How to Get Rid of Dollar Weeds? | Root Cause Fixes

Killing dollarweed starts with drying out wet soil, then removing plants by hand or with a labeled post-emergent herbicide.

For the full breakdown, see our best Herbicide For Dollarweed guide.

Dollarweed shows up where your lawn stays soggy — low spots, sprinkler overlap, or soil that drains poorly. Spraying the weed without fixing the moisture is a temporary fix, and the plant usually returns. The working order is simple: cut the water, pull or treat what’s there, and keep the turf dry enough that it can’t come back.

Why Dollarweed Keeps Coming Back

Dollarweed (often called pennywort) is a sign of too much water, not a sign of a weak lawn. Its thin rhizomes travel through moist soil, and any root fragment left behind can sprout a new plant. That’s why one spray rarely ends the problem.

Clemson’s Home & Garden Information Center puts moisture reduction first on its control list. Until you fix the wet conditions, the plant has everything it needs to regrow from whatever you missed.

Controlling Dollarweed: The Order That Works

Work through these steps in order, and give each one time to work. Skipping the moisture fixes is the most common reason dollarweed survives.

Step 1: Stop Overwatering and Fix Drainage

Switch to deep, infrequent watering so the soil dries between sessions. Clemson recommends reviewing your irrigation schedule and monitoring soil moisture before anything else. Level low spots where water pools, and aerate compacted soil so water moves down instead of sitting on the surface.

Step 2: Pull Small Patches by Hand

For light infestations, hand-pulling works — but only if you get the whole plant. UF/IFAS Gardening Solutions notes that pulling only succeeds when you remove the white rhizomes along with the leaves. Work when the soil is moist but not soggy, and dig a few inches out from the center so the runners come up intact.

Step 3: Spot-Treat Larger Areas With a Labeled Herbicide

When dollarweed covers more ground than you can reasonably dig, a post-emergent herbicide is the practical route. Two things matter: the product must be labeled for dollarweed, and it must be safe for your specific turfgrass species. Using the wrong match can damage the lawn you’re trying to save.

For some lawns, products containing atrazine or trimec-type blends are also labeled options. Apply when dollarweed is actively growing — LSU recommends late spring — and expect to spray again at 12 to 14 day intervals if the label directs it.

Dollarweed Control Mistakes That Waste Your Effort

These are the errors that keep dollarweed coming back no matter how much you spray or pull.

• Pulling leaves and leaving roots. Without the rhizomes, the plant regrows from what’s left underground.
• Spraying without fixing the moisture problem. Wet soil is the plant’s home turf; it returns as fast as you remove it.
• Using the wrong herbicide for your grass. A product that kills dollarweed but damages your turf species is a net loss.
• Expecting one application to finish the job. LSU AgCenter says more than one treatment is usually needed.

Both will injure or kill any desirable grass and ornamentals they touch, making the problem worse than the weed itself. They’re only reasonable for tiny, isolated spots well away from plants you want to keep.

Keeping Dollarweed From Coming Back

Once the dollarweed is gone, the goal shifts to keeping the soil dry enough that it stays gone. That means sticking with deep, infrequent watering, correcting sprinkler coverage so you’re not flooding one zone while starving another, and filling low spots before they collect water.

Mississippi State Extension adds that proper irrigation, combined with periodic hand removal of new plants while they’re small, keeps infestations from rebuilding. A healthy, thick lawn also competes better — dollarweed establishes fastest in thin or bare patches where nothing else is growing.

If the same wet areas keep producing dollarweed year after year, the real fix is below ground: improving drainage in those spots rather than treating the weed again. Dollarweed is less a lawn problem than a soil problem with a green flag on top.