A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2004 "Wild Violets" are taking over...

.... my front garden!! They've migrated to our garden from our neighbors house/driveway & now it's spread to our front garden (right next to their driveway).

I'd like to take care of them organicly, but don't know how. Also don't have much $$ to hire an organic company to do the work for me. There are WAY TOO MANY to try to pull them by hand. The grass in the yard is doing pretty well. I did use a chemical fertilizer/weed killer (Scotts) in the spring, but the violets didn't die... they seemed to multiply.

Any ideas??

I would get in there and spend days and days ripping them out but then I liked the book "The Tommyknockers" by Stephen King.

Violets are one of the hardest weeds to control.
You are not going to have much luck using a weed control attached to a fertilizer.
You can control them by using a 2.4.D based product, but it must be done in the spring while they are still in bloom, if you wait until after the surface of the leaves harden and you might as well wait until next spring to do anything.
Even if spraying in the spring you may need to do multiple applications to kill them dead.I have tried to choke them out with grass by just feeding lawns, and properly caring for a lawn, but the violets enjoy pretty much the same conditons as the grass does so what ever you do to make the lawn healthier, it just does the same to the weeds. <img border="0" alt="[perplexed]" title="" src="graemlins/confused.gif" />

Good Luck

Mike