Will *this* work to rid yard of this grassy weed? [View all]

[UTUSN]

O.K., I have not been able to identify the weed. The ones in this pic are "buckhorn plaintain," NOT mine (and certainly not my landscape). But the pic gives the general shape: A clump at the bottom, a tall thin stalk, and a seed thing on top. The seeds on my weeds are in the shape of spokes on a wheel, different numbers of spokes, five, eight.

A couple or three years ago there weren't many, and I thought to hoe each plant one by one and rake them all up, thinking I would avoid "planting" the weeds by not letting them stay on the ground. Obviously, just mowing the grass would just "plant" the weeds. This seemed to work in the next year. But then the danged things sprouted with a vengeance.

I tried another thing, weedeating the tall stalks and then raking up those, the seed stalks. But this didn't seem to work.

The nursery people have told me that the grassy weeds herbicides were outlawed by EPA, who knows. So here's what I started to try: Using a version of Round-up (that kills everything), but in a very SPOT spray. Just on the seeds.

My specific question is: Will MISTING only the seed heads, separately from working its way down to the roots, make the SEEDS, besides dead, INFERTILE?

It's too soon after the first couple of weeks, but it looks like a resurgence has not immediately occurred in the limited area it's been tried so far.