Getting Rid of Weeds
Picking dandelions when you’re a child, wearing the pretty yellow flowers in your hair, and rubbing it onto your hand to color it yellow are all things all of us have done. When we get older, however, these cease to be pretty flowers and become pests that infest our otherwise pristine lawns.
Sometimes, I feel sorry for weeds. Until they show up at my house, that is. Then it’s war! Alright, I exaggerate, but you know where I’m coming from.
If you look through a botany catalog, you’ll find that almost all plants are classified as “weeds.” Basically, the definition of “weed” is anything that is growing out of place or that comes in a very small zipper baggy.
Bluegrass, for instance, is often used on golf courses because it’s thicker and heavier (this makes it the “rough”). Find some in someone’s yard, though, and it’s a weed. Most of us aren’t quite so picky, though, and basically classify anything that sticks out or looks bad on our lawn to be a “weed.”
So first, you’ll need to identify what is a “weed” and what isn’t (for you). Most likely, the above definition of something unsightly growing on your lawn is it. In that case, you’ll need to get more specific about what exactly that thing is, so you know how to get rid of it. Digging it up is a start, but doesn’t mean it’ll be gone for good.
Often, our lawns may have three or four species of grass growing in them and we just fail to notice because we cut them to the same length all the time. This is fine if that’s not what you consider a weed and you can move on to the broad-leafed, mis-colored things we usually classify as unwanted weeds. Yarrow, clovers, knotweed, thistle, and dandelions are all plants like this. How do you get rid of them?
No matter how often you pull up dandelions or thistle, they always come back. It also seems like try as you might, you can never get every bit of that clover out of your lawn, and it just keeps springing back. Weed killers you spread on your lawn (often as combination fertilizers) are one answer and might work for you. They usually are pretty specific, however, and may not kill what it is you want them to.
In that case, culturing your lawn is what will do the trick. No, not reading it books and taking it to the opera, but culturing it as in horticulture. This takes a lot of time and patience, but pays off eventually. You want to isolate the problems and then “weed” them out by culling most of it and then starving what’s left. It’s unsightly, but plastic tarps or coverings can do this quickly in small areas while tilling under, proper application of fertilizers, and replanting is the more extreme remedy.
Mostly, you just need to know what exactly you’re dealing with so you can learn how to get rid of it, either by asking an expert or by looking it up yourself.
It’s not a hard task, it just requires patience. If you know your enemy, you can select herbicides and other measures that will target it specifically, keeping collateral damage to a minimum.
