Wild Onion In Your Lawn
Wild Onion In Your Lawn
By late March or early April, many home owners experience wild onion growing in their lawn. Not only is this weed unattractive to look at, it also has an offensive smell when you are near it, especially when you cut your grass.
How to Spot Wild Onion In Your Lawn
Wild onion is an invasive weed and will aggressively reproduce itself. If you have ever dug one up you will notice small onion bulbs. Wild onions will reproduce from underground bulbs and also from seeds that are set from their blossoms. If you allow them to blossom, each plant will produce dozens of seeds called bulblets that can grow into many more plants to infest your lawn.
Wild onion is a cool weather perennial so you will see it growing in the early spring. After it blooms the wild onion will go dormant in late spring as the weather warms up. The onion bulbs will patiently wait under the soil and reappear in the fall as the temperatures drop and continue to grow as you get into early winter. The process will start all over again the following spring.
Wild onion will grow more rapidly than your good grass so it will be very easy to spot in your lawn. Unlike most weeds that you can pull out of the ground, wild onion presents a more difficult challenge because even if you pull it out, most likely you will leave some of the small onion bulbs in the ground which will continue to push up new plants.
How To Get Rid of Wild Onion
The easiest way to control this pesky weed is by spraying with a great lawn weed killer called Bonide Weed Beater Ultra. This weed killer is more effective than others because it works very well in cooler weather when wild onion is growing. Weed Beater Ultra when sprayed on the foliage will kill not only the blades of the plant but will also travel down and kill the onion bulb.
If you see wild onion in your lawn in early spring or fall, make sure you control it so it does not take over. Using a spot weed killer like Weed Beater Ultra makes this very easy. Get busy!