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I had a post about this last year but had no luck. I took some fresh pics as it's started growing already.

Location: Massachusetts

This weed/grass starts growing way before anything else. They grow in bunches that are very... firm. When you mow the lawn and the wheels run over clumps, they are like speed bumps. This stuff is spreading through my lawn and I fear that if I do nothing, a few more years and it will take over the entire yard. It is far too wide-spread to dig up by hand. It would take me weeks to dig it up. There has to be some other way I can kill this stuff.

Looks like clumping tall fescue.
Dig it out
Glysophyte
Plant the yard in tall fescue

With bulbs like that it is not a grass and not onion weed or nut grass.
Very hard to tell with just the bulb and the new shoots, could be any one o 10,000,000 + bulb plants.
Best to plant some in a pot and look after it till it flowers
Could be a very rare orchid .
Being a bulb it will always get a head start on the grass which has to re-germinate each year from the roots or seed bank.
Plants with bulbous root system a re very hard to kill with stuff like glyco and when you do the lawn still can not grow through it till the remaining bulbs decay & that can take several years.

bertsmobile1 said:

With bulbs like that it is not a grass and not onion weed or nut grass.
Very hard to tell with just the bulb and the new shoots, could be any one o 10,000,000 + bulb plants.
Best to plant some in a pot and look after it till it flowers
Could be a very rare orchid .
Being a bulb it will always get a head start on the grass which has to re-germinate each year from the roots or seed bank.
Plants with bulbous root system a re very hard to kill with stuff like glyco and when you do the lawn still can not grow through it till the remaining bulbs decay & that can take several years.

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The other pictures are pictures of this very thing, fully grown. All it does is create a grass-looking bunch. No flowers. And it's super wide spread and getting more so every year. If I have to dig all these up, this is going to end up being more of a pain in the ass than the constant crabgrass battle.

In Georgia we have horticulturist assigned to every county. You can find them in the phone book under County Extension Agent. Bag a sample and send it to your agent. They'll ID it and tell you all about it.

Sometimes they'll even work from emailed photos.

You might need to have a long talk with a hortoculturist .
IF you grass is being invaided with weeds all the time then there is something wrong with your soil or the grass you are trying to grow or the way you are maintaining it .

l008com said:

I had a post about this last year but had no luck. I took some fresh pics as it's started growing already.

Location: Massachusetts

This weed/grass starts growing way before anything else. They grow in bunches that are very... firm. When you mow the lawn and the wheels run over clumps, they are like speed bumps. This stuff is spreading through my lawn and I fear that if I do nothing, a few more years and it will take over the entire yard. It is far too wide-spread to dig up by hand. It would take me weeks to dig it up. There has to be some other way I can kill this stuff.

Click to expand...

Looks like nutgrass to me. Roundup only top kills it and the underground bulbs gives it an early start next year. Image, Sedgehammer and other products will kill it but you should start by reading the labels as to timing and application instructions now so you can develop a plan of action. There is no overnight cure. Good luck with your project

l008com said:

I had a post about this last year but had no luck. I took some fresh pics as it's started growing already.

Location: Massachusetts

This weed/grass starts growing way before anything else. They grow in bunches that are very... firm. When you mow the lawn and the wheels run over clumps, they are like speed bumps. This stuff is spreading through my lawn and I fear that if I do nothing, a few more years and it will take over the entire yard. It is far too wide-spread to dig up by hand. It would take me weeks to dig it up. There has to be some other way I can kill this stuff.

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I believe what you have there is "False garlic". I have a lot of it. I haven't come up with any answers either. Anything with a waxy leaf is hard to kill. From what I have read it is a protected species. Google or check with your county agent.

Based on a 'false garlic' image search, that doesn't really look like what I have. It really looks like wild onion.

So the other day, I hit each bunch with some weed b gone, which is supposed to kill wild onion. Anything that survives, I might just hit with boiling water. I read that's a good way to kill lots of types of weeds without toxifying the soil, so I'm going to give that a try next. Hopefully, with luck, there won't be much left to pour the hot water on but we'll see.

About two weeks later and it's not going well. All that shit is still growing strong, NONE of it is dead. I'm going to have to dig it all up which is going to be it's own pain in the ass because it's so wide spread and I don't have any dirt to fill in the holes with yet.

Have you tried a propane weed torch?

Mow it down to ground level then as it start to grow again hit it with glyco phosphate which will deprive the plant of energy from photosynthesis .
Wait a couple of weeks and mow again .
Expect to be doing this all season.
Eventually the bulbs will have no energy store and will die off .
If you try to dig them out you will spread the problem unless you do it with a backhoe & send the soil to the tip.

Something else that can work is to make the soil very acid by adding Iron sulphate or make it very alkaline with lime water
builders lime is perfect if you can get it, but must go on as a milky solution
Try both and see which one has the best ( worst ) effect on the weed.
Plants require minerals to be either a cation or anion so if you change the pH the weed bulb will starve .
Other things that work well with bulbs is to saturate the soil then add some compost tea and cover with plastic.
This only works best on bad draining soils where the excessive water + the bacteria from the compost tea will cause the bulbs to rot .
You might need to water almost daily ( always in the morning ) so the soil is wet & hot all day .
Fresh chook poo also helps this process ( not processed poo as it has been steralized )

Tell all the teens in the neighborhood that it's good stuff to smoke.

It will be gone in 3 days. ?

Born2Mow said:

Tell all the teens in the neighborhood that it's good stuff to smoke.

It will be gone in 3 days. ?

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Previous owner was a legit pedophile it turns out so I'm not saying anything to any kids in the neighborhood

I did pour some boiling water on some bunches today and stuck flags in them, we'll see how that goes. I think it might actually work. I just hope enough heat got down there to kill the bulbs not just the greens.

If the water only killed all of the above ground portion of the plants, but did not cook the bulbs, will they still die or will the try to quickly grow more greens?

They will just keep on growing.
Rot is about the only thing that will kill off bulbs which is what I mentioned a few days ago .

Hammermechanicman said:

Have you tried a propane weed torch?

Flame King 500,000 BTU Propane Torch Kit Heavy Duty Weed Burner-PQ-5000T - The Home Depot

The Flame King 5000T Propane Torch Burner is perfect for many different uses, melting snow and ice, removing parking lot markings, paint removal, thawing frozen pipes and equipment, melting tar and asphalt,

www.homedepot.com

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This is what I was going to suggest but Hammermechanicman beat me to it. It ought to at least stunt their growth.

In the meantime, completely dig up a few. Fill the hole with good dirt and sow it to grass that grows well in your area and keep it watered. Good, thick grass crowds out a lot of weeds.

Don't get overwhelmed by the project. Do it one area at a time, first of all, to find out what works best, so you're not wasting time on methods that don't work.

Good luck! Our youngest daughter just bought a 5-acre place that half of the "lawn" part of it is covered with this stuff...and the other half is worse.

It looks like some sort of fungal lawn disease to me.

desertenthusiast said:

It looks like some sort of fungal lawn disease to me.

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Did you look at the photos? It looks nothing like that.