I had my flower beds and garden beds cleared out last year because the weeds just completely took over. The weeds grew like crazy for some reason. The best solution was to clean everything out that was upright. Looked great when it was done.
However, this spring I was waiting to see what did and did not come back up from the ground. Now I have all these wild onions/ garlic all over the place.
It is bulbs not just roots. What is it actually and how in the world can I get rid of it?
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Garlic is quite expensive to plant. If it is garlic it would allow you to save quite a bit of money.
Hi Mike! I am not an expert, but I think that is wild garlic. The same thing happened to a flower garden I started a few years ago. I cleared out an area around a bunch of old tractors in my yard and mulched with pine needles and planted flowers. Looked great! The next spring I had hundreds of wild garlic leaves coming up through the pine needles. I didn’t want to spray weed killer. I wasn’t really sure if it would kill those bulbous plants, so I have to admit that I pulled them up, one by one. I did it when the ground was damp and made sure not to shake the extra dirt off because I didn’t want to loosen the baby bulblets from the main bulb. It actually worked and wasn’t as time consuming as you might think. Each year I have to pull a few that come up but it isn’t that many. Good luck, if you choose that route.
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@MikeC
A couple years ago I let some bunching onions go to seed and … wow! In the patio cracks, all the potted plants, among the fruit trees, etc. The upside was the rabbits stayed off my neighbors lawn that year.
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So far that is what I have been trying to do- pull them up and take the bulb. Or try to take the bulb. The ground has to be very wet, like after a rain. Then they will mostly come up. However, there are some that I just break the tops off of them and the bulbs stay in the ground. They are EVERYWHERE. It looks like I am growing tall grass there in my beds. You know exactly what I am talking about.
I thought about spraying them with something like a " Roundup" type product. I had read somewhere else the spray does not kill them completely. So how much would I need to spray to really get rid of them? How long would I need to wait until I planted something if I sprayed that much weed killer? Another year and then get some wild garlic back again. Uggggg.
How in THE world did all those just show up at once?If I was trying to grow them they would all die.
Thank you for your helpful info.
You too Richard. They do smell REALLY strong of you just end up pulling off the tops and not getting the bulb in the ground.
Elivings- the bulbs do not get very big. I would not want to try and chop them up to use, That smell would stay around for a long, long, long time in the kitchen.
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@MikeC Sounds like you and I came to the same conclusion about the Roundup. The largest ones are certainly the easiest to pull up. One option you have is just to go after the largest this year and then mulch your bed really well. I have been reading lately about putting down cardboard and then mulch on top. That would put a damper on the growth of the small ones and then next year you can tackle the survivors. This really is a multi year project, but it is doable.
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Looks familiar, alas! I just keep pulling them out, but they reappear faster.
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That happened to me in RI. Drove me mad thinking I had to pull them all out by hand. I had a professional come in with a strong weed killer. Took three years to get rid of it. Wild garlic. Horrible.
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Those remind me of what grows in North Carolina, they are called wild onions here, although they are like a cross between garlic, and onion, as far as the flavor and the texture, some people in North Carolina love eating them raw, they are much better cooked, yet I don’t like them anywhere near as much as the modern Garlic and onions. We could never get rid of them totally. I think that we just learned to live with them growing to some extent.
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You make them mad by pulling out their buddies. 
That is what I have always called them, wild onions. They smell strong and seem to never go away.
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I have wild onions here too… especially in my 90ft long food forest bed.
In the spring they come up in droves… and as you said if very wet you can sometimes pull them out bulb and all… but some are quite deep and you just break off the top… leaving the bulb to return again.
I have a hand tool… that looks to be designed for removing dandelion… it has a blade about 2 inch wide by 8 inch long… and i use that to push down beside the onion top and then leverage them out. It works well… but is still a one at a time thing.
But when you get the bulb and any bulbets… it feels good.
By about now i have mine cleaned up pretty good… and they dont really come back that much in the summer and fall… but next spring… they will be back.
I have often wondered if you could not just take a jar of roundup and small paint brush and dab some on each one… i have never tried that though.
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I’ve got that long handled dandelion tool. I will try it when the soil is wet and see if it makes it any easier. It is a long, long process. That area looks like I planted grass and that it needs to be mowed.
@MikeC … i have a son that just turned 21 … he is in college but comes home most weekends.
He needs a little spending money quite often and the last two springs i have paid him for a few hours of wild onion removal.
We can easily spend 8 hours each spring popping and tossing those things.
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Send him up here to hone his wild onion removal skills. 
It will take at least that much time as much wild onions that has come up. I took pictures to post here but it just looks like I took photos of a large tall grass area. It really did not give you that 
effect you would get seeing it in person. My daughter and I pulled , or tried pulling, some of them up this afternoon. Some just broke off at the ground level. It is suppose to rain the next day or two. The ground will be softer then so that would be a great time to try pulling those rascals out of the ground intact.
You can come here and pull up all you wanted- for free.
I already paid something like 21 dollars for mine.
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The wild onions/wild garlic we have here looks nice, grows very vigously and is really pretty nasty to eat. After eating it in four or five dishes we decided we really did not like it, no matter how much of it was growing all over in our garden. I have been pulling it ever since, which is about 7 years now. I love my neighbor who introduced it to our area, but we really do not like the wild onion taste. We just keep pulling and pulling.
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That is exactly what I am doing. I did about an hours worth today. The ground has to be either really wet or really dry for them to pull up more easily. Slow work but worth it.
They just smell like they would be nasty to eat.
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