Controlling and Killing Dandelions

Wondering how to get rid of dandelions? Want to kill those rouge dandelions infesting your pristine lawn today? Let the lawn care guide help you in your quest for the best looking lawn.

Dandelions are some of the toughest weeds to control because of two main factors.

1. Kids love to pick them up and blow 100’s of seeds into your grass.

The wind will pick these seeds up and carry them across your neighborhood infesting everyone with their share of dandelions. It won’t take long for these seeds to propagate and the cycle to start over.

2. A 10″ taproot.

That’s right. The majority of those seeds will find their way to fertile soil and sprout a 10″ taproot. If you try pulling this taproot it will likely fracture leaving just enough in the ground to regenerate another pesky dandelion.

So now that you know a little about the dandelion lets talk about the best ways to control and kill them.

Control Dandelions by Pulling Them

As I mentioned you’ve got to pull a 10″ taproot in order to get rid of the dandelion forever. If it ends up fracturing you can expect to see it again in a few weeks. There are several special tools available for getting at the tap root to essentially loosen up the soil to ensure the taproot comes out cleanly. If you’re looking for a step by step on pulling your dandelions check this out:

• Attempt to pull your dandelions after a good hardy rain or heavy watering. This will facilitate loosening up the soil around the taproot and make it much easier to get the entire taproot out.
• Using a knife, screwdriver, or fancy dandelion pulling tool make a small incision next to the base of the dandelion.
• Wiggle your chosen tool around to loosen the soil.
• Ruffle up all the leaves around the dandelion and use them as a handle. Apply even pressure, wiggling the dandelion. If its not moving use your tool to loosen up the soil a bit more. Eventually, the dandelion and its taproot will come out cleanly.

Killing Dandelions with Herbicides

If you’re lawn is riddled with dandelions and pulling them isn’t an option you’re interested in you better consider a herbicide before they really get out of control. Killing dandelions is only going to get more difficult, if you don’t get control of them.

Fortunately dandelions are a broad leaf weed and there are some really easy herbicide solutions like Weed-B-Gone. Weed-B-Gone will not only take out dandelions but any broad leaf weeds you may have. Depending on the number of weeds you have you can spot treat or use a hose attachment to cover large areas.

If you’re looking for a natural alternative to herbicides, you might consider vinegar. The acetic acid in vinegar is what kills the dandelions or other broad leaf weeds. The problem is you may need to boil the vinegar down to make it potent enough to actually kill the weeds. It may also pay to shop around as different vinegars have different levels of acetic acid, so read the label.

The last herbicidal solution is roundup. Roundup and vinegar will kill anything it touches so be careful not to get it on surrounding grass or garden plants. The Weed-B-Gone is selective only targeting broad leaf weeds and is the most popular choice when killing dandelions in your lawn.

Dandelion Prevention - The Ultimate Dandelion Control

The healthier your lawn, the less weeds you’ll have. If you’re already in a situation where you have dandelions in your lawn, apply your selected method to kill the dandelions. Apply your herbicide a 3 days before you plan on mow your lawn. The bigger the dandelion the better, so the surface area is maximized.  The 3 days gives it plenty of time to get the herbicide into the root system to guarantee you’ll never see it again.

Once you get rid of your dandelions and you want to keep them from coming back next year, apply a broad leaf weed control in the early fall. Normally dandelions die back during this time and all the nutrients in their leaves are transfered to their root system. Remember this is not only good for dandelions but all broad leaf weeds, so it really helps even if you don’t have a weed problem today.

Watering Bermuda Grass

Keeping your lawn healthy and green requires some amount of water. Whether that comes from mother nature or an irrigation system is irrelevant. Of coarse we’d all agree we’d like mother nature to take care of watering our bermuda grass, but it just doesn’t work out that way sometimes. Although when it’s thirsty it’s blades will bow a bit. It’s subtle but if you’re looking for it, you can easily spot a bermuda lawn in need of some moisture.
Bermuda grass is one of the more drought tolerate types of grass. If you want to give you grass an even better chance during the next drought than consider only watering once a week.

Watering bermuda grass once a week will force the roots of the grass to dig deeper as the water supply is dried up during the week. The deeper the roots the more likely you are to have a greener healthier lawn during the next drought. Watering once a week isn’t suffiecient if you’re not getting enough water down that one day a week.

In general you’ll want to water to a depth of about 6″. Like we said earlier this will encourage deep root growth which will protect it from the heat, cold, and the next drought. A quick test you can do to ensure you’ve watered to the right depth is to stick a screw driver into the ground. If you can sink it easily about 6″ in the ground you’re there, otherwise you need to put a couple hundred more gallons of water on your bermuda grass.

It’s important that when you’re watering that you don’t allow water to run off your lawn. If you’ve got water run off problems you’ll want to only water until the water start running off, and then move to another zone. If you didn’t get to the 6″ mark you’ll need to come back to that zone after your new zone starts running off.

Pond and Lake Weed Killers

There are a variety of products that are available to control weeds in ponds and lakes. The specific type of pond weed killer or lake weed killer depends on the types of weeds that are growing as well as the size of the pond or lake. Different products are generally recommended for plants that are growing beneath the water as opposed to those that are growing on top of the water.

The critical determinant of which pond weed killer to use is the type of weed that is the target. One of the more common surface pond weeds is duckweed. Duckweed exists on the surface of a pond and is characterized by very small leaves that measure no larger than ¼ inch. If duckweed gets out of control, it is likely to cover an entire small pond and it can cut off the oxygen supply for any fish that exist in the small pond and result in death for these and other aquatic creatures. While raking of the pond is an option, a pond weed killer may be necessary to control this weed. There are several pond weed killers which when used according to directions are relatively safe. These herbicides act as very effective pond weed killer or lake weed killers and generally pose no extended risk to the environment if used properly.

Two other common surface pond weeds are mosquito fern and watermeal. As with the duckweed these possess very small leaves. Watermeal is the smallest seed-bearing plant in the world and is characterized by leaves that are less that 1/16 inch in size. Mosquito fern bears leaves that are no larger than one inch and the color may vary from green to red. These plants often co-exist with each other and with duckweed. A pond weed killer will effectively rid a small pond of these weeds.

There are a number of weeds that exist in ponds below the surface. Two relatively common weeds are American pond weed and baby pond weed. American pond weed has several leaves on a stem that are about 3-6 inches long. It grows from the bottom of a pond and these leaves can be present on the surface of the pond as well as below. Baby pond weed is a wiry plant that exists below the surface. It is green and has the appearance of tangled string when pulled up. Again a pond weed killer or lake weed killer will be effective in the control of this pond weed.

A critical element to bear in mind when using pond weed killers or lake weed killers is to accurately determine the volume of the water to be treated. Careful measurement is a must when using a pond weed killer to protect the environment while ridding the pond or lake of these weeds.