Dandelion is a flowering herbaceous perennial characterized by extraordinary vitality, unpretentiousness and endurance. In the autumn-winter period, when the aboveground part of the plant has already died, the root system continues to live. In early spring, with the arrival of warm sunny days, it releases a rosette of leaves of a rich green hue and long peduncles that look like tubes. After flowering, fluffy dandelion seeds are easily carried by the wind and, having landed on wet soil, they immediately take root and very quickly take root in a new place in order to continue their existence. The plant easily propagates not only by seeds, but also by dividing the root, as well as by small trimmings of roots. After mowing, yellow dandelions are often placed in the compost heap (or rather on the surface of its contents) to prevent seeds from emerging. But even under such conditions, their formation occurs and again the seeds are spread over the soil surface and germinate.
Dandelion control methods
A beautiful yellow perennial for many summer residents and gardeners is a real headache. Getting rid of him is not so easy. Many people try to carry out regular weeding, chemical treatment, apply various preventive measures, which reduce the amount of this crop many times over. It is worth trying various methods to solve this problem once and for all.
Manual weeding involves picking out all the roots and their parts of perennial grasses while digging up the land. Such painstaking work will give its results only with careful removal of all copies that come across. After such preparatory work throughout the summer season, it is necessary to break through the emerging young dandelions and always together with the entire root part. None of its clippings should remain in the soil, because they will germinate again. Since the fragile taproot of a plant goes deep into the ground, it is recommended to use available means to dig it out to extract it as a whole.
When dandelions grow in an area with dense soil and it is definitely not possible to pull out the root part entirely, then you can use the proven popular advice. The upper part of the plant must be cut to the very base, and generously sprinkle the place of the cuts with table salt. The main thing here is not to overdo it with the amount of salt, since if there is an excess of salt, large bald spots will appear on the lawn, and the surrounding flowering crops will react negatively to such a "delicacy" on a flower garden or flower bed.
Treatment of the site with chemicals is used with a large number of plants. Herbicides can destroy plants selectively or completely affect all plantings in a row.
For mass destruction of weeds, it is recommended to use the preparations "Roundup" or "Lontrel". Processing is carried out either in the spring, a few days before planting the necessary crops, or with the arrival of autumn after harvesting. When spraying the selected area, the drug should not fall on the leafy part of fruit and berry plants (trees and shrubs).
If it is necessary to destroy only certain weeds, then the preparations "Killeks", "Lintur" and "Sniper" are suitable for these purposes. For several days, herbicides actively affect the plants. For example, "Lintur" enters the plant through the leaves and stems-tubules and after about 7-10 days the dandelions begin to "hurt", and after thirty days they completely die. When processing a large area with this drug, you do not have to worry about other crops, because only dandelions are negatively affected. The advantage of the drug is also that it is odorless and, when added to water, easily dissolves in it.
The herbicide "Sniper" is capable of destroying dandelion leaves, stems, flowers and roots, but the seeds retain their high germination capacity even after such chemical treatment. The drug is applied pointwise to each plant with a special applicator.
Do not neglect folk recipes in such a matter, especially if chemicals are not welcomed by you. Spraying dandelions with table vinegar of high concentration (more than five percent) also gives good results. It is necessary to moisten each plant abundantly with vinegar.
The fight against dandelions is greatly helped by timely preventive measures. In order to prevent dandelions from spreading en masse, it is necessary to mow them before the seeds appear, which will gradually reduce their number in the country, in the garden or in the garden. True, it is very important that after mowing, the herbaceous specimens are laid in the compost heap to a great depth or completely destroyed in any way. Do not allow seeds to ripen on cut dandelions.
Such mowing is recommended to be carried out regularly at intervals of 3-4 days, so that new buds do not have time to appear, which can open even after pruning. With regular mowing of weeds, not only the number of flowers, which produce a large number of seeds, is reduced, but also the root system is significantly weakened.
