How to get rid of dandelions in your garden quickly and easily
Perennial weeds sprouting from seeds make life difficult for all summer residents. How to get rid of dandelions on the site, forever making it easier to work in the beds and the development of cultivated plants?
There are several ways to deal with intruders, including:
- folk remedies;
- chemicals that inhibit or completely stop the growth of the weed;
- regular digging and weeding of vegetable gardens and flower beds;
- using special dandelion root removers.
Growing on roadsides, on city lawns and wastelands, that is, everywhere, dandelion is a rhizome perennial with a powerful underground part and a root rosette of green lanceolate leaves, which are one of the first to appear from under the snow and disappear only with the arrival of winter.
The danger of a dandelion as a weed lies in its easy dispersal and rapid seizure of territory.
The first flowering occurs in mid-spring, then the plant can bloom up to 2-3 times, scattering hundreds of seeds in the vicinity on light flying umbrellas. Dandelions are very tenacious, they sprout well, take root in the most unfavorable conditions. But to remove the plant because of its branched strong rhizome is not easy.
How to deal with dandelions in the garden, in garden beds and lawn? The choice of method depends on where the weeds have settled, and how many of them.
Dandelion control in the garden
If there are few dandelions, you can do a lot in the simplest ways. Compliance with agricultural techniques is one of the surest ways to deal with dandelions:
- The beds that are to be sown or planted with cultivated plants must be dug deeply, along the way choosing weeds up to small fragments of rhizomes.
- The emerging shoots are weeded out, the soil is regularly loosened so that the seeds falling into the ground cannot hatch and take root.
Clean land in garden beds risks becoming covered with a carpet of dandelions again, if you ignore the aisles and garden paths. Due to the density of the soil, weeds on them are difficult to weed out, but weaken them with a hoe, hoe or flat cutter is quite real. If you process risk areas without waiting for flowering, dandelions do not multiply, and the existing plants quickly weaken.
In the fall, the beds are dug up again. The same is done with tree-trunk circles under fruit trees and shrubs, perennial ornamental crops, as well as with flower beds, on which annuals were fragrant in summer.
How to deal with dandelions on the lawn with folk remedies
Perennial sod on the lawn or in the garden cannot be dug up; manual weeding is also ineffective here.
An attempt to manually remove the weed will inevitably lead to a breakage of the rhizome, which will soon begin to recover, or damage to cultivated plants in the vicinity.
How to permanently get rid of dandelions on the site if the shovel and the hoe are out of work? There are several simple folk ways. To remove dandelions, use:
- table salt;
- boiling water;
- vinegar essence.
Aggressive compounds hitting the base of the rhizome kill the growth point, lead to the suppression of the weed and its death. The salt is used dry or in the form of a concentrated solution. In all cases, the means of control:
- act directly on the selected instance;
- do not affect the vegetation nearby;
- do not change soil fertility.
In addition to the positive aspects, the use of folk methods of struggle has disadvantages. On large specimens, the root system of which can reach 20-30 cm in length, household products do not work too much.
Controlling dandelions with a root remover
It is much more difficult to deal with dandelions than in the garden:
- on lawns;
- if on flower beds almost the entire area is occupied by overgrown perennials;
- the ground in the garden is under turf.
Here comes in handy a spotting dandelion remover so you don't seriously damage the turf, or targeted herbicides or folk remedies.
On lawns and other areas with perennial sod, root removers of all kinds of structures provide real help.
The sharpened edge of the tool easily penetrates even through the turf layer, cuts the soil around the rhizome and easily removes the plant along with the underground part. The holes left on the lawn after the dandelion remedy are small and quickly overgrow, especially if they are filled up and the area is watered abundantly.
Do the same in the garden. The root remover saves on flower beds with densely growing perennials.
The use of herbicides: how to deal with dandelions in the country
Before you use herbicides to control dandelions in your lawn and garden, you need to make sure that your crops and lawn crops are not damaged by the chemicals.
Weeding by hand or using mechanical aids is laborious and time-consuming. Another thing is the use of modern chemical compounds that suppress weeds. Herbicides are indispensable if dandelions have filled the area, and it is simply impossible to cope with them manually.
The range of drugs available that are suitable for dealing with dandelions in the garden include drugs:
- killing all types of green plants on which the sprayed liquid falls;
- selective action, destroying only cereals or rhizome weeds.
Broad-acting products, for example, Roundup, Tornado, Agrokiller and other drugs, will rid the garden not only of dandelions, but also of wheatgrass, sow thistle and other annoying plants, which can be extremely problematic to remove in other ways. However, these herbicides do not end immediately after spraying. For several more weeks, the composition oppresses everything that grows in the neighborhood. This also applies to seedlings and seedlings planted in the beds. Therefore, large-scale chemical weeding is carried out:
- having covered in advance the cultural plantings and the soil under them;
- early spring, long before planting vegetables, flowers or other useful plants;
- in the fall, when everything useful is removed from the beds.
Broad-spectrum herbicides that destroy all vegetation are used in wastelands, for example, after the purchase of a new site.
Specialized teams act selectively. But when purchasing this or that remedy, you need to remember that a chemical for wheatgrass does not necessarily help get rid of dandelions, but it can kill lawn grass.
Before getting rid of dandelions on the site forever, you need to choose the most useful drug, read the instructions and follow it without exceeding the permitted dosages.
You can destroy dandelions in the beds with potatoes, garden strawberries or on the front lawn using the herbicide Lontrel-300D, which also suppresses the growth of sow thistle, perennial sorrel and other weeds.Especially for lawns, formulations have been developed that do not affect the growth of cereals, but in a few hours suppress the development of dandelions, meadow chamomile, plantain, buttercup and sow thistle.
When using chemicals, use personal protective equipment and, until the solution dries, keep the treated area away from pets and family members.
Herbicides kill the aerial part of the dandelion and its rhizomes, but cannot affect the seeds. Therefore, it is important to carry out all treatments before the weed fades, and flying seeds ripen on the heads. Plants torn from the ground are put into compost, sprinkled with soil, since the seeds can ripen here too.
How to deal with dandelions in the country if it was not possible to prevent the dispersal of dandelions? In this case, you will have to remember about regular weeding. Picking of dandelion seeds begins as soon as the soil warms up to 10-15 degrees. As long as the seedlings are small and the roots are weak, manually removing the dandelions is not difficult. In the future, loosening the beds will help.
Mulching or the use of a film that covers the entire area of the ridges, except for the planting sites of tomatoes, zucchini or other useful crops, helps to significantly reduce the population of weeds. This solution will be especially useful when growing strawberries.