gardening/yard help please?!

[tuneskids]

how the heck do I rid my yard of being a field of yellow, and make it a field of green? without spending a heck of a lot of money would be preferable.

Compared to both neighbors, our yard looks like crap! They have beautiful green grass, very few dandelions ... mine just keep multiplying, despite ripping the heads off the darn things so they can't go to seed.

Oh, and if I just turn over my garden, with a shovel ... will it work as well as a rototiller that I can't afford to rent/buy? We want to get our garden planted asap, so we can enjoy it, not that the weather is finally nice and not dropping to freezing overnight.

[Leah]

I would go to your local farm supply and pick up something called 24D or a broad-leaf weed killer. Don't go cheap. You get what you pay for.
Buy the concentrated stuff, not the pre-mixed. Then you can mix your own concentration. I always like to err on the side of more than not enough. However, if you mix it too strong, it can turn your grass yellow. So I would just go a little bit more than what the directions say.

We have a weed roller - goes behind our garden tractor (but then again, we have 8 acres).

And I don't think you should have to rototill your garden. I would just hoe it, rake it, turn it over and call it good.

[Brooke W]

Call me a rebel. I like dandelions. I also, if i lived in town, wouldn't care if my yard didn't look like everyone else's,lol. But if you want to get greener, be careful with what you get. Read carefully. You have to be careful with kids and critters when you use something like Roundup.
How big's your garden that needs weeding? The hoe sounds like a good plan to me as well. For tighter places, get yourself a hand trowel and a pair of garden gloves ( i hate getting all the stuff on my hands,lol) to get at the smaller stuff around your plants.

[clearskies]

DH swears by Ortho Weed-B-Gone. The stuff that doesn't kill grass.

[pbumbaca]

We use a professional brand of weed killer but I'm sure you can find something at Home Depot that will work well. Just ask someone in the garden center.

And good for you for wanting your yard to look nice, we have worked hard on our yard and hate it when a neighbor doesn't care about theirs and lets all their weeds go to seed because they end up everywhere!