TheMondayGarden.com

PICTURE: The Dandelion Terminator (DLT-100) and my electric drill.

To do the DLT-100 justice, you should read the information on the dedicated site (www.dlt100.com ). This article is intended to supplement the information already on that site and to provide an independent review of the product.

POWER: In my first test, I used my corded drill, on its only speed, with a long electric cord and it worked fine. In my second test I used a borrowed battery-powered drill. The inventor recommends a battery-powered drill on low power. What I saw was that the tool is so well designed that, even on low power, a quick burst of power, lasting no more than a second, is enough to do in the weed. A battery-powered drill is also nice since you can keep it handy in the wheel barrow.

NOISE Since the drill is in use only for short bursts, I didn't find the noise objectionable. While the inventor doesn't address the subject, the DLT-100 would probably also work well with an old hand-crank, non-electric drill.

SAFETY/LIMITATIONS: As mentioned, the inventor is a professional carpenter so he knows the damage an out-of-control electric drill can do to someone's hand or shin bone. He designed the DLT-100 to break if it hits too much resistance, like a rock or your underground sprinkler system. Better the tool than your hand! This means, though, that the tool is not for use in rocky places. You can't use it between the bricks in the patio or in the gravel driveway. Likewise, it may not help with woody-rooted plants like a mature rosa mulitflora or a 3-year old ailanthus sapling but this has not yet been tested. (Also, perhaps someday, if we're nice to Ed Reed, he'll develop a DLT-PRO 200 for use by trained workers to taking out the tougher customers).

PICTURE: While fleabane usually can't get tall enough in the yard to go to seed and spread more, I don’t feel that its fits in visually with the other plants. The DLT-100 took out 15 or so plants in a few minutes. It didn't get all the roots, as my technique can improve a bit, but it got more than I get by hand pulling with a fraction of the time and effort.

OPERATION: Load the DLT-100 in an electric drill like any other bit. Stick the DLT-100's point in the center of the weed, pressing the point down slightly and give a short burst of power. The weed will wrap itself around the bit, like spaghetti around a fork. Every 2 or 3 shots, clean the accumulated weeds off the tool by sliding down the black housing that rests just above the bit. There's generally no need to go deeper in the ground than a half inch so the amount of earth disturbed is minimal. Not disturbing the earth is very, very important if you're trying to reduce the number of weeds -- every time you till the earth, you open up the seed bank and give more weeds the opportunity to grow.

You can buy a 12" extension for your drill that means almost no bending over. I tested the DLT-100 without this aid and did OK. I do recommend trying the extension so there's as little bending as possible.

In my tests, I found that different plants needed slightly different techniques. I'm sure that you'll discover all kinds of things you can do with the device and many "best practices". As you do, please share the wealth by posting comments on this site or emailing them to Ed Reed via the official www.DLT100.com site

SPECIFIC PLANTS: Armed with a Dandelion Terminator, you'll now have the power to decide the make-up of your lawn. So you now need to think about which plants to keep and which ones to take out

PICTURE: A diverse mix of white Dutch clover, smartweed, plantain, oxalis, lawn grasses, and broad-leaf crabgrass. I'd take out the crabgrass, which will otherwise take over, and perhaps half the plantain. I'd then over-seed (in Spring or Fall) with a grass seed mix to increase diversity. Also, a little thyme might be nice, or some cinquefoil, wild strawberries, speedwell and violets -- the list is endless.

The Ideal lawn: The ideal chemical-free lawn is a bio-diverse, very short meadow, made up of a wide mixture of low-growing plants that don't mind being mowed at the 3" level. The greater the diversity, the more the lawn is naturally resistant to pests that plague one or more plant species (e.g. grubs, grass fungi), and to drought, foot-traffic, flooding, and other woes. Using a board range of local plants and clover also generally eliminates the need to add fertilize or supplemental water.

Undesirable lawn plants are the overly aggressive ones like crabgrass and spurge that crowd out the neighbors, and the ones, like chickweed, that die in a drought, leaving bare spots which can erode. Some plants may also be undesirable because they don't fit in visually with your lawn-tapestry. Fleabane and wild onions, for me, fall into the latter category. The diverse lawn, with a high percentage of broadleaf-plants and clover, is less attractive to Canada geese, who prefer grass. Conversely, the diverse lawn is more attractive than most of your garden plants to rabbits and woodchucks, whose first love seems to be clover, dandelion, and violet leaves.

Dandelions and plantain: The DLT-100 was designed for the broad-leaf tapped-rooted plants that grow low to the ground. I found it works perfectly on them. What you need to consider with whether you want to remove all or even most of these plants from your lawn since the deep roots are very beneficial to the overall health of the lawn (and, besides, the rabbits like the dandelion greens).

PICTURE: I tried to kill this curly dock for years and finally gave up. A few minutes after this picture was taken, its root crowns were pureed mush. Now, that was fun!

Curly dock: There's a patch of curly dock in one of my mother's gardens that's been getting worse for years. The deep, fat tap roots are just too hard to dig out without taking the rest of garden with it. To make even more of a challenge, half the patch is under a low growing bush where I can't get a shovel in the ground. The best I've been able to do is keep the curly dock from seeding (mostly). The DLT-100 took the crowns off the roots in seconds and shredded root top so that the curly dock is going to have a very hard time regenerating. I suspect that trials will show that the DLT-100 has a lower regeneration rate than hand cutting the tap root because the DLT-100 shreds, or even purees, the root top. This opens the root up to decay. Even if curly dock manages to re-sprout, spending less than a minute on it every month or so is no problem and a much better solution than I had.

Wild onions: In the second test, my friend's yard was dotted with patches of wild onions. To me, wild onions are visually undesirable since they grow so much faster than the grass. They are also totally a pain if they get in the garden, so it is best to eradicate them if you can, but that doesn't mean spreading lime or something all over your yard and upsetting nature's balance. If you hand pull the onions, you can't help but leave behind many tiny seed-onions, so, next year, you'll have even more onions than now. My solution has been to hand cut the onions to the ground whenever I pass by but this is too hit-or-miss to make much of a dent. The DLT-100 works perfectly to effortless cut the onion stems off just below ground level. Over the next few weeks I think we'll see that the onions will be slow to regenerate and that even the fat onion bulbs don’t have enough reserves stored in them to survive this treatment more than a few times.

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PICTURES: The single crabgrass plant on the left can accrete into a crabgrass-only lawn as on the right. Some responsible people have an all-crabgrass lawn; it certainly is better than pouring chemicals and water on the lawn. A crabgrass lawn can look OK, and it is hard to kill. I, personally, prefer a diverse mix of lawn plants.

Crabgrass: Crabgrass doesn't have a tap root or a bulb but the DLT-100 did a better job for me in both my tests than hand pulling. Any time that you have a clump of weeds, rather than a single plant, the best line of attack is to work from the edge, moving inward in a spiral pattern. I found this rule to hold true with the DLT-100 when facing patches of crab grass: go for the weaker, smaller plants at the edge of the patch first. Then, you'll be able to see the centers of the bigger plants in the middle. The DLT-100 did not, on the first pass, removed all of the crabgrass root crowns but it got more than hand pulling usually does, while disturbing the earth less. I suspect that the DLT-100 will be fully effective in 2 or 3 treatments -- again much less work, and bending, than hand pulling.

Mustard, purslane and spurge: Bittercress is a small mustard with a low rosette of leaves, tiny white flowers, and a thin center root. The root is not fleshy like dandelions, plantain, and the like. I don't have a problem with bittercress in the lawn --it is kind of cute -- but I wanted to see how the DLT-100 worked with a plant of this type. The DLT-100 wrapped the entire little plant --leaves, crown and roots -- around the blade with a ½ second burst. The tool should work similarly on spurge and purslane. I personally don't like thyme-leafed spurge as it is too aggressive to be a "good neighbor" in the lawn. Chickweed was the only plant that where the DLT-100 didn't seem to be much help and it may be that I'll figure out a technique for this over time.

Invasives: There is gold to be had here. Everyone struggling with invasives needs to consider the DLT-100. We need to do trials and share the information. As noted above, the DLT-100 is not designed for woody-rooted plants or for use in rocky ground. However, that leaves lots of possibilities with herbaceous invasives and with young plants that have yet to become woody. The beauty of the tool is that it takes out only the plant's crown, and therefore minimally disturbs the soil and surrounding plants. I tried it on garlic mustard that hadn't yet bolted and it worked like a charm.

PICTURES: Three problem plants that can be attacked with the DLT-100, from the left, are Japanese knotweed, garlic mustard and wild onions. I suspect that trials will show that the DLT-100 will work best on Japanese knotweed when, as pictured here, the new shoots are sprouting (but watch out for rocks!) It is always best to get garlic mustard before its starts to bolt-- the DLT is prefect for uprooting the pre-bolt rosettes. Wild onions are discussed above.

NEXT STEP:

BUY YOUR OWN DLT-100: You can buy direct from the inventor at www.dlt100.com ; numerous other web sites are starting to carry the product.

TRIALS: Those of you from the agricultural schools, Forest Service, parks departments, Master Gardner programs, nature conservancy groups and the like, do some trials and post the results on the web. The tool is inexpensive and the testers will have a great time.

SALES AND FUND RAISING: This product seems to sell itself. Further, the more DLT-100's that get sold, the less chemicals people will use and the more invasives we can safely kill. Talk about win-win.

Right now, the inventor is open to community groups selling the product as a fund raiser. He, of course, would also be very pleased if you got your local nursery to start selling it. Contact him at ereed@dlt100.com or via www.dlt100.com

PICTURE: These violets, in between the patio bricks, are safe from the Dandelion Terminator but not the neighborhood bunnies. My mother "bribes" her rabbits with clover and violet leaves to stay out of the garden. Her neighbors who don’t do this complain about rabbit damage to their gardens.

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Photo credits: Sue Sweeney
© Sue Sweeney 2006

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