February Week 3

Organic Gardening Calendar
9 Weeks to frost free date in zone 6

By: Kathi

Wow! It seems like its been forever since the last post, but doing a 4 week month means twice a year, you have to skip a week to get back in sync with the calendar. What better time than February to not garden for a few days?

But I believe I promised a way to get rid of your dandelions and reduce your wild onion populations.

Things you will need:
Lawn Mower

I have never read this technique in any book, or heard any old timer tales about getting rid of dandelions. I discovered this back in 1992 completely by accident. But as you would expect, I did not realize I had done anything that would get rid of those pesky boogers until mid summer when I realized that I only had a handful of dandelions rather than thousands.

It took me some hard thinking to try to figure out what was different that year than any other year. I decided the only difference was in mid February I mowed the grass. The next year I purposely did not cut the grass in February and the number of dandelions increased from the prior year, but nothing close to the original number. During the third year of this test, I mowed the grass in February, and this time during the summer to my delight, there were absolutely no dandelions in my yard.

I don’t know why this works on the dandelions. With the onions I think by cutting the leaves down you are weakening the bulb, so the more often you cut the less healthy they will be. With the dandelions…if anyone can tell me why this works, I’d love to hear about it.

The trick is you need to mow your yard when the onions are popping up before anything else starts to grow. Set the blade as low as it will go and still clear the ground. I am convinced that setting the blades as low as possible is what does in the dandelions.

If you try this, you neighbors will talk about you. Who in their right mind mows in February? But there are advantages. 1) It kills dandelions, I promise. 2) it makes your ragged old winter yard look pretty good 3) it removes all the dead grass and leaves from the yard making it look greener, 4) if your lawn mower is going to break, it is best to find out now, rather than in April.

I will say right now, I bag my grass. It keeps the yard neat, provides lots of material for the compost pile, or for sheet composting, and means you never ever have to rake again. Bagging is so much lazier than mowing and raking. Not to mention all the free mulch you get.

Next week you will need:

Seeds and seed starting pellets or mix.

And put up those row covers if you haven’t yet! You want tomatoes in June? Row covers. You want a full crop of greens, broccoli, kale, cauliflower, and English peas?…Row covers, baby. I also put my annual flower flats out under my covers to get then big and healthy and ready to transplant in April.