How to Kill Dandelions

Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) are some of the most common yet tenacious of garden weeds. They happily dot your carefully tended lawn, pop up among your prize flowers and try to wrangle your vegetables out of their spaces. Here are some tips on how to get rid of dandelions.

Instructions

1. 

   Difficult to eradicate due to the long tap root, the dandelion can grow back even when you think you've killed it. The trick of removing a dandelion plant is to make sure you have no living root remaining.

2. You can use a choice of herbicides, natural weed-killing methods, or the good old fashioned manual way of digging out dandelions by hand. The two safest ways are organic and are done by hand. You can dig your dandelion out making sure you don't leave any root behind, or you can continually pull leaves (and buds before flowering) from the plant. Leaves make food for the plant so if you regularly remove those leaves, the root will eventually starve and dwindle away.

3. Using herbicides can work if done carefully. Follow all directions since herbicides are poisons. You may have to re-treat.

4. You can also burn, boil or chop out dandelions with special tools or by hand. Most of the tools are fun gadgets and work well, but you will have to spend some money for them. Pouring boiling water or burning dandelions can be effective. But due to the deep tap root, you will have to repeat the action over and over until the root is starved, creating the same result as pulling off the leaves manually.

5. 

   There are actually some redeeming qualities about the dandelion. Not only does the dandelion have a pretty flower, but the young leaves can be used in fresh salads and are extremely high in vitamins and minerals. A tasty and nourishing coffee substitute can be made from the dandelion root. The dandelion is famous for its whimsical seed heads with tiny seeds attached to fluffy parachutes, often used for making wishes. Of course, each time you blow on a dandelion seed head to make a wish, you are sending out lots of new dandelion seeds to insinuate themselves in gardens and lawns where other people will have to work to get rid of them!

6. For more information on gardening and how to kill dandelions, please see the links listed below under Resources.

Resources

• About dandelions
• Garden and landscape design information
• Dandelions for good health
• eHow Spring Guide