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"Martin Brown" wrote in message
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H Ryder wrote:
I'd ideally love to have a lawn sprinkled with daisies but without great
lumps of other lawn weeds such as dandelions. At teh moment my lawn has
plenty of daisies but is also so full of dandelions that teh grass is
struggling to compete (we also have a lot of clover which I do not
mind).
Any suggestions as to how to eradicate (or at least cut down) the
dandelions? There are too many and the lawn is too big for hand weeding.
I
thought of pouring some kind of selective weed killer over the worst
bits.

You could use a generic spring weed and feed containing a broadleaved
weedkiller. And/or use a spray wand with similar broad leaf herbicide.

Will teh daisies recolonise them? Can you buy daisy seed and can I just
sprinkle it on? can you still get selective weedkiller that works? I
tried
spraying all the dandelions with some last year but it had no effect (it
was
just a hand held pot of spot weeder.) any idea where I went wrong?

Hand held pots of pre-diluted weedkiller are expensive, convenient but
pretty well useless. The diluted weedkiller is not stable enough. If you
must spot weed this way the wax based pencil formulation is better.

Freshly made solution is much more effective. And you need to hit them
at the right time in active growth, but it should be fairly easy to rid
a lawn of dandelions with one hit early in the season and one later to
get rid of the first flush of new seedlings.

I prefer the 12" screwdriver method for removing any large ones. They
make a satisfying crunch as the tap root breaks. There will always be
new ones - just look at the airborne seeds from the wild hedgerows.

I have never had any trouble with daisies (or their nicer cousins) or
clover expiring due to weed & feed treatments. And I find creeping
buttercup more troubesome to eradicate than dandelions.

Regards,
Martin Brown
So how can one encourage dandelions? I find them pretty to look at and the
tortoise is partial to them. I cannot grow enough of them.