Now that we can identify these two plants, the question of control often comes up. Henbit is usually pretty easy to control with a combination postemergence product containing dicamba. One can also control henbit by applying pendimethalin in the fall or very early spring. I generally have only a few of these plants growing in my lawn and flower beds and find that pulling them is the easiest control method. Ground ivy on the other hand, is a very hard to control weed no matter what kind of control strategy is used.
Hand pulling is a never-ending event because the prostrate stem easily breaks at each rooted joint.
One also has to be careful where you discard the plants that have been uprooted. The plants or plant segments can easily reroot in the new location that you have thrown them. Preemergence herbicides will not control a perennial, which leaves us with postemergence control. The most effective postemergence application has contained a combination of at least two broadleaf herbicides. However, even this application will need to be repeated a couple of times at 10- 14 day intervals for complete control.