Sharpening dandelion extractor

[Jan]

In Europe dandelion is considered to be a vigorous weed despite the fact that it has some culinary and herbal medicine usage. Today I was sharpening our homemade dandelion extractor. I have found a half-round file to be suitable to sharpen its tip.

       

P.S.: The name dandelion comes from the French dent de lion = lion's tooth, in reference to the  jagged-edged leaves.

[grepper]

Regardless if you eat or hate them, you have to hand it to the dandelion’s multiplicative proclivity and exceptional propagation methods.  They flourish everywhere and anywhere; shade, full sun, gravel, wet soil and cracks in pavement.  Given a chance they will totally take over!  They even seem to know to duck when they see the mower coming.  A true flowering of evolution.
 
Entire fields taken over by them can be beautiful when blooming and support bees and other beneficial insects.  What more can you ask of a lowly weed?
 
I kill them irreverently with herbicide when they dare grow in my lawn.

[Jan]

Thanks for assuring that we are not with dandelions alone.

[grepper]

The puller that you have, Mr. Jan, looks like it might be a perfect candidate for the Tormek SVD-185 Gouge and Turning Cutter Jig.

I have one just like the one  pictured in the attached pic.  It works OK for one or two dandelions, but when there are very many of the pesky pinnacle of pernicious weed evolution perfection of flowering pests a sprayer with some environmentally polluting herbicide is more efficacious and far less time consuming. 

[Jan]

Yes, Mr. Grepper, my dandelion puller should fit in the new Tormek Gauge jig SVD-186 which is wider than the older SVD-185. The blade width of my puller is 32 mm.

What concerns herbicides, we try to avoid them on the land near the vegetable and strawberry beds, even though we know that an ideal bio quality it is a futile effort. We have a large garden with a rested soil where composting the cut grass provides nutrition to our plants and trees.

[Komitadjie]

I've actually been using a "Weed Hound" for quite a while, that thing works AMAZINGLY well. We had severe dandelion problems in our lawn (we use irrigation water from an open-top ditch, so a lot of weed see drifts in) and we'd tried for many years to get rid of them. Within about three weeks of vigorous mechanical removal, bookended by a broad-leaf herbicide on both ends, we basically obliterated them entirely from the premises. Now we just have to occasionally pull one when we see it, haven't needed herbicides at all in several years.

[grepper]

Yeah, once you get rid of them it's not too hard to keep them under control. I don't like using herbicides and have to agree mechanical removal is a much greener way to go! Have to respect that.

[Komitadjie]

I've had the best luck combining the two. Hit them with some herbicide, wait a couple days for them to start looking kinda bad, then mechanically remove 'em. The one-two punch seems to knock out even the toughest dandelions with no returns. After they're thinned out, mechanical removal can keep them under control easily, and is both cheaper and more ecologically friendly than chemical controls, for very little effort. Walk around in the early afternoon when the blooms are fully open, and it's really easy to spot and pull the couple newcomers, it's very rare that we'll get more than maybe a dozen new ones in a whole week in our lawn, ditch-water and all. But for that first elimination of a bad case, the combo is hard to beat!

[Jeremy]

A file sounds quite effective and the fancy tormek wheels and electricity even more. I would recommend keeping or creating a point on the tool like a digging shovel to help break the ground.

Vinegar with a little soap in a sprayer will kill!

[Jan]

Mr. Jeremy, thank you for your environmentally friendly tip, I will test it.