It's Time To Drop The Diys: There's An Amazon Find For Removing Crabgrass

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When you picture the perfect lawn, it rarely includes crabgrass, right? Yet, those nasty weeds seem to find their way into our backyards, quickly invading and taking over your entire lawn and even your garden beds. In your war against crabgrass, there's an Amazon find that might make your life a bit easier.

Amazon sells Sixcar's weed remover tool for just $12.99. It's a small gardening tool that has anti-rust stainless steel teeth at the end, which you can use to pull crabgrass out of the ground. It has a rubber handle, so you can get a stronger grip. This small tool measures around 13 inches long and only weighs half a pound, so you can keep it tucked away when not in use, whether in a small garage storage unit, gardening tool box, or cabinet. It's a good alternative to other commercial weed pullers on the market, which are often longer and bulkier. 

The benefit of this kind of tool to remove weeds is that it's reliable. While DIY solutions like hand pulling or boiling water work in tiny infestations, but they're hard to sustain if the crabgrass has already taken over. Other ways to kill crabgrass in your lawn, especially using herbicides and weed killers, also have serious downsides. These types of chemicals are full of toxins that are harmful to the environment, wildlife, and humans. So using this type of manual tool is a natural weed removal strategy that's safer than chemical solutions, yet more effective than some other DIYs you might hear about.

Removing crabgrass with this type of helpful weeding tool is simple. The stainless steel 'fork' section of the tool is at an angle, which means you can stick it into the ground next to the weed and pull towards you to apply pressure upwards. No need for excessive strength, the teeth of the tool should grab onto the root ball of the crabgrass and dislodge it at once. Once you've removed it from the ground, grab it with your hand and throw it in the trash. You might be tempted to compost these weeds, but to avoid new ones growing from seeds, it's best to avoid. 

The key here is to make sure to remove the roots as well as the leaves. It might be tempting to use the fork part to simply pull out all of the leaves, especially if you want to get it done quickly. But when you only remove the leaves, new plants can regrow from the roots, and you'll be back working on the same spot in no time. To help this process, don't hesitate to stick the tool in the soil several times to loosen the ground a bit, especially if it's compacted. This, plus a bit of wiggling as you pull, should be enough to dislodge the roots. 

Afterwards, you might notice holes in the soil. This especially happens if the crabgrass and its roots came out of the ground with lots of soil attached. If that' the case, try to remove some of that soil from the root with your gloved hand and place it back into the hole to fill it. If that's not enough, you can use topsoil from the garden center to refill the hole.