Question
QUESTION: Do you know of an organic way -- no chemicals -- to get rid of or at least to avoid "catching" wild onions in the lawn?

I have a friend who has them everywhere and I thought I would know a solution. But I can't find them anywhere.  I dig mine up which is annoying but after cutting the grass it is hard to tell where they are.

ANSWER: Pre-emergent herbicides are spread on the lawn before certain weeds sprout. They create a film on the soil and are usually used to kill annual weeds as they germinate, before they have emerged through the soil surface. Post-emergent herbicides are applied directly to weeds that are already up and growing.

You could spot weed them with an organic weed control, or weed and feed the whole lawn.  

For an organic weed and feed program I would use "weed protection plus" available from Planet Natural.  http://www.planetnatural.com/site/xdpy/sgc/Organic%20Lawn%20Care/Weed%20Control

They also carry a a product called Weed-A-Tak that you can spray directly on the onions.

The general non-organic way to eliminate wild onion and other weeds that are currently growing in your lawn, use Trimec Broadleaf Weed Killer, Ortho Weed B Gone (liquid) or Speed Zone.  If they are really driving you crazy this would be a short term use solution.  Then you could start an organic program using organic weed and feed.

Or, you could spot weed using distilled vinegar..a natural herbicide, which will kill every living thing, including the onions and the grass.  Then when they are dead, you can make the soil alkaline again by adding some lime, and then re-seed grass seed.

Or you could just dig them up by hand, fill in the hole with soil, and plant grass seed.

The easiest would be to live with them and just mow them and keep them as part of the lawn. Be sure not to let them go to seed, as that will cause them to spread.



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Your advice about using herbicides is a surprise to me.  The organic pre-emergents do not seem a likely solution -- aren't wild onions bulbs (unaffected by pre-emergents)?  And as far as these going to seed, am I wrong to believe that they propagate very efficiently by self-dividing and splitting underground?  Sometimes they come up in little clumps when I pull them up.  Is vinegar the only answer left?  (I'm happy to use it but I would really like a less labor intensive solution, the one that suggests Borax to get rid of certain weeds.)  Thanks.

Answer
I was just saying that chemical herbicides would work if you wanted to go that route.  I wouldn't advise that you do so.  Yes wild onions will multiply and divide underground as well as reseeding.  Vinegar is the only herbicide I know of that I know will work.  Then adding lime back into the soil will correct the pH so the grass seed will then germinate.  I think that I would just live with the onions in the lawn and mow them regularly.  They do traditionally provide some pest rotection...technically wild onions are not weeds, they are bulbs, so I don't think borax would work, nor corn gluten.