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I’m gonna show you how to get rid of wild onions, wild garlic or whatever you usually call it (onion grass) – without damaging your lawn much and without using chemicals.
This is a perennial plant that grows from a bulb and it grows in early spring till late fall when the rest of your grass isn’t growing. When it gets tall it’ll be noticeable and unsightly. It’ll even dull your lawn mower blades a bit because it’ll be sticking out above your regular lawn so much. You might be tempted to pull it you don’t want to do that.
This plant is engineered to survive that most of the time it’s going to just break off at this at the sod line and you’ll be left with the bulb deep in the ground yet. And you’ll have to deal with that plant later so here’s one that I got all the way out.
You can see the bulbs way down below my pinky look like little scallions or something but the sod lines quite a bit. It’s usually around 4-6 inches above so you have to get all of this. The reason why chemicals don’t work so well because this is not a broadleaf so broadleaf weed killer doesn’t work so well it’ll shed it.
If you try to pull it this is what normally happens unless you have really nice soil: you’ll be just kind of holding a handful of stalks and the bulbs will still be there and the plant will come back.
The way I get rid of this is that I wait until it rains. Then the next day I’ll try to get out there and take a shovel or a pitchfork, then space it several inches off the plant. Put it at a steep angle so that I can get about six inches underneath the plant when I stab in there.
Then you’re basically going to kind of just gently rock it back and you can pull on the stalks while you’re doing this as long as you’re gentle about it.
It’s just until you can kind of roll it back and start looking around for these white stringy roots there’ll be a whole bunch of them in one area. That’s where the cluster of bulbs is all grouped together and then you’re going to pick away at that a little bit. Make sure you don’t drop any bulbs, otherwise you’ll have another plant.
But once you can get most of that cluster inside your fist, all you basically do is hold the sod and pull. And you’re basically doing the opposite of pulling a weed in that you’re going in the wrong direction.
So to speak you’re pulling it through the side and this will leave a small hole in your sod pad that you just dug up. But it’s pretty much the same as aerating your lawn. However, once you’ve gotten everything out you pretty much just have to replace the sod right back where you dug it up and this works very well.
You can go after individual plants you know your regular weed killer won’t work. You’re pretty much stuck using roundup or boiling water or vinegar which will kill all your grass as well. But this is the most effective way I’ve found to do it without leaving a bunch of potholes around your lawn.
Another way to do this (it’s the way I normally do) is with a pitchfork. I use a pitchfork because I can line up the plant in between the tines and that way I know I pretty much have no chance of stabbing a bulb or cutting the stalk. But once you do that the process is basically the same you’re just gonna fry it back, rock back, and forth gently until you can pull the plant through the sod pad.
If you like other kind of stuff like this, we’ve got a lot of interesting articles over there but again the key is to get the bulb and the stock completely out of there and then, you know dispose of it.
It’s not going to grow back anywhere else not even in your neighbor’s yard because they might go to seed and then you’re gonna wind up with more of these. Once you’ve done this you shouldn’t have a plant come back or if you do. it’ll be much reduced. But I hope you’ve enjoyed the tips.
