Garden weeds can be the bane of any gardener’s life, but you could be sabotaging yourself by removing them in the wrong way. Gardening expert Adam Kirtland, who goes by View From The Potting Bench on TikTok, shared the correct way to remove unwanted dandelions from your lawn and stop them from growing back bigger than before.
Fortunately, you won’t need any weed killer, for those who are looking to avoid chemical solutions. Adam said: “There’s actually a right and a wrong way to weed your garden. And if you’re doing it wrong, you’re actually making the weeds stronger.”
Irrespective of the weed’s size, they still need to be dealt with with care. The gardening expert shared that currently his lawn is covered with dandelions.
He said: “And while the flowers are great for bees and pollinators, I don’t necessarily want a lawn full of them.”
Adam urged fellow gardeners to avoid mowing over dandelions, which would chop off the tops, as this will be counterproductive. The best way to remove the weeds is to tease them out slowly and carefully with a hand fork, making sure you get the whole plant and its roots.
He continued: “When weeding, most people just rip the top off a weed not realising that what they leave behind could be catastrophic.”
The expert likened weeding to pruning, explaining: “If you go around and chop the tops off, all that does is send signals down to the plant to produce more and more and fight it off.
“And while there really is nothing wrong with dandelions, nobody wants a whole garden completely full of them.”
Now if you find that dandelions are peaking through cracks and crevices in your patio, you’ll still need to attempt to remove the weed’s whole root. Adam urged people to be “extra gentle” when carrying out this task.
He suggested giving the weeds a little squeeze to find the right amount of pressure, then pull slowly until all of the weed comes out. To give yourself a little extra help, consider pouring some boiling water over the patio weeds you want to remove.
Experts at The Spruce explained: “Reapply after seven to ten days to increase the likelihood of killing the deep taproot. Keep in mind that any other plantings exposed to the water will also be damaged or killed.”
Boiling water can help remove dandelions and weeds by “shocking” them, ultimately damaging the plant’s cells and, in turn, killing them. Carrie Spoonemore, co-creator of Park Seed’s From Seed to Spoon app, told Southern Living: “It is particularly effective on young, annual weeds and weeds growing in cracks or small areas.”
While this may be a less potent way to kill dandelions, it may not always be a reliable remedy, and not effective in the long term. Robert Silver, gardening expert and CEO of Pro Gardening, told Real Homes that the reason is because the boiling water doesn’t get all the way to the root of the plant.
He said: “The main reason boiling water fails as a weed killer is that it cannot get to the entire root system of most weeds.”
So to ensure that dandelions won’t grow back, focus on removing the whole root to prevent them from coming back time and again.
