If bristling burs are turning your backyard oasis into a minefield, don’t despair. You can win this battle with some time and patience.
Whether you call them stickers, sandburs or sticker burs, the grasslike weeds with sharp, painful spines are the bane of bare-footed children and homeowners alike in summer.
| Sticker species Both produce painful, spiny seeds, but they’re entirely different weeds. They spread by seed and thrive in bare, sunny areas, and both can be controlled by pulling young plants before they set seed, maintaining dense turf or healthy landscape beds and mowing regularly. |
| Sandbur (Cenchrus sp.) is a grasslike weed with characteristic painful burs throughout the lawn. |
| Puncture vine (Tribulus terrestris ) is a low-growing vine with small yellow flowers that produces hard, sharp seedpods capable of puncturing shoe soles and bicycle tires. |
If bristling burs are turning your backyard oasis into a minefield, don’t despair. You can win this battle with some time and patience.
According to many experts, the best defense against sandburs is a healthy thick lawn, since sandburs thrive where turf is thin, stressed or bare. But what if your lawn has endured seven years of drought?
If you’ve reduced your grass area to make your landscape more drought-resilient, kudos to you! It’s usually easier to keep sandburs in check when you have bigger landscape beds and less turfgrass to deal with in the first place. But for the turfgrass that remains, where do you start?
- Regularly mowing your lawn, starting early in the season, goes a long way to keeping sandburs from flowering and developing the dreaded stickers. In addition, it benefits the grass and weakens the weeds. So mow your grass often (at the recommended height for its variety) and avoid mowing too short, or “scalping,” which exposes the soil and gives sandburs an open invitation. Water deeply but infrequently (once per week is sufficient) to keep turfgrass in good condition.
If sandburs have already appeared, don’t let them go to seed. Learn to identify and pull young plants while the soil is moist, making sure to remove the roots.
- Once the prickly burs develop, you’ll need sturdy gloves to collect them before they fall to the ground. If they do, a shop vacuum can work well for gathering loose burs from patios, sidewalks and even closely mowed lawns. Some gardeners use specialized tools like sticker pickers — specialized drum rollers to snag burs before children or pets do (a modern alternative to dragging an old carpet across the lawn).
The key is persistence. Every bur you remove is one less seed waiting to sprout next year. If you stay after them, you can gradually reduce the seed bank hiding in the soil.
A pre-emergent herbicide can prevent annual sandburs from sprouting in the first place. Since they can start germinating in late winter when the soil temperature reaches 52 degrees and reach peak germination at 75 degree, they have a long season. Applying it in February and again in April may be necessary to provide coverage throughout the warm growing season. (For a natural alternative, apply ¼ inch of corn gluten instead.)
Can you eliminate sandburs without herbicides? Yes, many homeowners do, but it rarely happens overnight. Expect improvement after one growing season and significant control within two or three years of consistent mowing, hand removal, and good lawn care to stay ahead of seed production.
