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A spot herbicide for weed control is effective at killing crabgrass and not grass, but it depends on the type of herbicide. Always check the label to ensure that your herbicide is safe for grass but tough on crabgrass. Overall, spot treatment is ideal because it puts fewer herbicides into the soil, which can damage the soil. If you’re wanting a natural remedy to crabgrass that also won’t harm surrounding grass, you can also hand-remove crabgrass or even pour boiling water or 5% vinegar over crabgrass as a spot treatment.

Ultimately, pulling weeds vs. spraying them depends on what’s happening in your yard and your personal preferences. Manual weed removal doesn’t introduce any chemicals into your landscape, targets specific problematic plants, produces immediate results, can be free if you go the DIY route, and is inexpensive with a weed service if you only have a handful of weeds. On the other hand, spraying is often preferable for severe weed infestations and situations involving difficult-to-pull weeds because it treats multiple weeds at once, is usually more effective long-term, is less time-consuming, and costs less when done by a pro.

No, definitely not. Pulling weeds by hand is the single most effective way to remove them because you're eliminating the entire plant—roots and all—so it won’t have a chance to grow or spread. Setting time aside a few times per week to pull weeds can keep them at bay. If the number of weeds gets overwhelming, then you can resort to other methods.

Herbicides containing a combination of the active chemical ingredients dicamba, fluroxpyr, and quinclorac are most effective at purging your turf of white clover. However, for small home lawns, organic prevention and control can be very effective methods for killing clover weeds and save you from using harmful pesticides that might damage your lawn.