Dandelions

Anacrusis

I dig mine up and give them to my guinea pigs, they love them! I'm forever digging them up but they just keep on growing...

angelavdavis

Pour cheap table salt into the centre of them - they curl up and die! I remove the flower buds beforehand to stop them sending out a last minute attempt at spreading themselves.

miltonskeen

Alternative to table salt... Road grit. Kills everything! Brilliant at supressing weeds in chippings etc but it's corrosive as hell!

gazza975526570

angelavdavis wrote: »

Pour cheap table salt into the centre of them - they curl up and die! I remove the flower buds beforehand to stop them sending out a last minute attempt at spreading themselves.

Be carefull with this method and dont apply too much salt otherwise you will get a patchy lawn

Patchwork_Quilt

Just keep mowing. They are green, after all

Jesthar

Best way to keep them from spreading is to try and go out every day and pull any flower heads off you see. If you do that and also dig up any you reasonably can, you'll reduce the problem substantially year by year. Yes, it's a pain, but if motivation is a problem I find renaming them after a person is annoying you at the moment is both motivational and thereputic ("Right, I'm just going to go pull the heads of the Blairs" )

Throw the flower heads in the household rubbish, though, not on the compost heap or other green recycling thing, as they'll turn to seed anyway after being picked.

Table salt will off them OK, but be careful you don't poison the soil around the weed too - salt is indiscriminate, and can render ground infertile for a fair while in large enough quantities. You'd need a fair bit to do any serious damage, though.

I believe there used to be advice bandied around about making paste you could paint on from concentrate glyphosate weedkillers, or you could buy commercial gels and pastes, but the EU have banned such things and such advice now according to google...

~Jes

Davesnave

Jesthar wrote: »

I believe there used to be advice bandied around about making paste you could paint on from concentrate glyphosate weedkillers, or you could buy commercial gels and pastes, but the EU have banned such things and such advice now according to google...

~Jes

Not entirely, they haven't! :cool:

Mix a strong glyphosate solution with a bit of wallpaper paste, add some red food dye and paint the resulting gel onto the dandelion's middle bit with a small paintbrush. The red dye simply shows you which ones you've done.

Also paint the solution on anyone who tells you, "Oi, the EU says you can't do that, mate!"

It will take a good few days to work, but it will. Put sand in the holes left by the rotted roots, or leave them for miner bees (see other thread.)

tanith

Normal lawn weed and feeds won't see off Dandelions lots of good advice here but as others have said if you don't remove the WHOLE ROOT they dang things just grow back... I've never tried the salt thing so I think the ones in my driveway better watch out today....

Lotus-eater

If you can't get rid of them, it may be good to remember that dandelions are very important to bees and we all know bees are in trouble and presumeably if you are on this forum, you are some kind of a gardener, or care about nature, therefore you probably want to have some dandelions.

renegade

sharloid wrote: »

I'm making dandelion syrup as we speak! It's nicer than honey.

Sounds good could you supply the recipe please?