(Taraxacum officinale)
You know this pretty little face don’t you? Staring up at you with it’s bright golden feathery petals gleaming in the sun. It is a pretty little flower in it’s own way. Almost…dandy. But its pretty exterior hides how fierce this weed really is. It spreads fast if not contained.
This little flower from the Asteraceae family will spread like wildfire among the soft green blades of your luscious lawn. It is a difficult plant to fight. Sure you can use chemicals on it, but there are other ways of fighting the dandelions.
I’ve used boiling water on individual weeds and it works great. The only drawback is that you can only bring a little with you at a time then you have to go boil some more. If you have a teapot you have a ready made weed killing machine. Just boil your water and pour it over the base of the weeds that are bothering you. It may take a couple treatments to kill the weed but the advantage is that no chemicals are being used.
Another option would be to use a high concentration of vinegar. It will raise the acidity of the soil so be careful that you don’t over do it.
One other way would be to physically remove the diabolical dandelion from the ground. This may require some digging since the dandelion is very attached to its home. Dandelions send down a deep taproot that can be hard to remove. If you leave even a small amount of the tap root it will regrow to haunt you another day. That’s why I like the boiling water method. The water gets down to the taproot and you don’t have to dig!
In the above picture you can see the dandelion about to break into it’s seed distribution mode. If you see a dandelion in this stage or earlier and don’t want more of them then pluck it and dispose of it. Also the more flowers you remove from the dandelion the more energy it wastes producing more seed which eventually may extinguish the plant.
When they get to this stage you can expect to see more in your future. The seeds have little cotton like hairy appendages called pappus that will catch the wind (or a child blowing them) to help the seeds travel to a new home. The good news is that many of its parts are edible. The new growth of the foliage can be eaten in salads and some people make Dandelion wine from the flowers. Perhaps the most organic way to get rid of dandelions would be to eat them out of your garden!
Discover more from Growing The Home Garden
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Dave if you have one of the turkey fryes that are so popular now you can boil a large amount of water in it. Fill it up and put it on high and the water will be boiling almost as quick as a little ole teapot will boil. I know as I have done it.
Dave,
I loved the post title and the post…
Vinegar is all purpose, kills, revives, cleans,
Gail
i dig mine out with a fishhook. i thought i had gotten most-NOT! back to the garden. glad you talked about these things.
Around here you’d have to crawl to get them all as bending would kill your back, up, down, up, down. I’m sure you get the pic. They are pretty little flowers though. Isn’t that the first flower a little boy brings to his mommy? Or a great,grandson perhaps.
how do you and frances get such nice pictures?
Jean,
That’s a great idea. Too bad I don’t have a fryer. A large pot on the stove would work also, it would just take longer.
Gail,
Thanks. 🙂 You’re right vinegar does wonders. I like what it does with ketchup too!
Tina,
You can’t leave anything it seems. They just keep coming back if you do. I left out that some people used to make a coffee from the ground roots.
Lola,
It could be the first flower. I know I wouldn’t care if kids came to my yard to pick them all up. I was thinking of going out with my daughter to hunt the lions. Just for fun and to maybe get rid of those flower heads before they seed!
Tina,
I don’t really have any special tricks to what I do with the camera but here’s what I do.
I use an older Olympus digital camera. 3.2 megapixels with only a 3x optical zoom. I try to only use the optical zoom. The camera I hope to get eventually will have about an 18x optical. Lighting is very important. Overcast days seem to take good pictures. Our camera needs to be pushed halfway to focus then pushed the rest of the way to snap the picture. I find that turning the flash off gets better pictures usually. Thanks for the compliment!
Thanks Dave,
I have a Kodak easyshare vintage 2004 with 3 megapixels too. I am longing for a new camera-some day. I will try your technique but the focus part is not a feature on my camera. I have trouble with up close shots.
Well, if anyone would like to make dandelion wine you are welcome to come to my house…I have plenty of the little buggers. I am going to have to try the boiling water method, but with all I have in my yard it will probably take the whole year just to get rid of them. Of course, that comes from doing nothing for 2 years.