Any gardeners out there?

OK, you've all seen the ad. A smug looking bloke spots a dandelion on his lawn, deploys the Fiskar (complete with shotgun noises) and, voila!, no more dandelions. Bloke looks, if possible, smugger still. Lawn looks immaculate.

This is, of course, total BS. What actually happens is you end up with a sore back, a truly humungous pile of dandelions and a lawn that looks holier than the pope. Seriously, bits of our front lawn look like it's been carpet-bombed.

So, oh mighty org, does anyone know how to kill dandelions without destroying the surrounding grass?

Dig them out with a Hori hori knife, or sharp trowel.

Listen again to Gardner's Question time on radio 4 iplayer from last Friday. The final question was very similar

[Geodude]

For deep rooted stuff cut an 'H' shape in the turf then fold sides back dig weed out fold turf back, well it works for me.

[Sir Trev]

If you let it your lawn can become an obsession. Don't let it take up too much of your time. Most weeds don't like being trimmed so by all means cut/dig some out as noted above but consider simply mowing the lawn every few days. It won't take long if you're only skimming the top of an already neat sward. Oh, don't scalp your lawn either which will help the grass grow thicker and help keep the weeds down.

[Littlepeahead]

I got around this problem by buying a house where they had paved over the lawn. I let the wild flowers grow in the beds, including nettles and poppies and this attracts the bees and butterflies.

You can obsess over the grass, but what's the point? If you are going to do that you may as well become the Head Groundsman at Lord's who has a team of 7 staff to keep our turf looking perfect. There's a grass insanity that affects all groundsmen and comes of worrying about dandelions - stop seeing them as as pest but as pretty yellow flowers and life will be much better!

Alternatively you could do what we do here when we find a weed!

[Biker Biggles]

I bet you employ a turf accountant to keep track of that lot.

[NTECUK]

Astro Turff.
Several different styles.
Best thing I've ever done..

[Luckypants]

I'm going with the paving over solution when the garden make-over happens.

[Sir Trev]

Originally Posted by Luckypants

I'm going with the paving over solution when the garden make-over happens.

I can understand the low maintenance appeal of this option but if it's not broken up by beds or even gravel gardens it can look way too stark. It also increases flooding risk if too solidly paved so make sure rainwater has somewhere to go. Don't do it cheap either - a house round the corner block paved their entire front garden which looked terrible and can park at least 10 cars on it, but it has sunk in several places and looks even worse now.

[Swin]

snip

Originally Posted by Sir Trev

It also increases flooding risk if too solidly paved so make sure rainwater has somewhere to go.

This - was watching something on the TV a while back about how New Orleans are using a more porous type of concrete to allow rainwater to get underneath pavement and presumably get back to the aquifers below, I wonder if this type of paving is available commercially now, as during the last heavy rains in my area a couple of people got flooded out by rain coming straight down the block paved front garden and through their front door