Blindside but familiar with it.

You can buy the single servings of Celsius for about $15…..yes it’s more expensive per application than buying a bottle but you can try it out and not have the large upfront cost.

Can get on amazon or at cleggs