I read recently that dandelions are important for honey bees early in the season before tree's and more flowers bloom. So I leave a few.
I remove my dandelions with one of these... The first effort took several hours. Now it’s just few minutes a day of maintenance.. didn’t do anything for the lawn last year. This year I’m doing fertilizer and lime once a month. Gonna see if I can get rid of the moss and choke out the rest of the weeds... not comfortable with herbicides or pesticides with the kids playing in the yard.. also, we are able to keep the clover for the bees. Not sure what it is about the dandelion but it’s just an eyesore.. I don’t mind the little white clover flowers...
A lot of my neighbors use trugreen (Chemlawn) and their yards are gorgeous. Heck I watched the truck go house to house treating lawn this morning. For some reason I thought it was a liquid spray that they used but it was simply a motorized fertilizer spreader, that they loaded up with bags of fertilizer. For me I just use the farm and fleet brand of fertilizer 4 times a year, it’s about a 1/3 of the cost of Scott’s that I previously used and the results are similar. Unlike most of my neighbors I actually use my lawn so I’m not sure even with Trugreen I would see the same results as them, theirs are showpieces, that only see foot traffic when there lawn service is trimming. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I have the longer handle version of the dandelion picker. It has a long wooden handle about 40" long. I bent the prong ends into an upward curve. You just put it down into the root and give it a kick. No bending over. You are right about picking them. In a few weeks there are very few.
When I started my project, I tried to leave them on the lawn and mulch them with the mower.. for some reason, dandelions seem to have some kind of force field that prevents them from getting cut like the rest of the grass.... It looked like a mess.. so I decided to compost them which requires that I either bend over to pick them up or get s new tool to do so. Not a big deal. Might as well exercise the musculoskeletal system to make sure it keeps working as it should...
Here is where I found a lot of my info: Organic Lawn Care For the Cheap and Lazy It has grub info down in the article.
Dandelion honey is delicious. I used to be able to buy it in Canada, but haven't seen it in years. If you ever find some, buy it!
How did your clover seeding project turn out? If you posted an update I didn’t see it. Sorry for the thread derailment. Here is a patch of clover and some milkweed I planted for the butterflies. My neighbors love my lawn because I make theirs look awesome!!
Whatever they're making on the net, it's not dandelion honey. Only bees can make honey. Established clover, I think it looks nice. This is a new patch that I seeded this spring. It was bare dirt before.
Because usually our climate is so damp, our lawn stays green all year round with the high moss content. If I was to de-thatch it, I wouldn't have a lawn. After having dogs stung by bees in the clover, I am not a fan of clover in the lawns.
[QUOTE="billb3, post: 973662, member: 125"[/QUOTE] That is not easy to do. You really have to teach yourself the rhythm to do it well.
I used Chemlawn at my old house when I had beautiful lawn. They did a fine job and then I started doing it on my own and was able to keep it looking just as good and saved some money. Fast forward to my current home, as many already stated if it wasn't for the weeds or the dandelions I wouldn't have a lawn. I don't bother with it, I just mow it and keep it looking as nice as possible. Maybe one day I'll get around to having a nice lawn again!
