It’s still too early to add a general weed and feed to the lawn, you need to wait until April when it is a bit warmer and the grass is actively growing. However, it is a good idea to tackle any weeds with a spot weed killer, or dig them out, before they go to seed and make more work for you later.

I bought this Roundup gel weedkiller to kill weeds in hard to remove places, such as in between paving, and also deep rooted weeds like dandelions in the lawn, where if any of the root breaks off it will regrow. As it’s a gel there is no danger of spray drifting onto surrounding grass and it was easy to apply to a large weed like this one, although smaller weeds might be more of a problem to isolate. The manufacturers claim it should kill the weed in seven days and it should be permanent when it does disappear. I feel it’s a bit pricey at around £7.00 a bottle, so I am keeping it for the ‘difficult cases’.

This is the same weed two weeks after weedkiller was applied. Possibly looking slightly less healthy, but I gave it another dose just to be sure.

Three weeks after the first application and the weed appears to be dying back. Unfortunately I have managed to get some of the killer on the surrounding grass and that is also dying! This was a large weed and it shows how careful you have to be when applying. I think I will keep this weedkiller for weeds in paths and not on the lawn.

 

If you don’t like using chemicals, you can manually dig weeds from a lawn.

My preferred weapon of choice to remove weeds from a lawn, is a daisy grubber.  It allows me to remove weeds without damaging the lawn too much and it is more environmentally friendly than a chemical weed killer. It is also more instant so there is less chance of weeds seeding before they die.

To use, simply place the prongs under the rosette of leaves and lever the daisies and other weeds gently out of the grass. Sometime you need to plunge the grubber into the ground to loosen the roots first, but when the soil is damp they are easy to pull out, complete with their roots intact. Push any excess soil back into the hole where the roots were, to finish off the job.