When you come home from work and check to see if the lawn needs cutting, do you see a green lawn next door anda yellow line that begins on the edge of your property and continues intermitently all over your lawn?

You have a 'Dandy Problem' that requires you hire a weed sprayer, buy some weed-n-feed fertilizer and apply, or eradicate the 'Lion'. They call them dandelions (dandy lion). You call them those darn weeds.

So you have several options, choose them carefully, environmentally, hungrilly, Chemically, dual purpose fertilizer and weed chemically, or with guns blasting in eradication mode and your Jimmy Bar, dig them dudes, wash them, cook them, and have them for supper.

I tend to resist using weed or insect chemical to cure my presumed problems. Actuallly, it is not a problem to have dandelions. They are quite pretty flowers. My son in his infancy called them "Dandy Flower", and picked many to show me or his mother. Not only does it not look that bad, but is a very good food early in the spring before the leaves age, and become too bitter. You can wash well and use the leaves, stem, flowers in salads, You can cook them for greens, or just leave the eradicated plant on top of lawn grass to dry out and be cut up by the mower for mulch. Cut up by the mower, the mulch becomes food for your lawn.

The yellow line along your property disappears, your neighbour is happy, and you have been removing dandelions for fresh greens to cook for supper or add zest to your salad bowl. Don't laugh at this; you can buy dandelion at your grocery produce area. Yes it is Italian cicoria catalogna large variety, but early in the spring, right out of your own lawn, plain old dandelion, is even better, full of vitamins and no doubt fresher (just picked). My mother made all six of her sons eat a sandwich with lots of dandelion leaves and mayo every spring. She called it our spring tonic.

Another use for this, now becoming useful, plant is to harvest just the blossoms until you have a two pound margarine jar full and compressed of blossoms. This is enough to make one gallon of dandelion wine. So, I make 4 gallons, and need to pick and pick and pick, until I have eight pounds of margarine container's worth pressed down and full. My wine turned out to be the very best I have ever made. It has 'kick butt alcohol content' and a nice dry, slightly bitter dandelion flavour that grows on you as you consume. Now you need a recipe for dandelion wine, available in book stores 'The Art of Making Wines'.

Of course, If you do too good a job eradicating 'Dandy' with your Jimmy Bar, you will need to find a chemical free lawn to get your dandelion flowers for next years wine. This tells you to leave a few little plants just for that purpose and keep the cycle alive. Or, You could just say "I don't have a problem with dandelions".

Well I told you about the Jimmy Bar above but didn't elaborate.

So, early in spring when the soil is still quite full of moisture from winter buildup and spring rains,You use the Jimmy bar to push under the dandelion and pry up. It is a simple task to pick the dandelion out, shake the soil from roots, and add to your collection container or leave for the sun to dry it out for composting with the lawn mower.

The 'Jimmy Bar' is a very solid steel tool that works amazingly well for this and other weed lifting. The good thing is, you probably already own one and never used it in this way before. If not, they are not expensive and you will be amazed at how it works. I have some pics along side to give you the proceedure and a look at the tool of many uses.

HAPPY GARDENING from Gardener Harold.

You will find me here at home among my daylilies .

HAPPY GARDENING