Tools for dealing with dandelions

I have a Spear & Jackson weed puller very therapeutic lol and easy to use.

Trouble with Dandelions is if you dont get every bit of root the darn things just grow again. I've yet to find anything that works other than carefully applied weed killer.

What Tanith said.

I am too old to enjoy "keep bending over" but I can still kneel and crawl so that's how I weed (and plant) now. Spongy kneeling pad for knee comfort.

For deep tap roots like dandelion and dock, I use a commando dagger (H got his in a leather sheath ,cheap, used, from Army and Navy stores in the 1950's) Back then apparently every boy scout owned one, carried in the sheath attached to his belt.

Slide it deep into the soil immediately below the crown where all the leaves start, a small vicious twist severs the taproot deep down and you can easily winkle up the corpse by tugging the leaf bunch. Japanese gardeners use a similar tool called a hori kiri, available in UK.

butterandjam you say it severs the taproot but in my many years of gardening unless you get every single bit of the root it will regrow and severing the tap root leaves some behind to grow.

We use a "Blow touch weed killer" that seems to work. Not expense available on Amazon.

Thanks everyone. Am leaning towards the Gardena, but will check out Spear & Jackson.

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I realised last year that the small square front garden had more dandelions than grass .
It looked awful.

My neighbours have broken crazy paving and the dandelions seeds blow across .
I tried to dig them up and it was too much .
I have an old fashioned dandelion tool -it must be about 30 years old . I used to fo it annually then stopped .
On a dry day ,
I bruised each dandelion and poured on Fairy liquid and then salt .
It took three bottles of Fairy .
I saw the neighbours looking at me .
I wonder what they were thinking .
Probably that won't work !

Well ,there's more grass than dandelions now.
I've only seen a few and not hundreds of them .

I might try your method Esmay although having moved house I don’t have that many in my new garden.

Hi tanith
I found digging them up really painful . I'd come indoors with my back and knees aching .
I lost count of them . I was digging up about a dozen a day . I think that the lawn was solid with dandelions with hardly a blade of grass between them .
Perhaps those with a massive tap root might regrow,but I think that I'm winning .
Washing up liquid and salt will leave a brown circular patch ,but it grasses over.
The lawn looks much better now.
Do try it .
Good luck .

Get a sheep.

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I have actually called 2 puff balls to sow in a wild patch, dandelions are the first flower to help bees whe they come out of hibernation, and are being poisoned by folk putting weed killer on the dandelions, I have a hive of bees in a dead tree and hope to give them what they need when they come out in the spring, we have so few insects around lately,
Not banging a drum just wondering how many know that

Not called,,,collected

You need two things for dandelions, fortitude and determination! Good luck.

Hoe. Do it regularly and they soon give up the ghost.