This blog's title "Annoying Thistles" is a deliberate play on words. Thistles are annoying and I also annoy thistles. As a boy, canada thistles were just arriving on the farm. So few and far between were they that we'd stop the tractor and, using a plier to avoid the stickers, we'd pull them. Now I know that it was pointless because they would simply re-sprout from the roots that remained in the ground.
Today canada thistles are ubiquitous. In spite of this, effort to keep then from going to seed is expected. If a farmer has large patches of thistles about to go to seed that farmer can expect admonition from the 'weed supervisor' directing that the weeds be controlled or else. So, such control was my task today.
With the thistles about to go to seed I mowed several thick patches of them in grassland. While it prevents their going to seed it sometimes seems it only annoys these annoying weeds (do you like the word play?). Though, I do have one bit of evidence that mowing does help.
A few years ago a series of wet years prevented equipment access to one field of grass. Lacking any form of control the thistles thrived. When it was possible to access the field I gave a farmer permission to cut and bale the grass with the thistles. There were some useable bales but many of the bales contained so much thistle that they were burned.
Much to the surprise of both the farmer and me, that field has been virtually thistle free ever since. Apparently the harvest of the thistles at that time actually killed them, they are perennials, and they did not regrow. Perhaps I should not be so pessimistic about the effects of the thistle annoying that I did today.
Takk for alt,
Al
Norway on the left and Sweden on the right of this picture.
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