Last updated on October 23rd, 2023 at 08:53 pm
In your garden you want it to be as neat as possible. You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to spread the lawn and sow the plants.
With horror, you realize how yellow flowers are rising up and appearing both in the lawn and between paving slabs. The dandelion may be beautiful to look at, but in the garden it is considered a weed. It spreads at lightning speed and crowds out the actual predominant plants.
How can you effectively remove the dandelion and what work is involved? Also learn if there are chemical products that help against the dandelion.
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Why are dandelions considered a weed?
In your garden, you spend a lot of time maintaining the lawn and creating optimal growing conditions. You want to have a great harvest at the end of the season and get the fruits of your labor.
The dandelion could throw a wrench in these plans. Because even though this one comes across as relatively inconspicuous, it poses a major threat.
One characteristic of dandelions is that they have a very long taproot. To remove dandelions, you must also pull the long root out of the ground. Otherwise, the weed will keep coming back and crowd out the plants you actually want in your garden.
Dandelion is also known to spread quickly. It produces a high number of seeds that are easily blown away by the wind. Once dandelions have taken up residence in your home, they will quickly spread and become a real nuisance.
In the garden, the dandelion is considered undemanding. It grows well even in less than ideal soil. There it displaces weakened plants and takes their place. If your soil in the garden is of poor quality, you should be especially careful. Then the dandelion has an easy game to spread over the entire area.
Once found in the garden, the dandelion proliferates and leads to bare patches in the lawn or the bed. Therefore, you should control it early and prevent it from spreading further.
When is the best time to remove the dandelion?
The best time to remove dandelions is after you have discovered the plant. This means that you should not hesitate, but immediately start working to remove the weed from the lawn and garden.
With various immediate measures, you can stop the growth and buy yourself time to think about how to proceed. Important to the spread of the dandelion are the yellow flowers. Over time, these develop into dandelions and the seeds are carried away with ease.
Therefore, the first step is to mow the lawn. By doing this, you will shorten the dandelion and the seeds will not be able to mature. However, the roots are still in the ground, so you have some work ahead of you.
Do not hesitate with fighting, but start immediately. At the latest, when the yellow flowers look like signals, it is high time to remove the dandelion.
Remove the dandelion with a weed cutter
A natural and at the same time effective way to remove the dandelion is to cut it out manually. Common weed cutters are well suited for this purpose. Take a model with a longer handle, so that the load on the back is reduced.
It is important that when you cut out the weeds, you also remove the root from the soil. If you are too careless, the root will remain in the soil and the dandelion will grow back after a short time.
So there is a lot of work waiting for you when you cut out the dandelions by hand. With modern equipment, the effort is kept within limits. A longer handle and a suitable grip ensure that the weeds are pulled out of the ground in a single movement. Thus, even for people who suffer from knee problems, the use of a weeder is not a problem.
Joint cleaner
It gets a little more difficult when the dandelion gets stuck between sidewalk tiles and has found its new home in narrow joints. You would not be able to penetrate deep enough with a conventional weeding tool to remove the root as well.
There are a variety of joint cleaners available for this application. The electric ones are designed to get into the gaps with a high speed and a thin brush.
However, these devices do not ensure that the root is also removed. Therefore, play it safe and lend a hand again with a joint scraper to combat the dandelion completely. Here, too, there are variants that are equipped with a long handle. This reduces the strain on your knees and back, making the job much easier.
Do without vinegar and salt
The previous methods of removing the dandelion involved some effort. It seems easier to just sprinkle salt and vinegar on the sidewalks, so that the weeds do not spread in the joints.
Salt and vinegar are considered popular home remedies to get rid of weeds of all kinds. It proves to be effective, but has a great harmful effect on the environment.
The agents penetrate into the soil and cause lasting damage. For this reason, it is even prohibited nationwide to apply salt and vinegar on sealed surfaces. This means you are not allowed to treat your driveway or sidewalk slabs this way.
Vinegar and salt disrupt the fine balance of microorganisms in the sewage treatment plant. These die off and thus it becomes much more difficult to filter pollutants out of the water.
Therefore, do not use this method and think about the environmental impact when removing dandelions.
Nettle – an effective home remedy
You do not have to completely abandon home remedies in the fight against dandelions. Nettle is not only considered a home remedy against aphids. This plant also proves effective against weeds, and it is worth at least a try to use it to destroy the dandelion.
First, you need to gather a larger amount of the nettle. Then crush the nettle and store it in a suitable container. This must not be made of metal, as the fermentation process would be disturbed.
Fill the container with water and place it in the sun for two weeks. With occasional stirring, a brew develops that not only has a strong smell, but also a high efficiency.
Dilute the slurry with water. A ratio of 1:10 is considered appropriate to destroy the dandelion. Spray the liquid manure on the plant so that it literally burns. The dandelion will die and hopefully the effect will transfer to the root.
This will give a better effect than using an electric weed killer. This has a great thermal effect, but the deep-seated root usually remains intact, so the application is not very effective.
Permanently remove the dandelion
If weeds are not welcome in your garden, you should act quickly at the sight of the dandelion. It proves to be hardy and with its long root, removal requires more effort.
If you attack the problem directly at the root, you will be adequately equipped with a weed cutter. Then you can permanently remove the dandelion from the depth and prevent it from spreading in the garden again in the future.