Maybe I'm like the Danish prince, haunted by dead plants past so that I want my current crop to do well. For the most part, I'd say I'm pretty organic. In the back yard, I weed pretty much all by hand. The front lawn, however, can hide massive amounts of intruders that, left on their own, would pretty much take over from the grass.
Some lawn weeds...like mallow, oxalys, or this as yet unidentified weed above...can be pulled with a fork and some elbow grease.
The dandelion, on the other hand, can quickly get out of hand.
In this year of drought, many of my neighbors have completely ignored their lawns. I've let mine go, too, but still tried to keep it in a kind of 'mothballs' situation, waiting for the rain to return.
With all the lawns in our area ignored, dandelion seeds have spread like crazy and when the green came back, so did hundreds of these little lawn killers.
In years past, I could dig in with a trowel and at least keep my head above water. This year, I stopped counting a one hundred.
OK, I hate to do it, but the only way I'm going to have a chance with this lawn is a judicious application of weed killer.
Fortunately, the biology of a dandelion means I can just apply a few drops to the center of the plant, which is basically a funnel, where the poison will settle into the interior of the plant and not disturb the grass around it.
Yes, I know you can pick them and eat the leaves but I also need some control of what I grow and these are beyond that point. Hopefully, I can get a handle on this huge, new crop and go back to hand weeding for the future.
Darryl
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