"A.Malhotra" wrote in message
...


DDEckerslyke wrote:

Newbie gardeners. Just moved into a house where the small front lawn
(20 -
25 sq m) is about 15 or 20 percent dandelions. Can anyone here either
advise
us what to do, or point us in the direction of a good
site/book/resource? Do
we dig them out? (I had a go at a big one and the root was approximately
2cm
diameter, deeper than I could get, and I've left an impact crater.)Use
weedkiller? (We've got three young kids so we're reluctant to do this.
Is
there environmentally and kid friendly weedkiller?)

Thanks in advance

dd


I generally just dig them out with a knife, getting as much of the root as
I can, and keep at it until it gives up the ghost. But really big ones
will
have lots of resoruces left in the chunk of root you leave behind and will
keep going for a while. So you may be best using Roundup, and painting it
on the leaves with a brush. This needs to be done on a dry day (it needs
at
8 hours before being washed off to be taken up by the plant) and will be
translocated throughout the plant and kill it in one go (although actually
painting the leaves of each dandelion will take longer than just digging
them out). As long as you keep the kids/pets off the lawn for this period,
it is broken down and rendered harmless so it a realtively env friendly
herbicide.

Anita

Again many thanks. At the moment I think I'll go with the Lawn Weedkiller
suggested elsewhere in the thread. That said my better half has a degree in
Fine Art so I could suggest to her she would be much better at painting the
leaves than me :-)

cheers

dd