The lawn of our new house is infested with chives, of all things. While it make a lovely smell when I mow, they make the lawn look like it had green hair plugs. Is there any reliable way of getting rid of these? Since they’re a bulb, I don’t think mulching will help. There’s far too many to seriously consider digging them out individually.
Any ideas?
My sympathies to you. Each one of those clumps is composed of several dozen bulblets. You can dig up a big ball of earth surrounding each clump, but if you miss even one bulblet, it’ll eventually re-grow. There’s no chemical I can think of that’ll help you out, just a sturdy trowel and grim determination.
I’ve got the same thing. What will not work:
Covering with an old wool carpet (it decayed, the onions survived).
Covering with the black material used under wood chips as a lawn (thery’re still there, waiting).
The only thing I have ever heard of working was from an old farmer in southern IN (clay and loam soil). He loaded his disc with kerosene - it killed the onions, but nothing would grow there after that.
Very regular, close mowing should eventually get rid of them - grass is pretty much the only thing that can stand up to close, frequent cropping.
Umm, those aren’t chives, most likely. what you probably have is wild garlic or wild onions like these
I’ve been able to get rid of them in early spring by spraying or painting with Round up while shielding the surrounding vegetation. However I only had a few clumps.
There is a herbicide called “Riverside” that works (worked?) very well. I found that it killed wild onions and garlic but did not hurt Bermuda a bit. It’s been a few years (ok, about 15) but I recall that I sprayed it as a spot treatment of the “green hair plugs” and it got about 90% of them in one try. The remaining ones were curled and yellowed and were easily killed by the second treatment about 2 weeks later. No regrowth even years later.
It made the grass within a couple of inches of the spot slightly yellow for a week or so, but no long-term effect.
Downside: as I recall it contained arsenic as the primary ingredient. I think it’s still available in concentrate form at farm supply places, but have no idea if it’s available in “residential” quantities at garden shops.