Author Topic: Thistle management with herbicide  (Read 750 times)

DorsetDear

  • Joined Jul 2025
Thistle management with herbicide
« on: July 03, 2025, 10:32:37 am »
Our hay field is slowly becoming a thistle field and other small paddocks thistles are competing with grass. We need to spray them. My partner would like to do it safely with a knap sack. What courses does he need to do? Is it PA1? I think I've found someone that provides the course online. Has anyone done it?

SallyintNorth

  • Joined Feb 2011
  • Cornwall
  • Rarely short of an opinion but I mean well
    • Trelay Cohousing Community
Re: Thistle management with herbicide
« Reply #1 on: July 03, 2025, 07:31:37 pm »
I can't help you with chemicals, sorry, but just in case it's useful to you or to other readers...

Top them in July, every year.  (You want them in flower but not yet gone to seed.  "July" usually works!)  You won't recognise the field within a couple of years.

Untreated cut thistles are highly palatable to livestock, or if you flail them all the nutrients will feed the ground for future years.
Don't listen to the money men - they know the price of everything and the value of nothing

Live in a cohousing community with small farm for our own use.  Dairy cows (rearing their own calves for beef), pigs, sheep for meat and fleece, ducks and hens for eggs, veg and fruit growing

Fleecewife

  • Joined May 2010
  • South Lanarkshire
    • ScotHebs
Re: Thistle management with herbicide
« Reply #2 on: July 03, 2025, 07:49:26 pm »
Which kind of thistles are they?  Spear thistles or creeping thistle?  Spear thistles need to be dug out by hand or sliced below ground just before the flower is about to open in June or July, creeping thistle is dealt with by frequent mowing.  So much safer than using poisons, which I can't advise about.
"Let's not talk about what we can do, but do what we can"

There is NO planet B - what are YOU doing to save our home?

Do something today that your future self will thank you for - plant a tree

 Love your soil - it's the lifeblood of your land.

Rosemary

  • Joined Oct 2007
  • Barry, Angus, Scotland
    • The Accidental Smallholder
Re: Thistle management with herbicide
« Reply #3 on: July 04, 2025, 07:34:05 am »
I support both Sally and Fleecewife. We had a huge thistle problem, started topping just before they set seed, when they've expended most energy and we have ahrdly any now. I did buy spray but it's in the shed.

Penninehillbilly

  • Joined Sep 2011
  • West Yorks
Re: Thistle management with herbicide
« Reply #4 on: July 09, 2025, 03:04:18 am »
I've been using a Ragfork for thistles, time consuming but satisfying. I had them down to just a few, but couldn't do it for a couple of years, as bad as ever this year. I try and let butterflies and bees have a go at the flowers, then get them before they seed, so timing is critical.
I don't like the idea of using weedkiller where animals graze, unless no option. (Spot treating to reduce the rushes. :-(. )

 

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