Monday was April 20, or 4/20. Marijuana users know it as National Weed Day, but what should you do about those yellow weeds popping up in your lawn?
Most experts agree the dandelion is a weed, despite its beauty and its nutritional value for people and bees. So some people prefer to put up with a few weeks of yellow in their lawn because they don’t like the idea of applying chemicals.
“If somebody’s really obsessed with getting rid of dandelions, it’s ok to spray, there are legal products you can use," says Jeff Burbrink, Purdue University Cooperative Extension educator for LaGrange County.
But Burbrink says you’ll have better results if you spray in the fall.
“If you spray them now, they’ll curl up, you see that kind of injury, the stems will get kind of wonky and the leaves will get kind of wonky, but they’re probably going to have enough energy left in the root system to go ahead and shoot out some seeds.
He says each seedhead is capable of producing up to 200 individual viable seeds, which can drift through the air for miles.
“So it’s more of a revenge treatment to do it in the month of April and May, than it is to do it in October or late September when it will actually get the job done.”
