Last year dollarweed started taking over parts of my yard. I applied a weed control fertilizer. It killed almost everything but the dollarweed.

This year dollarweed has returned a hundredfold. The people I talk to do not know a cure. Can The Informer tell me something about dollarweed, and is there a way to control it?

An LSU AgCenter fact sheet posted online suggests homeowners combat dollarweed with “repeated applications of Weed Free Zone, Weed B Gon, Wipe Out, Atrazine, weed & feed with atrazine.”

But several sources The Informer checked noted that atrazine — a popular and potent herbicide — is best applied at certain times of the day and year. And they noted that herbicides alone seldom solve the problem.

Read the package instructions carefully, and call the AgCenter’s Calcasieu office at 475-8812 for more information.

Dollarweed, which is also called pennywort, thrives in wet and poorly drained areas, so reducing the level of moisture — either through improved drainage or less watering — may aid in your quest to halt the weed’s march across the lawn.

But the plant spreads through the use of rhizomes, underground stems that may prove resistant to all but the most fundamental of control measures — that is, pulling the plant out by hand.

For more information on herbicides, visit the LSU AgCenter’s website and download the 2013 Suggested Chemical Weed Management Guide.

Click “Management Guides” under the “Publications” tab at the top right of the home page, LSUAgCenter.com.

Church considers Peter first pope

Can you give me the names of the first pope all the way down to the new pope?

Unfortunately, no.

The list — at 266 names — is much too long for this space.

But The Informer will note that Catholics consider St. Peter to be the first pope and provide a list of all the popes from the beginning of the 19th century to today:

Pius VII, 1800-1823

Leo XII, 1823-1829

Pius VIII, 1829-1830

Gregory XVI, 1831-1846

Pius IX, 1846-1878

Leo XIII, 1878-1903

Pius X, 1903-1914

Benedict XV, 1914-1922

Pius XI, 1922-1939

Pius XII, 1939-1958

John XXIII, 1958-1963

Paul VI, 1963-1978

John Paul I, 1978

John Paul II, 1978-2005

Benedict XVI, 2005-2013

Francis, 2013-present

Online: www.vatican.va.

The Informer answers questions from readers each Sunday, Monday and Wednesday. It is researched and written by Andrew Perzo, an American Press staff writer. To ask a question, call 494-4098, press 5 and leave voice mail, or email informer@americanpress.com

(Special to the American Press)