The Wicked Weed

Jack Paar and Garry Moore entertained nighttime audiences with prattle of their ineffective battle against it. Cartoonists drew scientists discovering that it was the green layer observed on Mars. In grocery stores, on commuter trains and over back fences throughout the South, East and Midwest, it was a gripping topic of conversation. Subject of all the excitement: Digitaria sanguinalis, better known to the frustrated suburban lawnkeeper as crab grass. In 1959 the wiry, octopus-like weed and its pesky cousins have had a vintage year--and so have the gardening and seed companies that help the homeowner in his never-ending battle against it.

Last week, like pennant losers looking forward to next year, homeowners across the U.S. besieged garden stores for poison to kill off this year's waning crab grass, spades and shovels to dig it out of their lawns, sturdy seed to protect them against its ravages again in the spring. In Chicago, Vaughan's Seed Co. estimated that its 1959 lawn chemical sales are running 50% ahead of last year. In Marysville. Ohio, O. M. Scott & Sons, biggest U.S. lawn supply house, looked forward to a $30 million year, up $6,600,000 over record 1958. Said a Scott salesman: "We're almost embarrassed. If we ordered the weather, it couldn't be better for our business."

The weather that brought on this year's onslaught of crab grass was a mixture of wet, cold spring and hot, humid summer. a combination that weakens perennial grasses and strengthens the hardy weed. In Suburbia, where crab grass on a lawn can lower a man's status faster than a garbage can in his foyer, the prolific (up to 50,000 seeds a plant) weed has become a neighborhood problem, like juvenile delinquency; if not snuffed out in one spot. it quickly spreads to another. Yet it is almost impossible to stop: digging only exposes more seeds, poison is often ineffective or kills other grasses, mowing only conditions crab grass to produce its seeds closer to the ground.

Garden experts suggest applying regular doses of poison and keeping eternal vigilance, or gently pulling crab grass out by the roots. They are putting their hopes in new, specialized chemicals that have been developed to combat the weed. Many a homeowner has found the most comfortable way to beat crab grass is to join it. Says Washington Building Manager Mrs. Adeline Watson: "I'm sick of fighting. I decided to grow just crab grass. We've had wonderful luck with it.'' Trouble is that crab grass turns brown at the first frost. But Chicago's National Chemical & Manufacturing Co. has found one answer for that problem: Luminall Lawn Tint, a green paint that can be used to spray over all those brown spots.

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