For the Hate of Dandelions
March 29, 2025
Well hello there! Long time no talk. We’ve been busy around here enjoying spring and doing all the work necessary to have a good growing season.
Look at this monster!!!!! It has to have at least one million flower heads and each flower has approximately 8 billion seeds to spread everywhere.
I have been pulling up dandelions for the past 2 weeks. I know dandelions have a lot of good PR and people lose their minds when I talking about pulling out dandelions. Look- I know dandelions have a ton of good health benefits and that they are the first food for bees. BUT- please hear me out. When we first moved onto our land there was nothing but dirt and trees. The previous landowner had cleared about a 2 acre space and for a couple of years not much grew. What has always been present is native bees. They managed to survive here when there was nothing but trees and then they survived for a couple of years before a dandelion was ever present on my property.
Until last year, we really didn’t have any grass growing. That was also the first year we had dandelions. I pulled several but got overwhelmed and just let them do their thing. Overall last year we were overrun with weeds. It was also our worst gardening season since living here. I was working a job outside of the home and just didn’t have time to tend to the garden like I usually do. The dandelions multipled. What dandelion enthusiants don’t seem to understand is that one dandelion can make hundreds more. When they started popping up in early spring, we had entire garden beds covered in them.
After getting so much crap from a viral video (it got 58 million views! 😱) we posted last year about pulling dandelions, I did a lot of dandelion research. What I discovered was that dandelions are not actually a good source of nutrition for bees. They are more important in areas where everyone has perfectly manicured lawns and the bees have nothing else. Dandelions are not native to the United States.
With all of that being said, I have declared a war on dandelions and do so in good conscience. Some people may want to grow dandelions as a crop. I do not. Pulling them all has been such an overwhelming task. And just when I think I’ve gotten them all cleared out of a garden bed, a couple days later I’ll see that yellow flower. I haven’t saved a single dandelion root, flower, or leaf. We considered it because again- I’m aware of the multiple benefits but that task seemed too overwhelming. I currently have 2 construction sized trash bags full of dandelions and it’s other weedy friends.
Hazel showing off her new ‘do and the beach without an ocean on our property.
Pulling up weeds is only one part of getting the beds ready for planting. Today after hopefully the last day of weeding I started working on the pathways between the garden beds. The beds have lost their shape and started to flatten out/sink down a little, so I started scooping out the pathways and putting that organic matter onto the beds. I will then need to amend all the beds. I was very encouraged as I was pulling up the weeds because a lot of the soil looked so good. When we moved onto our land, the soil was awful. The area where the greenhouse is looks like the beach. There is a massive pit of sand. But 5o feet in either direction then it turns into more normal soil but there is still a lot of sand. Our general area is known for being red clay & rocky. That is the soil our neighbors have. Somehow we hardly have any rocks which I am very grateful for. And while we have some clay it’s not what most of our soil. BUt clay + sand = concrete and thats what a lot of our soil was like. We’ve been working on improving it every yeaar. I think what has helped the most is planting cover crops. The places where I have planted them vs where I havent - there is a huge difference in the soil. Also, the soil in the backyard is totally different than the soil where our garden is. It’s really crazy.
We have also started most of our seeds. We got a later start than we wanted but I also think people start their seeds WAY too early. We did that one year and I’ll never do it again. I was babying and up potting tomatoes for months. Our last frost is late April/early May (depends on who you ask) and I’m not making more work for myself by getting antsy to plant seeds.
Our greenhouse is almost finished. Savannah built tables to go in the middle which are holding our seedlings. The bottom has shelves which is where we’ll store stuff. We’ve still got to put in the other garden bed in there and fill it with dirt. We now have a power source in there and a string of lights. Most importantly we hooked our IBC totes to a water pump so now we can use a garden hose & sprayer to water everything in the green house. We will also be able to water most of the garden from that water source. We’ve collected a lot of rainwater off the greenhouse since Savannah got all of that set up. Turning on that water hose was so exciting!