Star of Bethlehem is poisonous???
I have been digging lots of them out of my yard,
potting them, and have them for sale
for a dollar a pot.
They didn't seem to mind the transplanting
at all and are blooming very cheerfully
in their pots.

From what I read on the internet, if consumed it can be, but a lot of people plant it, it has taken over my yard, way to much to dig up, I need to know what is the best thing to use to get rid of it.

Ornithogalum umbellatum toxicity

And from this site -

"Unfortunately, we do not have a good chemical control for Star-of-Bethlehem. A study out of North Carolina compared all common weed control materials. Trimec, a commonly recommended product, gave less that 15% control. The best products were Coolpower (31.3%) and Turflon Ester (23.8%). Coolpower is a commercial only product but Turflon Ester is available to both commercial and homeowner users."

Brenda

I don't think it's poisonous because from what I've been reading a lot of people ate it, and still do in some parts of the world.
The website linked below says "The Star of Bethlehem is a bulbous plant nearly allied to the Onion and Garlic."

I too have these in my yard, but not many. I was just going to mow them down with my weed wacker, but my mom said she wants them for her yard. I tried to dig up one, but only got to the white part of the stem. How deep is the bulb usually?

They're cute, and I like that they close up until the sun hits them. But I didn't plant them, so therefore they are a weed!

Here is a link that might be useful: Star of Bethlehem

Is there any method of getting rid of this pest.It has crowded out most of my flower patch? Thank you

They are quite deep now, several inches. Later in summer, August, they are only an inch or so down, so easier to dig up later. Go figure.....

I hate these things. The smallest particle of bulb will go on to bloom the next spring, and it seems that the bulbs move deeper every year. I also sifted garden soil by the cubic yard, to no avail. Now I just try to keep them from blooming,tear off all leaves, and dig up the ones I can get at. They really are SOBs.
I can't believe that nurseries/on-line stores are still selling these things; it's like selling kudzu.

I fought this pest for years, only to see it keep spreading. I used just about every commercial weed killer out there, only to see them come back in a week or two.
If these plants aren't illegal,they should be. More on a happy note though is that I think I have found a way to eradicate them. I bought a propane weed burner and attached it to a tank mounted on a dolly and secured by a bunge cord. Each plant was wilted after a couple of seconds of heat. It's been 2 months and they haven't come back.

After years of fighting this obnoxious weed, I bought a propane weed burner. Just before they flowered, I burned them until they wilted. I had a few of them try to come back and those I burned a second time. So far, they haven't come back. If they reappear next year, I'll burn them again. I'll post the results next year in June.

Star of Bethlehem is a bulb and you must dig them out to rid yourself of this plant.....
Burning the leaves will only kill the top growth and they will be back next year......but burning the leaves each year will eventually starve the bulb and you will finally get rid of it...BUT, it will take a few seasons to do so......

I'm not sure which is more environmentally unsound, using a non renewable resource (propane) to burn a plant or spraying any of the mentioned plant poisons.
Most everyone that should know says to dig the bulbs since not even the glypohosates are all that effective at killing them.

I'm afraid that you've got to just dig the bulbs up. Whatever you do, don't let the flowers go to seed!

I have been fighting this little monster for years. Trying to dig it help has been useless. I have finally started spraying. I am going to dig up plants I do not want to kill and go to container gardening to try to kill this pest. I have a large area and this plant spreads each year.

I read some one said to use Sulfentrazone to kill Star-of-Bethlehem. I noticed the timing to apply Sulfentrazone or other chemical is also very important. Anyone has any advice?

I got rid of this by digging up the plants along with all of the soil beneath them and disposing of the whole mess. Problem solved.

Star of Bethlehem is a cool season plant so treat it in early spring when it is actively growing with a product that is labeled for wild onion. It also has a bulbous root, which makes it hard for a herbicide to get totally in the root. So treat it once, then wait about two weeks and treat it again. Maybe a third in 1-2 weeks to make sure. Treating it when it first sprouts while temperatures are conducive to its growing is best. In other words, if it sprouts, then temperature fall to the teens or less, treating it will be ineffective.

Thanks John. In order to effectively apply chemical to Star of Benthlehem, I should wait until the weeds have enough leaves, right? Since the chemical should be spray on the leaves to make it work. Also, since the shape of leaves of Star of Benthlehem are narrow and hard for chemical to stick on it, what kind of adhesives I can used with my chemical?

The more leaf there is to catch the control product, then more of the herbicide will be taken into the plants system. But when it just sprouts, its growing rapidly and will absorb product at a faster rate, so its a bit of a balancing act. Also what weighs in is that younger plants or newly budding plants are more vulnerable to herbicides than mature plants.

The leaves are not only narrow, but they are also extremely waxy, causing products to run off. So a professional will almost certainly recommended a sticker, or adhesive, to be added to the herbicide mixture. I always found that a thorough job done without a sticker is good enough, so do not know much about stickers. There will be herbicides for sale with adhesives already mixed in them or will be sold in the same aisle as other herbicides.

SOB is the cooler of the cool season weeds. So they will begin to start sprouting much earlier than other cooler season weeds such dandelions, plantain, wild onion, etc. A herbicide applied to SOB in late spring will not be effective as the plants growth cycle has ended and it will not absorb any product. That is a safe comment. Treating SOB in mid spring tends to be ineffective also since, again, its a cooler or the cool season weeds. Also plants grow via temperatures and not by the calendar though.

I bought Ortho® Nutsedge Killer for Lawns Ready-To-Spray 32 oz bottle with hose end sprayer. But I use it in a tank instead of directly spray because I would like to add some stickers in. I added 8 oz of chemicals into one gallon of water then apply to SOB about 10 days ago. It seems the herbicide works perfectly. Now, SOB seems dead totally. Should I apply herbicide to dead SOB again since I only applied it once? I am afraid it may come back again at fall.

I have tons of them in my yard. This year, I dug a new garlic bed and my garlic bed is full of this weed. Spraying is not an option since that will certainly kill my garlic. So I used a long narrow garden trowel to dig them.

The trowel works really well, much better than the thin hand weed digger. The bulbs are about 5" to 6" deep. Remove the bulbs. It takes some time, but it does a complete job. I'm quite sure the weed problem next year will be reduced quite a bit.

I've collected 3 large trash bin full of this weed. I'll probably collect 4 more bins of this week. It is going to be hard for me to just dump this stuff. But it is very hard to kill them. I put them in black trash bag last fall, hoping to exhaust their energy. But they still come up inside the trash bag, without light. I'll see if they will die this year.

SOB is a notoriously hard weed to kill due to its waxy and thin leaves, relatively short ideal time frame to spray it, and its bulbous root. Usually it takes two treatments properly spaced out (~two weeks) to kill it. But if everything is done correctly, it can/will die with one treatment. If there are still green leaves 2-4 weeks after the first treatment, then it should be treated again.

If everything is done correctly and you had 10 SOB plants. Just assume that two will pop up next spring in the same area. Treat them again and that should solve the problem....until others start to try to spread into the area from other areas in the following years.

If the SOB is in ornamental area, I do not even bother to treat it. I treat the same way as my wild garlic. Mow it.

In garden area, chemical spraying is not accepted. Hand digging is the only way to get it out. And it is not hard at all. Just time consuming. But if you dig diligently, they will be reduced, or removed.

SOB IS moderately to severely poisonous to animals- even rainwater that collects in the flowers, if licked by your dog, can adversely affect them. Don't think you've eradicated them by spraying when they die back- at least in the Midwest they die out by late spring anyway, only to multiply like rabbits the following spring! So far, I've had the most success by digging them up and disposing of the whole chunk, dirt and all, which goes against my innate frugalness, but some of the bulbs are so tiny, 1/8" in diameter, that it's impossible to find them all, and if you put back the soil, chances are you're just replanting several bulbs. Pretty flowers, but UGH- bane of my existence.

Since now is another season of SOB, let me chime in... like sewwizard et al, we too got rid of them by digging them up.

There were a lot of its clumps spread all over an about 2000 sqft area when we moved in the current house (we didn't know they were there because we purchased the house in summer). Clearly they had been left alone for years and years, resulting in a high population density.

We dug them up, and dug DEEP and WIDE, along with all of the soil around them, throwing them into trash bag and disposing. Then before filling back the holes with new soil, we burned those holes with the weed burner torch to make sure any tiny bulblet we might have missed there would be killed.

It took over two seasons (yep, it was an intense, laborious process), followed by the following few years when we took care of a few tiny stray plants, but now the area is SOB-free.

We had given Dismiss a try once before the elbow grease, but it only burned the top of the plants -- it did not kill them and the plants came back strong (perhaps even stronger) the next season. Perhaps if it had been applied over several years it might have significantly weakened the plants (because it did burn them quite well), we just weren't that patient... ugh, the way they spread randomly was just too ugly for us to be patient!

So from my experience, I think the most effective way, if the size of your affected area is manageable, is the most primitive way... dig them up.

Dealt with these for years. Only way that worked to get rid of them was to dig them up including all of the soil around them and discard the whole thing. The soil is full of "babies" just waiting to grow big enough to bloom. Replace the soil and be vigilant for any you missed. Strenuous, but for me, the only way that worked.

Just follow up what I did in last two years to kill SOB in my 2.5 acre yard. Since the size of my yard is too big to dig all of SOB, I used Ortho® Nutsedge Killer for Lawns Ready-To-Spray 32 oz bottle in a tank to spray each SOB as I posted two years ago. One thing I would like to correct is that I used 4 oz of chemicals per gallon of water which is the same killing effect to SOB. Yesterday I do see some young SOB in the yard. I am not sure these SOB are missed or survived from my two years treatments. The amount of young SOB is about 5% of the original population (two years ago) so I think I should be able to kill all of them this year. Here are some key points I found to use herbicide to kill SOB (1) Sulfentrazone, which is the only ingredient in Ortho® Nutsedge Killer for Lawns Ready-To-Spray, is the only chemical to be able to kill SOB. (2) max amount of adhesive has to add into tank (3) when spray each SOB, move your spray nozzle from high top to the lower center. High top will spray all leaves but lower center will inject some herbicide into the ground to kill the bulbous
root. (4) spray as soon as you see SOB sprouts since when you see them they usually at least one inch high. Again, good luck on your fighting with this beast.

Sulfentrazone is also the only active ingredient in Dismiss (which is super-effective in killing yellow nutsedge, by the way), so it indeed might have worked if we had applied it over a few seasons. This herbicide is often mentioned in publications about controlling SOB (such as this one).

I've been fighting the SOBs for 4 years. After not making much progress digging them up, I tried hzhao65's method with the Ortho® Nutsedge Killer this spring, and it is killing the SOBs! :-) Unfortunately it's also killing my grass just as effectively. :-( Will seed the dead areas and have to wait until next year to see if the SOB bulbs were impacted.

I'm hoping hzhao65 is still around because I have a question about your method for using Ortho Nutsedge Killer on Star of Bethlehem. From your post on 2/26/18, you are referring to the ready-to-spray 32 ounce bottle, and you poured 4 ounces out and mixed with a gallon of water and sprayed that from a tank sprayer. Did you add a surfactant to that? You mention "max amount of adhesive has to add into tank."

If anyone else has ideas, I would sure like to hear from you.

SOB is the right nickname for this plant.

I have been fighting to eliminate SOB from a small strip of land in my back yard that I use to grow vegetables. Initially, I was not aware that the SOB's grew from bulbs so I was just getting rid of the shiny grass like leaves before the flowers emerged. But this year, couple of weeks ago I started researching and started calling specialty weed killer manufacturers. Finally, I contacted Gordon USA based in Kansas. I talked to a gentleman from the customer service of the company. He was very familiar with the Star of Bethlehem weed and advised me to spray Trimec Speed. He said this product transmits down to the bulb and would kill the weed. There may be some that may emerge next year from the baby bulb that were growing around the parent bulb. But with the following year application they should all be gone. I bought a ready-to-spray one quart bottle of Trimec Speed and sprayed the liquid last week in a small area. after one day the leaves were all yellow and were collapsing to the ground. To-day, I ordered the Trimec Speed 1 qt concentrate that I will mix with water and apply to the entire SOB infested area.

So Trimec Speed definitely works to kill SOB down to the bulb.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for that info, H-242. According to Gordon's website, Trimec Speed contains 2,4-D, dimethylamine salt, and I know that 2,4-D is one of the herbicides mentioned for killing SOB.

It seems like it is not hard to kill the sprouted SOB grass. The question is always whether the herbicide will act against the bulbs. We won't know until next year.

Hi, two years of using Ortho Nutsedge Killer on Star of Bethlehem has worked.

I did pour it into a sprayer and used a surfactant. I think the amount indicated is too much because it browned my grass pretty badly, killed it in some areas where I probably sprayed too much, but most of the grass did come back. The SOBs are almost entirely gone, I’ve just seen one or two this year and it was a carpet a few years ago.

I layed down heavy cardboard, added compost and dirt on top and weighed it all down with bricks in my flower beds. Only a couple of SOBs came back up. I think seeds blew in because they were at the top of the soil. I used black plastic and got some to die. I tried an expensive herbicide that was used on the golf courses in North Carolina and it was a complete waste of money. My entire lawn on one side of my house is full of it. I put down crabgrass preventer and hope that will kill it out. This SOB has pretty much ruined my gardening experience in Spring here in Kansas. I refer to it as ”the Enemy”. I have been fighting it for years. Complete and utter nightmare. I’m just going to keep mowing it down with a bagger on the mower.