Weeds can be a major nuisance for gardeners, but there’s a right and wrong way to remove them – and one gardening expert has shared the best way to do it
Garden weeds can be a real nuisance for any green-fingered enthusiast, but you might be shooting yourself in the foot by removing them incorrectly. Gardening expert Adam Kirtland, known as View From The Potting Bench on TikTok, has shared the proper way to rid your lawn of pesky dandelions and prevent them from returning even larger than before.
Luckily, there’s no need for any weed killer, which is good news for those wanting to steer clear of chemical solutions. Adam explained: “There’s actually a right and a wrong way to weed your garden. And if you’re doing it wrong, you’re actually making the weeds stronger.”
Regardless of the size of the weed, they still require careful handling. The gardening pro revealed that his lawn is currently blanketed with dandelions.
He stated: “And while the flowers are great for bees and pollinators, I don’t necessarily want a lawn full of them.”
Adam advised fellow garden lovers to refrain from mowing over dandelions, which would simply lop off the tops, as this will prove counterproductive. The optimal method to remove the weeds is to gently coax them out with a hand fork, ensuring you extract the entire plant and its roots, reports the Express.
He added: “When weeding, most people just rip the top off a weed not realising that what they leave behind could be catastrophic.”
The expert compared weeding to pruning, explaining: “If you go around and chop the tops off, all that does is send signals down to the plant to produce more and more and fight it off.
“And while there really is nothing wrong with dandelions, nobody wants a whole garden completely full of them.”
Now if you find that dandelions are poking through cracks and crevices in your patio, you’ll still need to attempt to remove the weed’s entire root. Adam urged people to be “extra gentle” when carrying out this task.
He suggested giving the weeds a little squeeze to find the right amount of pressure, then pull slowly until all of the weed comes out.
To give yourself a little extra help, consider pouring some boiling water over the patio weeds you want to remove.
Experts at The Spruce explained: “Reapply after seven to ten days to increase the likelihood of killing the deep taproot. Keep in mind that any other plantings exposed to the water will also be damaged or killed.”
Boiling water can help eliminate dandelions and weeds by “shocking” them, ultimately damaging the plant’s cells and, in turn, killing them.
Carrie Spoonemore, co-creator of Park Seed’s From Seed to Spoon app, told Southern Living: “It is particularly effective on young, annual weeds and weeds growing in cracks or small areas.”
Whilst this may be a less potent way to kill dandelions, it may not always be a reliable remedy, and not effective in the long term.
Robert Silver, gardening expert and CEO of Pro Gardening, told Real Homes that the reason is because the boiling water doesn’t get all the way to the root of the plant. He said: “The main reason boiling water fails as a weed killer is that it cannot get to the entire root system of most weeds.”
Therefore, to guarantee that dandelions won’t return, concentrate on extracting the complete root to stop them from sprouting back repeatedly.