Thistle Wars

I feel your pain. I've been actively fighting CT for at least 10 years. In the beginning I just tried mowing...doesn't work in a food plot. You would have to almost scalp the sod and even then, the roots are still alive and it rebounds. I've gone thru patches with a weed walker and cut it to the ground. Mowing stops the flowering, but it does not kill it. Plus, the thistle that gets run over by the tractor tires lays flat, then doesn't get mowed and it will still flower in the horizontal position.

I've tried pulling/digging it...doesn't work either. The roots are still alive and it suckers and now you have a dozen instead of one.

I've sprayed with gly of various strengths (all the way to full, undiluted strength) and at various times of the year from the rosette stage all the way to flower stage. Gly top kills it fine, but the roots are still alive.

So I tried a few other herbicides. Milestone...worked okay but I didn't care for the soil residual or what follow-up crops could be planted.
Raptor?? Don't waste your time.

Wes Weaver from Keystone Pest recommended Clopyralid3 to me. I like that the soil residue life span is shorter than Milestone and I'm pretty sure it's labeled safe on one of the brassicas (better check on that for yourself) and also safe on grasses like cereal rye so there are a few seed choices that I can still grow. I also like that C3 can be used all the way up to bud stage. In fact, I read somewhere recently that CT is more effectively killed at bud stage than rosette stage. I've rotated C3 with 2,4D this year. I don't want thistle to get used to the C3. I have not tried Crossbow or some of the other herbicides. I have more than enough chemicals sitting around...I hate the thoughts of buys yet another.
The C3 is working pretty well for me, but fighting CT is not a one-and-done deal. It will keep coming back to an extent. You just need to keep on it and eventually you'll get ahead of it. Notice that I didn't say you will eradicate it because I don't believe total elimination is possible.

There's a pretty good chance that your thistle didn't come from the rye seed, it most likely floated in on the wind. Under certain conditions, the seeds can float for literally miles. Right now, the unmoved or untreated CT in this area is in the floater stage. It's demoralizing and heartbreaking to ride down the highways and see hundreds of acres of the crap with so many millions of floaters in the air that it looks like snow flurries. There is no doubt that you will always have new seeds blowing in and as mentioned above, the germination rate must be off the charts.

And there's no such thing as a harmless CT plant. Even along the edges and out of the plots, the stuff will spread into the plots. In fact, I believe that the "mother plant" is often off the plot. We keep killing the "satellite" plants in the plot, but the real culprit is hidden and continues to live. Any time I happen to be walking past a CT plant in the bud stage, and I don't have a spray bottle in my hands, I will still pick off the bud. I realize I'm not killing the plant, but I can at least reduce the number of seeds that the plant produces.

The stuff is evil. Everyone should actively control it. The seeds don't just stay on your property, they float for miles.
I read a "wind indicator" thread on another forum where one poster insisted that CT floaters were superior to Milkweed so that's what he carried while hunting. If I caught a hunter releasing CT on my place, he would be thrown out and barred for life. I'd also make sure the neighbors knew what he was doing.
Did I mention the stuff is evil?
 
The best way to get rid of CT is to smother it, we had a patch in a brand new hayfield, we ended up piling some junk bales on it the first year, they stayed there for the whole 10 years it was in hay even though it was kind of a pain to work around.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tap
Pasture Guard will torch them but it is about $100 a gallon if I remember right. I have also killed some with Crossbow. I would think 2-4D would be your cheapest option.

PastureGard is awesome stuff - but it was closer to $150 gallon when I purchased a few years back.

As others have mentioned, Crossbow (triclopyr and 2,4d ) is pretty effective - I've never tried 2,4d with gly. For some reason I never had much luck with straight gly even when mixed hot.
 
There used to be stuff called Grazon P+D, we used it a few times on Musk Thistles. Could try something like Clarity ( Dicamba) and 2-4D mixed together
 
Back
Top