Well what you have is Dandelions, one of the hardest of all the weeds to control.

Hand pulling is the best method, but seldom is done correctly. Dandelions have a very long brittle tap root that can reach 10 inches in depth. If one little piece is left in the ground it will regenerate and come back.

Second problem is the seeds from one single plant can travel for miles on the wind.

The only real effective post-mergent herbicide is Glyphosphate aka Round Up. Problem is RU is a non selective herbicide and will kill any grass or plant it comes into contact with.

A semi effective post-mergence herbicide is any containing 2-4D.

Best control is pre-emergence herbicides, but that will do nothing for existing plants.

Thanks Texas-weed! I had no idea that dandelion stems/leaves etc could be so prickely and spikey!

I did a bit more research and I had landed on bull thistle or spear thistle. My picture isn't a particularly good one above, but these leaves and the stems are pretty spikey and annoying! I will start pulling and think about some weed killer, but I don't want to harm the surrounding shrubs in the bed.

Thanks again for your help!

There used to be a foamy type of Weed-B-Gone. It worked like a miracle on dandelions and really any broadleaf. All the herbicide stayed right on the plant. Put a dollop in the middle of the plant and it did that crazy 2-4,d dance they do. And then it died.

It looks to me like you might have canada thistle. It has an extensive root system. You can pull them but the root will remain in the ground, sometimes very deep and it grows sideways. That is why it keeps popping up other places. Professionals can use a chemical that kills it but we can only keep pulling to eventually exhaust the root energy and/or use weed killers repeatedly.

I concur with Kimpa. My neighbor 2 doors down tried to get rid of her sedges last year by using SedgeHammer. She says the SedgeHammer didn't work. (I don't know if my neighbor used it correctly or not and didn't probe to find out, but she is a retired teacher, so I would have to say she probably did follow instructions to a tee.)

The other day while she was in my backyard, she was surprised to see that the many sedges I had in my backyard last year were all gone. Shocked, she asked how did you get rid of the sedges? I told her I pulled them every single time I saw them, trying to get as much of the rhizomes as possible. After a little practice, you can get the hang of it and can sometimes finesse a small portion of the rhizome out along with the upper plant. You won't get all of the rhizome though.

But the key is just pulling the plant out repeatedly. Eventually the carbohydrate reserves inside the plants' tubers buried in the ground will be used up, so the plant won't have enough energy to send up new shoots. At that point, it will die. It may take 3 or 4 pullings for the sedges to die. You could also dig into the ground to remove the tubers along with the shoots to kill the whole plant in one fell swoop, but I never did that because I didn't want to disturb the surrounding grass which was good, healthy zoysia.

I learned about this procedure from David Mellor's great book called The Lawn Bible. I think he (or someone else maybe) wrote that the first time you pull a plant, the plant can exhaust 60 percent of its energy reserves to recreate its upper shoot. Do that enough times, and it just exhausts all its energy. The plant makes energy through its leaves through photosynthesis from the sun, so you don't want to allow the leaves to regrow for too long, otherwise the plant replenishes some of its energy reserves.

I also tried this multiple pull procedure on dandelions. It was harder to eliminate my sideyard's dozen dandelions that way than it was the sedges. The sedges were much easier to eliminate this way than the dandelions. But eventually the dandelions were no more too. You could try eliminating the dandelions quickly by removing their tap root. At least with dandelions you know where the tap root is (directly below the plant), unlike the sedges' tubers.

By the way, removing the shoot (which is defined as everything above ground for the plant) and then burning the very top of the dandelion's tap root with a blow torch didn't work for me. The tap root recovered after a week or so and produced a new shoot. And I tell ya, I burned the tops of those tap roots to a crisp, and they still recovered. Of course, I haven't tried The Dragon torch--just a regular blow torch--so I can't speak to The Dragon's effectiveness, but I have my doubts. Anyone tried The Dragon on dandelions' tap roots?

Here's a really good article from the Wall Street Journal by Gwendolyn Bounds on organic ways to get rid of dandelions. She also reviews the effectiveness of a number of dandelion killing products on the market. Learned a lot from it.

I agree, I too have Canadian thistle and that's exactly what it looks like. Check out the link attached to this message.

smithmal

Here is a link that might be useful: Controlling Thistle

I think everyone should have a bottle of tenacity herbicide.
This is a great product for hard to kill weeds without killing the grass!

Spectracide weed killer works like wonder. For an year we gave it lawn care company but its expensive. The following year, I wanted to stick to natural method and save money. I use to pull dandelions, its lot of work when its for entire lawn. You have to bag it in compost bag and they keep coming back.

Then I bought Spectracide pre-dilluted weed killer spray, sprayed on each weed may be when temps were high 50s though recomended temp is between 70 to 80F. Sprayed on weeds including well established wees dandelion leaves, flower and center of the weed. For couple of days I didn't see any result. Thought its waste of my effort and time. After a week I noticed , they started turning pale. I sprayed weed killer again after 10 day or 2 weeks as its suggested to do so. They are completely gone from my lawn. I have a huge lawn, Its great relief to see that something works without spending whole lot of money.

Now I am applying here and there little bit on new weeds.

Initially bought pre-dilluted weed killer, after I saw the good results, I bought same Spectracide concentrated weed killer. Make sure you don't inhale it and wash your hands. thoroughly after application. It works on weeds and who ever inhales it.