What can I do about dandelions in the gardens?

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Hi, I have a fairly large patch of dandelions starting to grow in my garden - they're starting to creep down the length of the garden and they're part of the lawn so I don't just want to go out there and start spraying weedkiller.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get rid of them?

TIA

Eat them. Seriously, they make a good addition to a salad.

Thanks, appreciate that.

I'd like to get rid of them though and not have them growing back next year if possible.

Embrace them. They provide support for important pollinators. Or pick the flower heads and make wine. The petals are edible in salads, so are the very young leaves, especially if blanched (deprived of light) as they grow. 😁

Thanks @JayeAshe, I"m so shallow that I just want to get rid of them.

They are a nightmare! We don’t use weed killer which means hand weeding - you can get a tool for digging them out of the lawn which helps, basically they have long tap roots which you have to get all of up otherwise they just come back. But their seed dispersal is so effective that we’ve found it almost impossible to get rid, sorry! Hopefully someone else has a success story and knows the secret!

This. They are beneficial. Humans have been brainwashed by poison manufacturers to think they are bad.

If you must remove them, do it by hand with a weeding tool.

Pick the flower heads before they seed / get the weed killer you dab on specific plants then plant clover seeds in its place if you are happy with clover in your lawn. It's good for the soil and doesn't need mowing often and stays ever green in winter and is resilient to drought. I'm slowly turning all of my turf to clover.

The only way is to dig the whole of the root out. And don't let the flowers go to seed. When the flower is finished it'll close up before it opens again into the seed head. When it closes up after flowering will be the best time to take those heads off so that bugs can benefit from the flowers but you'll stop the spreading if you catch them before they open. You need to keep on top of them or they'll be away as soon as you've turned your back.

Spring is the busiest time for that and just now they're trying to sneak back in. Any time is okay for digging the roots out. You need to get all the root, they'll regrow from the mere thought of a root left in the soil.

Dig them out with a daisy grubber. And as pp said, don't let any of the flowers turn into dandelion clocks.

Don't use weedkiller, it's so crap for wildlife and it's only a dandelion, you don't need poison.

Use a sharp edged trowel to dig up the taproot as best you can and if they come back, pick the flowers before they've seeded and they won't spread as much. Biodiversity really is a lot better for the environment than a plain lawn if you can embrace the idea! I've got clover and native anemones in the lawn, bees love it!

If you can get the tap root out and keep digging up any new plants which appear, you'll get there in time.

But they're lovely! Bright sunny flowers, early in the year, interesting leaves, interesting seed heads, good pollinators, edible...

I do remove them in certain places in my garden, particularly if they appear in pots, but my garden is definitely not dandelion-free. They should be better appreciated.

Clover has been a fantastic addition to my lawn. It's very beneficial to the soil as well.

Before they flower if possible, sprinkle the centres with salt. Preferably on a dry day. It will kill them off. If they have flowered , cut the flowers off before the salt.

They are perennials so they aren't going to die away of their own accord. As others have said, dig deep and get the tap-root out.
I know all the guff about them being good for pollinators yadda yadda yadda but (a) they aren't the only flower in the world and (b) they are not exactly in danger of going extinct any time soon!

The only way to control weeds is too keep on top of the task. Little and often.

I used a product on my lawn which became infested due to the council's No Mow May and every other month policy. It was so unsightly.

Miracle Gro Evergreen complete 4 in 1.

It saw off the dandelions and the seed helped to conceal the bare patches.

I agree with the clover or other flowers - daisies, buttercups, self heal. We have dandelions but lots of other wildflowers too, and the clover has spread so it's taken over half of our lawn. When we moved in, there were too many dandelions for my liking and there didn't seem to be as many other flowers. I pick the flower heads off the dandelions sometimes as I've heard that helps.

I had the in my previous garden and dug them out of the borders. Left them in the grass though as i loved the yellow and they just got mowed every couple of weeks.

Our current garden has horsetail weeds an I long for the dandelions!

Horsetail isa nightmare! We have it too. I don't mind the dandelions, cheerful wee flowers.

Did you know that dandelions are a member of the Sunflower family? They're beautiful and so useful. Why not embrace them.

I'm another one uselessly suggesting to learn to live with them. When ours go to seed, we have a few days of goldfinches down feeding off them. Wonderful.

Otherwise, dig them out by hand, go down far enough to get the tap root out. Backfill the hole with toil soil and reseed with grass.

I have a lot of sympathy with the previous comments about the consequences of no mow may (which I support in theory) because our area is now full of ragwort. Even if we get rid of it in ours, it's everywhere around us now. Wonder what will happen long term.

We will have a lot more cinnabar moths

You can also try and improve your soil, they prefer areas with low calcium I think, their long tap root brings it up from deeper in the soil which benefits other plants, once it's done it's job they are meant to reduce in number (but that job takes about 5 years).

Really? I'm on solid chalk once you've got through the thin, gravelly top soil, so I don't think I'm short of calcium, but neither am I short of dandelions.

Salt is persistent and will poison the soil, best not to use it on weeds.