In article ,
Janet Baraclough wrote:

The message
from Jan Flora contains these words:


Anyway, I found some yellow hawksbeard in one meadow last year. It's
a horrendous noxious weed that will totally invade a hay meadow, if
given half a chance. I carefully mapped the location of the weeds,
then forgot all about it this spring. The stuff is *really* hard to
eradicate, because it spreads by seed _and_ by creeping rhizomes.

I've found the best way to eliminate the yh roots is to bunch the
foliage to one side in my hand, slide a sharp knife down into the soil
and slice through the root as deep as possible. Very few of them will
come back from deep cutting.

I'll try that. The SO asked what sort of herbicides I have. Uh, none,
except 15% acetic acid. I don't use garden poisons...

I told him to get a handful of urea and burn each plant. He
didn't do that yesterday, so I'll go cut those plants today,
as you recommend. Our infestation is very small and localized
right now. I pulled every bloom & seedhead off the plants and
burned them yesterday.

We stopped letting friends park their pickups and horse trailers on
the ranch, because vehicles transport noxious weed seeds in mud on
the vehicle frames so efficiently.

You should see how careful Australia is about that; hugely impressive.

Hmm. Do they make people pressure wash their vehicle frames?

Everytime I drive into Alaska from Canada (from running up western
Canada from Seattle), I stop in the first town in AK and
pressure wash my rig, mostly underneath. They have Canada thistle
in western Canada. We have a very small bit of it in Alaska right
now and our weed warriors are trying to eliminate it.

Janet

Jan