I was interested to read that a British train was brought to a standstill by a cloud of dandelion seeds.
It’s been that way here in Ontario this spring too, although as far as I know, our trains are still running on time. Shelley, who works with me in the garden here, told me that clouds of dandelion seeds flew into her yard last week. There were so many that they looked like snow and she had to vacuum and rake them up after they literally covered her deck and backyard.
Dandelion seed heads galore -- the new normal? Maybe not for long
This is the second season without access to Killex and the other traditional chemical controls for lawn weeds, since the Ontario government banned a whole slew of commonly-used pesticides and herbicides. Now, it looks like we have new products coming to the rescue. Scott’s has an iron-based weed control called Weed Be Gone, which is now in stores and is supposed to be effective for spot spraying of dandelions and other common garden weeds. Fiesta, also an iron-based solution, was approved by the powers that be at the end of April.
According to Landscape Ontario, the industry is champing at the bit for something, anything, to deal with the plague of dandelions. Apparently, demand for Fiesta, the newest approved weed killer, is much higher than forecast, causing slight delays in shipments. More on this at the Landscape Ontario site.
Another promising product, this one discovered and developed in Canada, is Sarritor, actually a naturally-occurring fungus that devours dandelions and other lawn weeds, leaving the grass alone. I have more information on these new products and how to use them over at my website: see Get Rid of Dandelions with New Greener Products.
How well these weed killers will work in the real world is still not known, but we do know that, like most greener alternatives, they are quite a bit more expensive per square foot than the traditional lawn herbicides which have been banned in Ontario and Quebec and a number of Canadian cities. That’s the price we pay for living on the cutting edge of hort technology. I’ll be trying these products myself in the next few weeks, and I’ll report back to you then.
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Good Morning Yvonne: Go to C.L.’s post at the link below.
http://wholelifegardening.com/blog/2010/05/a-deal-with-the-dandelions/
When you stop and think about it a Taraxacum officinale is an amazing plant.
Have a great day,
John
Hi John: It sure is, but it looks like it’s on a mission to take over the world…
I’m not a fan of plants that reproduce all out of proportion to their landscape value. We live around a tree farm that releases billions of dandelion seeds. Weeding them out of our garden beds is a constant job around here. If I ever give up gardening, dandelion weeding will be one big reason.
Yvonne, hopefully the new products will follow the pattern of getting cheaper as they get more commonly used and maybe get some competitors over the next few seasons.
I never used to use chemicals in the garden, but the last couple of years we have had a big problem with “creeping Charlie’ and need to do something about it. I’ll look into the new products.
Lene
I have the impression from personal experience that nothing really helps with creeping charlie. It’s in parts of our lawn here, and all I can do is keep the gardens well edged, so it won’t creep into them. It’s somewhat easy to weed out of beds, but difficult to get out of the lawn. Even traditional chemical controls don’t seem to set it back much — we tried that, back in the day when that was allowed. We even tried killing off the grass with Round-Up and reseeding the most infested parts. The creeping charlie came back within a year. I’ve learned to live with it. At least it stays small and low, and doesn’t grow into a big monster weed with huge puffball seedheads the way dandelions do.
The weeds are bad, but what about the sufferers with
plant allergies this year?
Should we be more informed about planting the garden?
Hi Peter: I’m not sure what you mean about being more informed…
Here’s a good website on allergy free gardening.
Hi, our front lawn is invaded with dandelions, I mean, they are everywhere and I really want to get rid of them, but I am trying to see if I can avoid to root them out since there are so many. Any sugestions…
Thanks
Fiesta Lawn Weed Killer received federal regulatory approval and is now registered and available for use in Ontario to control broadleaf weeds in turf. Watch for this and other iron chelate herbicides at your favorite garden or home store. The jury is still out as to how effective this new product is, and there’s not much info about it on the web yet, but hopefully that will change.
I really need to know if this Fiesta Stuff works or not.
I do lawn maintenance service and I need to use a product to control weeds, but, I don’t want to sell a service that will not work.
I doubt very much that doing Fiesta spot spraying will control weeds because weeds will grow in the areas of the lawns where you don’t spray. In other words for this thing to work you would have to do a widespread application, to the whole lawn. and Fiesta covers 1 meter for 25ml of product. This adds up to 40 metres per litre and the price is $380.00 for 20l so $380.00 will cover 800 metres, 7 200 sq. ft. The size of a large lawn. I guess you understand my point.
Thank you.
P.V