The war on thistles is being lost. There is one particular variety that is taking over the fields. I run the cows through. Then mow the thistles behind them. Again and again but it will not give up. I have tried all the organic remedies on small patches. It will not succumb. It sends suckers underground. This thistle hates shade so the only remedy I see is to plant trees everywhere. But I only rent this land. No trees allowed.
Do you remember when the big digger came through up on the bank and dug all the muck out of the ditch and slung it straight across the bank and on top of the wild grasses in the government land. It has all come back in thistles. Miles of it. If I used Round Up -and I don’t – even round up will not kill it. It is Round Up resistant. Soon it will flower and then all those thistle seeds will be blown by the westerly wind straight through the new wild flowers and across my fields.
Now, what the hell do I do about that. This is a rhetorical question. No need for a question mark. Or an answer. I am already battling acres of thistles.
Anyway – I am hot already – it was a brutal day in the gardens hoeing and weeding and planting and watering into the night. The humidity has arrived. Today will be even hotter. But there you are. 
My gates have dropsy. This is the fourth one this week -just falling off their hinges. Dropping to the ground. The ground is drying out and the gates are shifting. And the gates are Johns department. He is in charge of infrastructure. So now we are open plan until his next day off! That and I drained the batteries of two trucks, my car and the mower in the last two days. He was not impressed. I did nothing but try to start the vehicles. I turn them on and they are dead. It is a problem this draining of the batteries. Though I have lots of energy for a while. 
Today will be better. Today there is just me – I can do that. And I will walk everywhere. I hope you have a lovely day.
Am I in a mood? Well maybe. I cannot always be frickin’ Pollyanna.
Love celi
ps – Yesterday I was able to txt with my son who was on a plane travelling to Dubai. Can you imagine!
Weather report: Even hotter. With wind.
Monday 06/12 0% / 0 inMainly sunny. Near record high temperatures. High 96F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph.
The Kitchen's Garden 
85 responses to “The thistle war”
What are the other farmers in your area doing about the thistiles?
Another thing- our county gets involved when there is widespread invasion of noxious weeds. Maybe a phone call is in order.
Yes – that is a god idea – I might call the county seat – it is after all government land.c
Curious as to what kind of thistle….pigs love sow thistle – if it’s burdock thistle, the roots are edible. I recently read another blog from a woman who is trying to fight knapweed (star thistle). She found out that her honey bees love the stuff – and ‘star thistle’ honey fetches a premium price.
Roll with the punches 😊
The honey sounds great! c
Forgive me for being incredibly uneducated on this subject, but what do thistles do, I mean what’s bad about them? Speaking of Round Up, I was walking my dog the other day, and someone was spraying it on the sidewalk, where people and dogs have to walk, because there was grass growing in between the bricks. I was furious. Is it REALLY worth people and dogs getting cancer just to get rid of grass and weeds? People are just spraying it all over the place now. Okay, rant over.
The thistles are overtaking the fields, pushing out my alfalfa and grass. Which means less for my cows to eat. Otherwise I don’t are where they grow.. c
Oh, I see. Thank you.
oh my- a controlled burn comes to my mind. or renting goats?
Hmm – burning in the high summer is mental plus they grow back FIRST! So if you burn them then you end up with ONLY thistle. Tried goats. c
You might want to check out the info put out by Kathy Voth on teaching your cattle to eat thistles and other weeds. They are actually really high in protein and energy. It really is an interesting and worthwhile concept. The other thing that is good about them is their long taproot aerates the soil, and if you cut them or a cow eats them, it turns into a bunch of great organic matter. Not to be an annoying positive person or anything….
I am trying to force them to eat the thistle by mowing it but they really are not, they just eat the grass then lie down in the few corners that don’t have a lot of thistle and wait for the next move. These thistles do not have a tap root – they grow in low to the ground patches and spread rapidly under the ground popping up more plants as they go. To eradicate them i would have to get a huge digger and escavate the top 4 foot of my fields. Not happening. c
I think they are called bull thistles. It would fit because they are just as stubborn and strong as a bull. There are many different varieties of thistles and the worse trait of this one is the large sharp spines on the plant. From what I remember the cows would not eat them, even in hay. We always took a spade and chopped them off at the ground before they bloomed. We also took the added step of putting the chopped off ones into a feed sack and hauling it back to the burn pile. That could have just been because of the hatred of the darn things. For dad keeping them out of the hay field was a priority along with milk weed.
Thinking cool thoughts for you this week. Also at times I wouldn’t be opposed to whacking Pollyanna with a thistle.
Yes I have those too – in fact they are the ones i can get out easily. The ones that are beating me do NOT have a tap root – they grow from root suckers that run along under the ground popping multiple plants up. Over night you will find another hundred small plants in the grass. You are right – Cows don’t eat them. And if they reach my hay field I am ruined..
Well if Roundup won’t work I wonder if a way could be rigged up to zap them with an electrical jolt. Now I’m curious as to what kills the darn things. It may be that you will have to kill good vegetation to kill the creeper. The weeds are developing a resistance to our attempts to eradicate them with chemicals. One key to controlling a fast growing invasive plant is to try and keep it from flowering and making seeds. The plants need to reproduce so they are sending up more shoots to counteract the mowed off plants, keep mowing. The plants will continue to try and spread away from the poor growing area (in their biological opinion). By not letting them mature to seed reproduction you are stressing the plants and roots. The plants need to produce leaves and flowers to keep the root healthy. It may take you a couple of years but you should hopefully be able to reduce the spread if not eliminate them.
Anyway you can turn them all in before they flower? Chop them all up and hope they rot?
I love you being ‘frickin Pollyanna” : )
John is trying to keep up with the ones on the bank by mowing with the bush hog. We tried to till them in,this was a massive mistake – you are chopping up the roots and another hundred has grown from each root cutting. c
Not sure what your planting restriction are on the rented land but perhaps consider planting vetch, it’s quite aggressive and a great legume. The farmer I buy grain from would love to be able to harvest vetch seed exclusively; it’s the shape of mustard seed but quite a bit smaller.
http://www.luontoportti.com/suomi/en/kukkakasvit/common-vetch
Do cows eat it? I will check. Thank you.. c
Vetch is another legume. Related to alfalfa. Fixes nitrogen. Bees love it: )
Biological control – Weevils?
I feel your pain, Celi. I use 2-4,D on the thistles because it has the safest “grazing restriction” of the common herbicides (as in, pretty much no grazing restrictions for horses). It does kill them, more easily if they are younger and smaller. But if you can persevere with the brush hogging, all the seeds that were obviously lying dormant in that ground the backhoe turned up should have sprouted within, oh, say seven years. It’s a frustrating struggle: farmer vs weeds.
Oh dear. I once thought, when a thistle showed up in my garden years ago, it was a great thing. Such a rookie move! I quickly learned how deep those blasted roots go. I wish you luck on getting rid of that scourge.
Yes, I much prefer Cecilia to Pollyanna! (laugh)
Moods are good. They happen and then they change.
Thistles were a battle growing up. We had sheep. They seemed to keep them from growing once they sprouted but they always grew outside the fences. A machete on a regular basis kept their seed production lower than it would have been, but we didn’t win that battle.
Would the pigs root them out after they’ve been mowed?
OMGosh! Pollyanna… Forrest’s whole family have Pollyanna personalities. Drives me freaking crazy. I live in the real world… but alas, they say I am a Negative Nellie.
I hate chemical but it’s a must with thistle. We have inherited a real problem with them on the west end of the pecan orchard. I was not able to get them sprayed this year and I noticed yesterday there are ACRES of them back there!! Brush killer will do them in, but you surely need a calm day for that. I will have to concentrate on the thistle next year in late winter and early spring. This year I just had to let it go. They’re going to seed now… and I worry they’ll spread into the actual orchard, increasing my work. But, I do know birds like the seed so I’m hoping they eat a lot of thistle seed this winter! 😀
Everyone gets in a snit and has a mood. Those days can be bad ass for getting things done. For me, I feel more like purging stuff… getting rid of stuff I normally vacillate about what to do. Not a problem when I’m in a mood! 😀
I don’t know what kind of thistle you have, and you may have already tried this. When we first bought our ranch it was covered with star thistle. That particular thistle thrives in poor, dry soil so we put a layer of thick compost everywhere we found it. And we kept doing that, year after year. Finally, we have very little thistle left. We compost our horse manure so we always have lots of extra to spread around.