Canadian Thistles!!!!

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A cheap way of getting rid of these thistles... My fields are loaded!

-- Mary Ann Reed (phranch@fidnet.com), June 03, 2001

Answers

There are some threads on the board about this. Spraying them with plain white vinegar will kill them, especially the seedling ones. If you have taller, older ones, I think I'd hit them with a machete, THEN spray the rosette at the bottom. Otherwise, I have been following another person's advice and kicking them with a shoe/boot first to knock them over (I don't know if this helps with absorption, but it does help to mark which one you sprayed), then saturate them with the white vinegar.

Mine are history! It worked in a day and a few tried to rally, but later died anyway. I hadn't let them get to the stage where they were putting up flower spikes. It kills very little surrounding grass, much much better than Roundup.

-- julie f. (rumplefrogskin@excite.com), June 03, 2001.


You could make a tool like an apple corer with a long handle. Say 6" inches of 2" fixed to a pole with a little step welded on the side. With this tool you will be able to get the tap root out of the ground, otherwise just chopping them down will encourage a flower at ground level. Dont leave any flowers in the field.

-- john hill (john@cnd.co.nz), June 03, 2001.

What I meant of course was 2" inch pipe, sharpen the bottom edge a bit.

-- john hill (john@cnd.co.nz), June 03, 2001.

I went to a seminar on pasture management last year, and the presenters showed slides on the thistles, saying that their roots can go as deep as 30 FEET! If you even leave one small piece, they will regenerate. I'll be trying the vinegar this year, since it worked so well for others. Maybe the new goats will eat them... Jan

-- Jan in CO (Janice12@aol.com), June 03, 2001.

Had a neighbor get rid of his thistle problem with a rented herd of goats. They seemed to like them. The few I get I just pull up and give to the hens, they really eat them up.

={(Oak)-

-- Live Oak (oneliveoak@yahoo.com), June 04, 2001.



My goats wouldn't touch them. My husband takes the post hole digger out and gets most of them. We just continually have to do this. If you don't allow the plant to get much green growing on it, eventually the root will exhaust itself and die. I have found that if the grass is healthy and full, the thistles can't get very well established; however, bare patches are invitations for weeds to grow. We have had problems with moles leaving mounds of dirt. Seems like a thistle wants to grow on each mound. I suggest clipping and dragging your pasture and re-seeding if you can. Just a thought.

-- sheepish (the_original_sheepish@hotmail.com), June 04, 2001.

Roundup works great. It is not a poison so is not harmful in general, except to plants that it comes in contact with. It blocks the plants ability to photosynthesize light, and so it starves to death. Once the chemical makes contact with the soil it breaks down into harmless elements.

-- Skip Walton (sundaycreek@gnrac.net), June 04, 2001.

How much Roundup does it take to kill a thistle Skip? If there is a big area to do one could mount a pole, say 20 ft long, horizontaly across a vehicle about 18" off the ground. Wrap the pole in sacking or some such and douse with a fairly strong Roundup mix. Drive around giving all those tall weeds the kiss of death. But would that be a fatal dose?

-- john hill (john@cnd.co.nz), June 05, 2001.

Roundup is toxic - I would never use it. Check the LD50 rate.

When we lived in the city we eliminated canadian thistle from our yard just by pulling. In one year.

I wrote a little web page on it at www.split.com/lawn

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@javaranch.com), June 06, 2001.


Oh yeah.... one of the secret ingredients: When the kids got in trouble, rather than grounding them, we would make them fill a bucket with fresh thistles.

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@javaranch.com), June 06, 2001.


Paul, LOL.....my adult children still remind me of how I used to make them "weed the driveway" if they fought and bickered. They are all doing similar to their children now.

I am trying the vinegar, but we have rain every day so sofar no luck. If Roundup is so NOT poison, why did the Farmer's Advance advise all the farmers to get a baseline blood level drawn before they started the season???? Some one has their facts wrong here.

-- diane (gardiacaprine@yahoo.com), June 06, 2001.


check out http://infoventures.com/e-hlth/pestcide/glyphos.html

Look for the LD50 rates. This is the the amount of product required to kill 50% of a population. Look like about 2 grams per kilogram. Very toxic!

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@javaranch.com), June 06, 2001.


I understand Mary Ann has quite a few acres to clear.

-- john hill (john@cnd.co.nz), June 07, 2001.

Thick grass will help to fight the thistle.

Whether you use roundup or a shovel to pluck it, it will come back. If the grass is healthy, thick and tall, the new sprout won't get much light, which will make the grass out compete the thistle.

If you have acres of land of almost nothing but weeds, you might consider mowing and then growing a smother crop like buckwheat.

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@javaranch.com), June 07, 2001.


I forgot about the buckwheat Paul!!! Thanks for reminding me. We did that on a piece years ago and it really worked. NOTHING grew but the buckwheat that year.

-- diane (gardiacaprine@yahoo.com), June 07, 2001.


Please make sure that you're not killing rare thistles! If it's a cirsium pitcheri, otherwise known as Dune Thistle, Pitcher's Thistle, or Sand Dune Thistle, please don't kill it! It's rare!

-- Lindsey Parsons (lindseyparsons@yahoo.com), August 09, 2001.

I promise not to kill anything rare. This Canadian thistle stuff should BE rare, imho!

I read threads about vinegar; everyone seemed to have had good luck with it. Not I! I was a lot of work spraying them out of a spray bottle, because there are lots of them.

I thought I'd invented the stomp and scrape method; it does work, if you keep on stomping every five or ten days, eventually, but again, I've got too many of the durn things. Also, I wear sandles or go barefoot most the time so stompings a bit uncomfortable.

I finally got pretty scared, because the things were getting covered with flower buds and flowers. I got out the weed whacker and knocked hell out of them. If they try to flower again, I'll knock hell out of them again. So far, they are starting to grow back, but no flower heads after about ten or fifteen days. If they don't flower, do I win?

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@ecoweb.net), August 09, 2001.


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