How to Engage in Highly Aggressive Chemical Warfare to Ensure Nothing But Grass Lawn in Arid Desert Environment Designed Only to Support Dirt

*These are not instructions for the light-of-heart gardener who believes that dandelions should be embraced and used in everyday cooking. This is for gardeners interested in a Patton-style attack on lawn weeds. Think Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

**I do not personally sponsor any of the products I recommend, but I would if they asked me too. For free, even.

1. Do not spray Round-up directly on your lawn. Not even if the army of dandelions and clover have banded together under the leadership of the head plantago and are ready to divide and conquer. Not even if the southeast corner of your lawn faces imminent crabgrass occupation by guerrilla ground ivy rebels. Not even then.

2. Do not spray an entire bottle of Round-up on your lawn.

3. If you happen to get so fed up with THE DANDELIONS THAT ARE TAKING OVER YOUR LAWN, NOTHING COULD POSSIBLY LOOK WORSE THAN THE DANDELIONS, NOT EVEN LARGE PATCHES OF BROWN SPOTS AND MISSING LAWN, TYLER, than Scotts Patchmaster Lawn Repair Mix is the only way to go. Mulch, fertilizer, and grass seed right in one bag. Note: one 15 lb bag of Patchmaster isn't sufficient to repair the damage caused by an entire bottle of Round-up. You'll need two for that kind of damage.

4. When you fertilize your lawn, use the one with the broad-leaf killer in it. This does essentially nothing, but since you have to fertilize your lawn anyway, you might as well use this as your first line of attack.

5. When the mildly ugly yellow flowers that dot your lawn turn into very ugly poofs of dandelion seeds, the most aggressive thing you can use to wipe them out is Round-up. Remember, however, DO NOT SPRAY ROUND-UP DIRECTLY ON THE LAWN (even if you've been married for nearly six years and you think your marriage can take it. It can't.). Use Round-up concentrate and apply the concentrate to the dandelions by carefully painting it on to the dandelions using a sponge-brush. This is of course taking great care not to hit any of the grass with the Round-up. If you do miss and hit the grass, see number 3.

6. After wiping out the worst of the dandelions, use Ortho Weed-B-Gone to wipe out the rest and the other ground covering weeds. This will take more than one application. Apply about two days before you plan to mow, so that the leaves are ready to soak up their chemical death. Do this weekly. For several months, even.

7. There will be dead spots after your highly aggressive chemical warfare. Not I-just-sprayed-Round-up-on-my-lawn size spots, just spots that used to be taken up by weeds. See number 3 again, otherwise new weeds will happily germinate in that newly cleared dirt.

7. Do not apply Round-up directly on your lawn.