# Hydrogen Peroxide for crabgrass?



## freightguy (Aug 28, 2018)

So I was reading an article on Farmer Almanac. Was scrolling thru the weed section. Them comes up crabgrass.

The article

" A mixture of 1 pint of hydrogen peroxide, diluted to 3 percent, per 100 square feet of lawn can help eradicate the pesky plant."

This is what the article said to do. I thought it was weird. But interesting. Did some other research online. Not alot out there except for using it in gardens for pest control.

Anyone use hydrogen peroxide for crabgrass control?


----------



## ken-n-nancy (Jul 25, 2017)

Interesting. I've never tried it.

It has a lot of appeal, in that the environmental impact of hydrogen peroxide would be nearly 0, as it simply degrades pretty quickly into water and oxygen. Even the EPA considers it basically harmless as a pesticide: https://www3.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/reg_actions/registration/fs_PC-000595_30-Jan-02.pdf

I'd have a couple questions:

1 - Is the 3% hydrogen peroxide a selective herbicide? In other words, can it kill the crabgrass without affecting the desired grass? I would presume that it would also kill desirable grasses, but don't actually know. If it kills all vegetation, it's essentially a replacement for glyphosate.

2- Even if it does turn out to be selective for crabgrass, how does it compare from cost effectiveness to other crabgrass post-emergent controls? A 32-oz bottle of 3% hydrogen peroxide costs $0.88 at Walmart. One 32-oz bottle would treat 200sqft, so one would need 5 bottles to treat 1ksqft = $4.40/ksqft. Just as a comparison, Tenacity, for which most lawn enthusiasts initially balk at the price ($60 for a little 8 oz bottle) is used at 4oz/acre for crabgrass. So, that $60 bottle treats 2 acres =~ 87ksqft. That's a price per ksqft of $60/87 = $0.69 per ksqft. In other words, using hydrogen peroxide for crabgrass control would be $4.40/ksqft while Tenacity is $0.69/ksqft, which means that hydrogen peroxide would be over 6 times more expensive than Tenacity!


----------



## Ridgerunner (May 16, 2017)

I don't believe hydrogen peroxide will have any detrimental effect to any plant. I've read some articles years ago where hydrogen peroxide applications were recommended to counteract the lack of oxygen in anaerobic soils (e.g. black layer).


----------

