I hate this stuff. Sure, it may look all sweet and innocent in the photo, but this weed is a tenacious lawn-destroyer. It likes wet areas and started growing next to my birdbath a few years ago. Not realizing how evil it was, I did nothing until last year. By then, it had spread out over several feet and even came up in a completely separate section of my yard.
I used Bayer’s Weed Control spray last summer, which destroyed everything above ground level but didn’t kill the roots. The buttonweed is back this year and I’ve been trying to remove it by hand, which I read is the preferred method of control.
Alan says that I may as well give up, but I refuse to let this weed win! 
Read more about Virginia Buttonweed here. If anyone has successfully dealt with this weed, please share your experience.
5 Comments
Use Confront by Dow to kill it..
i also have virginia buttonweed, i called roundup and they said to use “weed be gone”
it works very well although it doesn’t kill it for good
i use a 2 gallon sprayer for spots spraying
good luck
I have tried roundup and 24D, I got a slow kill or though I thought, it killed the heck out of my san augustine grass. A few months later, the virgina buttonweed was back. I talked to a PHD at Texas A&M in College Station and he told me there was no research of which he had knowledge that was being done to eradict virgina buttonweed. I am at the point of pulling my hair out. I do know one thing-if you mulch when you mow you will spread the heck out of it.
@ Billy: I’ve used Roundup over the entire area several times. Last summer was really hot and dry here, and Roundup killed everything in the area. As the buttonweed tried to fill back in, I sprayed it again and it died. In the fall, I planted grass and it filled in quickly. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I don’t see buttonweed coming back up when warmer weather arrives, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
I also have had an outbreak of buttonweed over the past 3 years. The one and only thing I have found that makes any difference is to spray with the Roundup Extended Control, and let it die, spray again (even though it is dead)and give it a week in the sun. And then, this is the kicker, I took and dug 12″ inches of soil down and in each direction from the center of the growth, and I hauled the dirt away, put new dirt in, and put new sod down. I have St. Augustine grass, as many people do in the south. I did that year one, and now two years later, nothing has yet to come back in that same spot. The second year, did it in another growth spot, and once again, nothing as of yet. So last year I did it in the remaining areas that I had the buttonweed, and so far this spring I haven’t seen the DEVIL rear its ugly head yet. It is very labor intensive, due the digging and excavation involved, but it really works, without coming back. The root system in buttonweed is what makes it an impossible weed to kill. It grows up to 10 inches deep, thus why I dug 12 inches down. Anyway, good luck, if you take my advice, it has worked without fail for me.