05-26-2017, 12:34 PM
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!