“Pickers,” as I use to call them when I was a kid, have become my recent focus as I discovered 2 of our pastures are filling with them. Using the ever so helpful APP Seek, I was able to identify them as Canada Thistle and Perennial Sow Thistle. Both highly invasive and aggressive growers. The good news is our goats and sheep rather like the Sow Thistle. The bad news, no one likes the Canada Thistle and so it thrives and thrives…..and thrives.
Quick aside; I noticed what I now know to be Canada Thistle in our pastures last fall, so in an effort to "control" them, I had spent many hours pulling a good portion of them out by hand. Well, wouldn’t you know that pulling up individual Canada Thistle can make things worse.
I have learned that when it’s pulled, the vast underground root system breaks and now those broken roots and rhizome it’s connected to can now sprout into TWO plants to replace the ONE you just pulled out. Of course...
Perennial Sow Thistle on the other hand can be safely, easily and effectively hand pulled as a management strategy.
So, now that we know what we know, what do we do? I read some and then read some more and also reached out to an amazing group of wonderful, insightful and experienced women who also practice care and conservation of our planet, Wisconsin Women in Conservation.
And with all of our new found information, Tracy and I developed our plan of attack.
As much as we wanted to avoid the use of chemicals on our soils, we also realized that in order to have our pastures, hayfield, native plants and pollinator plants flourish, we needed to take a drastic step.
We recognized that while Sow Thistles are not ideal, it is much more manageable and also provides forbs for our animals. Canada Thistle however, is a much different (ob)noxious weed and we can clearly see that we are up against an very unpalatable, fast and aggressive grower that takes over an area of land quickly, taking all native plants and lush grasses out in the process.
Our managment measures as of today for Perennial Sow Thistle are:
1. Conduct pasture walks every few weeks from late June through early October and hand pull all visible Perennial Sow Thistle before they go to seed and bag and dispose of them.
2. Implement intentional grazing in pasture areas with more prominent growth of Sow Thistles using our portable electric net fencing.
Perinnial Sow Thistle with some flower/seed heads open and some closed.
Our managment measures as of today for Canada Thistle are:
1. Cut pastures in late Spring, mid Summer and Fall using a rotary cutter and cut down growing Canada Thistles to prevent flowering as well as break/cut stems to interrupt growth and encourage die off.
2. Conduct pasture walks in between cuttings and cut all tall standing Canada Thistle using hand scissors, being sure to pick up and bag/dispose of all stems that contain purple flower heads.
Not So Fun Fact: If left on ground, the purple seed heads will spread thousands of seeds even after they are cut.
3. After the fall pasture cutting, we will also apply a herbicide (a Triclopyr 4, Surfactant and water mixture) as this is the time that the Canada Thistle is recharging their root systems for next growing season and when a herbicide may be most effective. In efforts to practice low chemical use, and our pastures totaling only 2.5 acres, we plan to hand spray this mixture onto all visible Canada Thistles vs. entire pasture application.
4. Broadcast spread granular Gypsum on pastures to increase calcium content of the soil, Canada Thistle grows best in soils low in calcium.
Canada Thistle with seed heads closed.
We are also walking the edges of our property throughout Summer and into Fall and hand cutting all Canada Thistles we come across and pulling up Sow Thistles and bagging and disposing of all that have flowing heads..
We will continue this pattern of management for the next few years as it sounds like that is how long it can take to Tackle Thistles. And by "tackle" we mean, to reduce the overall amount to better manage them ongoing.
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