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Meet Traute Klein, biogardener.

Don't Fight the Dandelions, Enjoy Them

by Traute Klein, biogardener

The much maligned dandelion is the organic gardener's friend. It is a great companion plant to grass, so if you are growing a lawn, you might as well love those dandelions, they are a great barometer of soil health."

Love Those Dandelions

This is the fourth in a series of articles on the benefits of dandelions. The other three articles are linked below.

The Setting

If you have ever visited the Peace River District of Alberta in June, you will have seen fields of glorious yellow. Nowhere else in the world have dandelions thrived as they have in this northern section of the globe. Americans know this region as the gateway to the Alaska Highway. The main road through the region leads directly from Edmonton to Mile Zero of the Alaska Highway.

How did this part of the world become dandelion paradise? Well, one of the early settlers knew that dandelions are an excellent cure for arthritis, and there wasn't a dandelion in site for hundreds of miles. She asked her European relatives to send her some seeds, and Mother Nature looked after the rest.

Bane or Blessing?

True, the dandelion is not native to North America, but does that make it a pest? Russian thistles, yellow star thistle, and mustard thistle are not native here either. My legs are scratched all summer long and right into winter, and I am always trying to pull thistle pricks out of my fingers. I hate them with a vengeance, and I have not yet thought of anything which would redeem them as being useful in some manner. My friends a little farther south tell me that mustard ??? drives them crazy, too.

Dandelion should not be falling into that group of plant pests. It does not hurt anyone. It is nutritious. It does not spoil any crops. If growing in a grain field, the seeds won't even show up in the threshed grain, because they flew away long ago.

I rarely have dandelions shoot up in my garden, because I do too much digging to allow them to settle in comfortably. The boulevard lawn beside our city property, though, is ablaze with the yellow wonders twice a season, usually in June and August, and in hot summers as early as May and July. When we first bought this property, I dutifully dug up all the roots. What a waste of effort! I won't do it again. By the next summer, all my neighbors had sent me millions of seeds from their boulevard to make sure that mine looked as colorful as theirs.

Now the City comes and sprays the boulevard about once every two years. That effort is not only wasted. It is dangerous to our health. The spraying is done in the middle of the day, with children playing on the sidewalk, breathing in the spray and even getting it on their legs. The dandelions take no notice of the spraying anyway. Their roots reach deep down into the soil where the poison will never reach them. The plant may show a bit of stress for a week, but by the following month, it will be as healthy as before.

The Benefits of Dandelions

Okay, the only way you can get rid of dandelions organically is to dig up the ground constantly, unless you are right there all the time and can pull each plant out as a young sprout.

Seeing that you can't get rid of them, why not learn to love them? Children are very fond of the plant. As a teacher, I got many a dandelion bouquet as a love offering, and I always had a vase waiting to display them. Mind you, my mother had taught me never to touch the plant, because the milky sap leaves dark stains on clothes.

Let me give you some good reasons why you should not feel guilty about loving dandelions:

• The deep roots bring nutrient up to the topsoil which have been leached down to the subsoil.
• The plants will keep a lawn green without watering, because the juicy leaves don't dry out as easily as grass.
• Dandelion is the perfect companion plant to grass.

  Oh, I know. No one else lists dandelion as a companion plant to anything. Well then, let me be the first one to do that. Yes, dandelions help to keep grass healthy and well-nourished. That makes it a companion plant. So there!

Supplementary Benefits of Dandelions

I never let dandelion go to seed, because I have found out what to do with the flowers, and no, I don't make dandelion wine. The enormous amount of sugar in it negates the supposed health benefits in my estimation. I simply eat the flowers, and I have written about that in my article, "Don't fight the dandelions, eat them." And if you are a chocoholic, eating dandelion flowers will take away the craving completely.

© Traute Klein, biogardener