Winning the War Against Weeds
This is the time of year when it looks like the weeds are winning again. If you are like most property owners, you have probably scoped out the chemical aisle at the local farm stores, wondering which one might possibly be the cure all. Well the truth of the matter is that none of them are the cure all for all of the weeds that you have. Probably one the biggest break throughs in weed control in the last decade is a chemical named "Milestone". It actually can eradicate your thistle trouble if it is used at the correct rate and time, and for several years in a row. When you go to the farm store and look at the little bottle of chemical and the price tag, you had better have taken your blood pressure medicine first....it does look expensive. But what you have to know is this is one of the "new" chemicals, where you use a syringe to measure the chemical, not a five gallon bucket. A little goes a long long long way! It is critical to follow the label directions when using any chemical....and certainly that rings true with this one. Do NOT use more than the label says thinking "stronger will work better". You can actually reduce the effectiveness of these modern chemicals doing that. And it is bad for the environment as well.
For those of you that prefer to not use chemical control of any kind on your property, another technique that you can try is to get a roll of CLEAR plastic and cover what ever area you want to kill all of the vegetation. Hold it down with dirt along the edges. The clear plastic will let the ground heat up enough to bake the plants to death. It works better than using black plastic. I have used this technique effectively along canal banks of a large commercial organic garden and it worked swell. After the vegetation is dead you can move the plastic to another area. Be sure to plant some GOOD seed back in the area you have cleared, or new and different weeds will just come right back in. Weeds will take advantage of any open land they can find. So just killing one bunch of weeds won't do the trick. You have to get some good ground cover established or your problem will return.
For more info on weed management, check out this brochure from the CSU Agricultural Extension:
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