How Monsoon Season is Affecting Weed Growth in Arizona HOA Communities

Have you noticed more weeds than usual cropping up throughout your HOA community landscape recently? Weeds can quickly get out of control in the Arizona Monsoon season, which lasts from June 15th all the way until September 20th! This increased growth is primarily due to the heavy rain and high winds that this season brings. These extreme climate changes affect your Arizona landscape in a number of ways when it comes to promoting weed growth- mostly by washing down pre-emergent chemicals past their effective depth, preventing them from helping to control germinating weeds while encouraging the spread of seed throughout the property. In fact, monsoons provide the perfect environment for quick and out-of-control weed growth, making it especially important to invest in weed management and maintenance during this time.

Weeds are maintained with pre-emergent (weed prevention) and post-emergent (weed control) chemicals. Pre-emergent chemicals are typically sprayed in liquid form onto the soil to make a barrier, preventing the growth of weeds in that area without causing harm or death to the surrounding plant material. This application works best if done about every six months in order to help prevent weeds from growing into the turf and landscaped areas and can be followed with post-emergent for those few weeds that do crop up.

Due to the monsoons creating more rain than normal and the intense winds blowing soil/dust around your Arizona landscape, pre-emergent chemicals have a hard time staying saturated in the soil. Heavy rains can wash away the chemicals and high winds blow the seed throughout the property, giving weeds the perfect opportunity to flourish. These storms also make it hard to keep up with maintenance as they flood the landscape and appear consistently, leaving little time for the landscape to dry off and new, weed-preventing chemicals to be applied. Because of this, post-emergent may be necessary to use as a measure to control the increase in new weed growth.

During this season, it is a good idea to work with a professional landscape company to strategize a plan for weed prevention and control. Professional landscapers will be more aware of where to put the most attention in a large HOA landscape and they also can create a timeline for pre-emergent and post-emergent applications to ensure you are getting the best use out of each application. It is a great time to invest in prevention now, keeping your landscape from suffering the consequences later!

Reach out to our team here at ELS Maintenance today for a quote on commercial landscape maintenance and enhancements!