One of the more well known lawn and garden weeds is Dandelion, which is sometimes confused with Catsear due to having similar long seed stalks, similar yellow flowers, and similar white fluffy seed balls which can so easily be dispersed into the wind to fly away almost anywhere to establish new weeds.
The Catsear is known for a smooth edge of its leaves, whereas Dandelion has very pronounced serrated leaves looking entirely different than the other. The floating seed heads of Dandelion mean that we can find these weeds growing almost anywhere at all, wherever the wind may blow the seeds or even on the fur of pets or on the clothing and shoes of people. Taking root as soon as its found a tiny patch of moist soil, there will it grow.
The leaves on the Dandelion apart from being greatly serrated to differentiate it from Catsear, will also grow up and out, rather than just laying flat to the ground like Catsear does.
Botanical name: Taraxacum officinale
Killing And Controlling Dandelions
Once again we have a rather easy to control weed, which while easily treated can still spread onto our lawns and gardens again with ease due to the sheer abundance of seeds produced by these weeds and how easily they float through the air in the wind due to their little white parachute seed heads.
It has been noted that Dandelions can produce up to 5,000 seeds per year, all of which spread in transit with great ease, so it’s easy to see that controlling this weed is a necessity for us all.
A broadleaf weed killer is suitable to use on Dandelions growing in home lawns, which should yield very good results from treatments.
Hand pulling is also a very good option, using a small digging tool we would dig into the soil around the tap root to loosen the root and then pull the weed from the soil by hand, and then to dispose of it into the bin and not the compost. We would also want to be careful not to disturb any of the seed heads on the weed if it is in seed with those well known fluffy white seed balls.
Regular lawn mowing will also greatly aid in controlling and stopping the spread of Dandelions in the home lawn, as this will stop the seed stalks and flowers from ever reaching maturity whereby they could propagate more weeds into our lawns and gardens. The regular lawn mowing will not however kill the Dandelion weeds from our lawns until their lifecycle is complete, so the even better method of control would be to simply pull the weed from the lawn.
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