Canada thistle is tough but you can win this battle. They make a large, deep, carrot-like root that is perennial. You mentioned digging, which is good but not always an option, and unless you are very thorough, they can come back from pieces of root left behind.

Take a dandelion fork or even a flat-head screwdriver and pry up as much of each plant as you can. They will come back several times but keep prying them up and eventually the root will be exhausted of stored energy and be unable to send up new growth. Seedlings should be plucked immediately before they can form big roots.

Regarding spraying, I assume you mean roundup. I don't use it and am not recommending it but you've bought some so it sounds like the route you'd prefer to take. My Mom uses it, too, and canada thistle is one of the plants that can live through occasional sprayings of it. If you are more disciplined about using it, you may have more luck than she did with more sporadic use.

It needs to be hot out, and not windy. It takes a lot longer but you'll get much more bang for your buck if you use a sponge-on-a-stick from hardware or hobby store with painting supplies. The more leaf surface area you can cover, the more lethal it will be. The sponge applicator allows you to fully coat leaves without wasting any, or possibly getting it on a plant you don't want to kill. Applying more than necessary to coat the leaves is a waste. Glyphosate is absorbed through leaves and transmitted into the plant. You may see some thistles in your lawn too and this is a way to get to them without making dead spots in the grass. This is possible to do when there is more wind, too.

Plants with huge fleshy roots are known for being more able to live through either of these methods. So it's usually necessary to keep at it whenever they pop back up, until they finally don't come back again.

There are weeds that are harder to get rid of, but that probably doesn't make you feel any better at the moment.

Thank you so much for that very informative post! My problem here is that I have too much garden out. I'm so busy pulling weeds at other areas (besides where the thistles are growing) and still planting things outside that it's probably only once every other week that I get up to the milkweed patch. When I got interested in butterflies in 2005, I started out kind of small, but the more I learned about various kinds of butterflies and the plants that they lay their eggs on the more I dug and dug to make more garden. As a result of digging by hand with a trowel, I ruined my hands and arms. That's another reason I don't get around to digging out weeds like what is probably really needed. I'm going to downsize in a few months so it's more manageable.

Anyway, about this darn thistle...would it matter if I dig it out with a trowel rather than a screwdriver? I'd think that my big trowel would be easier for me and reach down just as far or further. So from what I understand digging kills it faster than spraying. Huh, here I would have thought the opposite.

I'm going to really make an effort to get up there to that garden/patch tomorrow and try to get those dozens of plants out of there. So did you personally have them in your garden?

I kind of assumed that if they get in the yard it wouldn't be a problem because they'd keep getting mowed off, but from reading your post I get the idea that a person should get rid of them there too. So far there are none in the lawn. I just wonder where these things came from anyway!! It really upsets me because I already have way more to do here than I can handle. I really regret making this much garden space.

Well, I guess it's good to know that there are other weeds that are harder to get rid of...at least that's some consolation. :) I have various types of weeds growing here and have no idea what they are. One that we have vining through our grass is so way out of hand that it would take so much spray to spray it and I just can't afford it. Oh, about the spray...I don't have the name brand Roundup but some generic form of it. It's in a red bottle that I got at Lowe's. It's a quart of the concentrate and I mix it with water and use it in my tank sprayer. I don't like to spray more than I have to though.

Thanks again for the advice. I'll give it my best shot.

Cathy

One of the "great joys" of Canadian thistle is that it also spreads by brittle runners below ground. So it's not just a matter of getting out all the 'root', like with other weeds. When you dig or pull one of these things, you are likely to have several more appearing in the surrounding area.

I have always been of the 'pretty much organic, and the gardens don't have to be neat or perfect' type, but after several years of fighting these things, deep-weeding and digging, and making sure they never flower, I now have part of the yard that is just thistles. And also thistles here and there, everywhere.

After researching the best advise, tomorrow I am starting phase one of the blasted chemical approaches.

Part of me winces, but generally, I just want to see them ***die*** [wild semi-hysterical cackles!!!]

Oh my, they sound like a real pain in the butt to kill! I thought maybe I wasn't pulling them up right or something because what happened to me is exactly what you said. I'd pull little ones up and I'd end up with more in that area and also other areas.

I know what you mean about spraying. I really hate to pollute the environment. I just wish that people who had more money and are supposedly in charge of seeing the noxious weeds like this don't spread all over would do something before nobody can have a home garden

I also have an occasional other type of thistle come up and probably have seen them here and there ever since we lived here (20 some years), but they're nowhere nearly as bad as these Canada thistles.

Thanks for your input and I might be diabolically laughing with you as I hit them with the sprayer. I'll try the pulling method first, but I can only take so much of that. It eats up my time and is hard on my hands/arms.

Cathy

Unless you pull them or cut them to the ground as soon as they appear, and keep doing that until you exhaust the rhizomes so they eventually can't grow back, and keep watching for every little new sprout in the surrounding area, and keep doing this, the blasted canadian thistles win.

But don't give up. Save up, and get some real Round-Up, not just generic weed-killer. (I know someone will ... disagree, but... ) Unless you are really close to a creek or other water body, this is much less polluting than most other chemicals. And it is less damaging to the environment than these thistles!

In some areas where farming is important, some counties, towns, states, will actually help you eradicate Canadian thistles on your property. I don't know that your area of PA is one of these. But it might be worth a phone call to your county agricultural extension office.

would it matter if I dig it out with a trowel rather than a screwdriver? Whatever tool you want to use is fine. I just found that digging an actual hole was not any more effective than reaching down with a dandelion fork or screwdriver, just a lot more work for me.

So did you personally have them in your garden? Yes! I had them when I lived in OH. I started a new garden when I moved in by having a professional spray half the yard. The thistles were not killed by it.

There is no benefit to using more of any spray, regardless of its' label name, than it takes to coat leaves. A weekly spritz will be much more effective than sporadic drenching.

I'm sorry you feel overwhelmed. The first few years of a new garden are usually the hardest, in regard to weeds. Many weed seeds can wait for years or even decades until they finally sprout. Digging is a near certain way to wake many of them up. Some weeds can be conquered by smothering. Cardboard and newspaper are good materials to use, and can be covered with leaves or mulch so it's easier to look at.

Anything you can do to make it harder for the weeds can help you eventually win the battle. Do you have some rocks around? When you dig a thistle, lay a rock there. If the thistle attempts to grow back, it will have to work its' way around the rock which will use more of its' stored energy. A combination of methods is usually necessary and luckily, easier on the gardener.

I saw your post about passiflora on the butterfly forum, and you mentioned a problem vine above. A very effective method is described in this discussion by Bry84, the 4th entry down. It is recommended for bindweed but any kind of vine can be treated this way. This is a good way to use a chemical without wasting any or getting it on anything but the weeds.

Thank you, Linda and purpleinopp for helping me try to figure out how to get rid of these things. Honestly, I'm reading so much conflicting information in different articles my head is spinning. I guess too much information is a dangerous thing. lol For instance, I've read that a person should keep cultivating the area to eventually kill the thistle, and somewhere else I read that even a piece an inch long will start another plant. So, going by what the last one is saying, I'd think that by cultivating, I'd end up with hundreds of thousands of pieces of root, which to me would mean that many plants. So I don't get how cultivating would help get rid of it. It seems to me that it would make it worse if indeed all it takes in a one-inch piece of root to make a new plant. In the cultivating article, it also said to do the culitivating I think every 21 days or something like that and to do it deeply. Well, if the cultivating method would actually work to get rid of the thistle, I'm afraid that it wouldn't work for us here because I know it wouldn't get done as often and as deep as it should be. We have a small Mantis tiller that my husband just now got out to till the ground on Saturday for the second time this year. Even then it was only one small section of garden. I had been planning on doing it myself but I shouldn't have that vibration on my arms, I am told after the fact. I had to have operations on my hands and arms for Cubital Tunnel Syndrome and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome last year because I spent months on end digging out big parts of our lawn for gardens. I regret it now, especially since I'm disappointed in the results of the operations. Anyway, I wish I could do the tilling but can't, and my husband doesn't have the time to do it very often.

Anyway, at this point, I'm still confused on why different sources have conflicting information about how to get rid of it. To till or not to till, that is the question. lol I have to laugh or else I'll cry. Darn, I wanted to have a nice garden and now this! You see, I'm really into the butterflies and raise and release various species. I grow their host plants here so the caterpillars can eat and grow into butterflies. The area where the thistle is growing was the area where I was going to plant my tropical milkweed. Since I don't feel comfortable planting it there now because of this wicked thistle, I planted it (although not nearly as much) down here in one of my other gardens that right behind the house. To make room for it there, I dug out my liatris, verbena, and coreopsis.

In addition to having the thistle and passionvine giving me fits, now I'm also realizing what an enormous amount of purslane I have this year. Ugh. I just read that one plant produces 240,000 seeds! :-O You see, I just have so much garden space out that it's hard to keep up. So I don't get around to weeding all of the areas and some weeds go unattended, making it all the worse the next year...it's like a vicious cycle and becoming a nauseating pattern here. Even though I wanted to put out more things in the gardens, I feel I have no other choice than to put some of it back into lawn. It makes me half feel like crying since digging it is what made my problems, so now I feel it was for nothing and that could have been avoided. If only I had a time machine! Not that I want to keep dwelling on my problems, but I also have degenerative disk disease (which I suspect was started when I was lifting very heavy rocks about 20 years ago when I was getting rid of an old dump and barn foundation that was here. Anyway, because of that I can't lift rocks or I would. That's the other reason why I can't run the tiller, it really pulls on my back.

I'll have to read about that method by Bry84 later. Gotta get out to my parents' place. I started a flower bed for them on my dad's birthday and never got it finished. He just turned 80. Thanks again.
Cathy

I'll tell ya, this Canada thistle thing really has my dander up. I'm wondering just how much time it's going to take me away from the other gardens that I already can't keep up with. In a way, I feel like just throwing down grass seed in that whole garden this fall and then it will get mown and hopefully won't be an issue. I'm not sure if the root system continues to travel wherever it feels like and would end up in my other gardens. I almost wish I'd have a backhoe or some type of equipment that would dig down deep enough that I could try to get this whole root system out of the ground. I have carpet laying down in that garden/milkweed patch in some spots and now I'm also wondering if this root system is growing under that? Nothing has tried to pop up through the carpet and I'm not really sure if it can. I know that when ground washes onto the carpet, weeds even start growing on the blasted carpet and I have to either pull them out or flip it over, which gets to be a pain (literally). I had some of this carpet laying over in my ex-strawberry patch that I'm turning into a NJ tea bed to try to keep the weeds down until I worked my way over more in that bed planting the NJ tea plants, but I had my husband move the carpet over to the milkweed patch to cover the thousands of purslane plants that are coming up.

I can't plant as many red beets this year as last year because the thistle is starting to move over in that area. I don't know how anyone can have thistle in an area and also grow desirable plants if they're to spray it.

Sorry, I still didn't get a chance to read that info from Bry84. I promised my husband I'd read this article by Penn State that he found online. It's about managing (I don't know if that means that you can entirely eliminate it or have to put up with it indefinitely) Canada thistle. I don't know if anyone has time to look at it but I have some questions if you do. First of all, I wonder why they don't suggest pulling it. At least I don't think they do. Maybe it's more meant for maybe farmers, who I can't imagine are going to go out in their fields every day or two and pull thistle. Another thing I don't have quite clear in my head is if they mean to not do anything with the thistle in the spring until it had a bud or flowers? The plants I had sprayed were tall (most of them anyway) and were almost to that point. So I wonder if I should have waited until I actually saw flower beds?! I just assumed that the sooner you attack them the better, but it seems like their article isn't saying that unless I'm understanding it wrong. I also don't know where to find the sprays that they mention. I heard of RoundUp, of course, but I never heard of most/all of those others in the article. Finally, they suggest planting a cover crop in the fall...can I assume that they mean after the fall spraying? Gosh, it seems like it sure wouldn't give it much time to grow up here in PA. We get our first frost around the beginning of October, so I'm not exactly sure when I should be doing those things. Sorry for all the questions. I guess I hate it when my plans are upset. :( I'm including a link to that article if anyone has time to read it.
Cathy

Here is a link that might be useful: Managing Canada Thistle

The good news... Purslane! Not a problem! It's classed as a weed, but it is low-growing, doesn't bother other plants, helps shade the soil, and if there is too much, or it is in the wrong place, it is very shallow-rooted, and pulls up easily without leaving "problems" behind. You can just let it grow there, unless you just don't like the look of it. And the leaves are great in salads. Wish I were infested with purslane.... That would be ok [grin]. Don't worry about the purslane.

Re the Canadian Thistle, the carpet will help. This does spread by runners, but not along huge distances. If you have 'patches' of the thistle, this will help in those patches.

Pulling them, or digging them out, doesn't. You are correct that much of what you see about 'controlling' these things is meant for farmers. And a lot of the conflicting information is because they have been trying to figure out the best way to deal with this blasted plant in agricultural lands for decades. But their methods are trying to figure out how to deal with acres and acres of planted land......

That's not you.

You may see the name 'glyphosate' in the stuff you have been wading through.... That's 'Round-Up'. Same thing.

Use this on the thistles that are intruding in the areas you don't have carpeted [grins].

No tilling! No 'cover crops'.

I have been dealing with these as a problem for more than four years. They started here and there. I pulled them out pretty much by the root the first year or two, as with other weeds. Then, the next year, we dug deep, to get out as much of the root as possible... They liked that!

I worked them with round-up [glyphsate] on Sunday. They are starting to brown down,,,

Another dose tomorrow.

We live in hope!

It seems to me that it would make it worse if indeed all it takes in a one-inch piece of root to make a new plant. You're right. Tilling is the worst thing to do with some weeds. I agree with everything Linda said.

When I said to lay a rock on the spot, I should have been more clear. A boulder is not necessary. Just a small rock the size of a softball will cause extra work for a thistle trying to re-emerge. It also lets you remember where they were so you can check often for signs of life.

If you have a garden, you will have weeds. Try to concentrate more on the enjoyment of the "good plants" and do not let the weeds make you feel like you have failed or are not "doing it right." Planting something taller like milkweed will help you win the battle over shorter plants like thistle and purslane by blocking a lot of the sunshine from reaching those shorter plants. Leaving an area of just thistle will allow these weeds to thrive and they don't deserve to claim so much of your garden real estate. Even if you just cut the thistles at the ground so they don't seed, you can still use the area for other plants. It doesn't have to be perfect, and even if you had no physical limitations and all the time in the world, it probably wouldn't be. Please don't be discouraged by a non-perfect garden. They all are.

Cover crops are for veggie patches and farmer's fields, not suburban flower beds. Ignore that stuff and concentrate on advice given for your situation and type of garden.

My Mom has selective vision which allows her to not see weeds. If I don't pull them, they stay. Sometimes you have to develop a skill of ignoring and mind-over-matter. As in, if you don't mind, it doesn't matter. I'm not saying to not battle with the weeds, but just don't let that be the ruler by which you measure your garden and its' benefits to you and the wildlife who visit.

If it makes you feel any better, thistle seeds are the most prized treat for cute little yellow finches. Although I hope none of your thistles make more seeds in your yard, you can be happy about knowing the little finches are enjoying the seeds somewhere and that they are visiting your garden.

Okay, I'll try not to let the purslane bother me. I guess seeing that carpet of the stuff reminds me of how badly poison ivy grows. We also have that in the woods beside us and it pops up in places here and there, which I have to spray.
I'll reply to you both another time. Getting a tooth pulled tomorrow morn and have to hit the sack soon. Thanks.
Cathy

Ouch! Hope that goes well!

Hi, Cathy

My sincere sympathy re the dentistry. Been there....

Just wanted to give you an update. The Canadian thistles are dying!!!! Yeehah!!!! I had a large patch of them, about 20 by 40 feet [this was one of the areas I had worked so hard to pull them, and dig them out over several years, and unwittingly helped spread them...], and then there were all the other little intrusions, and larger spreading intrusions everywhere, and everywhere, and everywhere.... but they are dying. Wonderful!

And purpleinopp is exactly correct. There are 'ah-they're-just-weeds', and then there are *bad weeds*'. The Canadian thistles are in the *bad weed* category.

I have lots of other 'weeds'. Some are very pretty in their season, and some are useful in some way, and some are nice unless they get to be too many, and some are just a 'yeah, yeah, I'll pull you out when I get around to it', no big thing.

Some have been truly valued 'volunteers', that I came to treasure.

Native thistles can be problems for farmers, but not much for gardeners, and goldfinches love them. Milkweed is a "weed", but Monarch butterflies depend on them, and if they are in the wrong place, they pull up easily, even when very tall. Ditto Jewel Weed, Dames' Rocket, many others.

I guess my general rule of thumb is, if it is "spread by runners", I want to run away [!!] unless there is some serious reason I might want the blasted thing. Or it would be really pretty in a pot, without access to the ground, and I can treat it as an annual [grin].

May you feel better. And relax.

Purple & Linda, Thanks for the commisserating with the dental thing. I had to go back to him again because of problems and also to the doctor. It's been an "interesting" few days lately. Sheesh.

Well, regarding the weed situation, I broke down and sprayed the Canada thistle. Dang, I hope I'll be forgiven someday for doing detrimental things to the environment. I hope my recycling for 20 some years kind of makes up for that. I'm just afraid that by pulling, I'm going to make it worse, and besides, for me to get around to taking the time to pull all of those out, the thistles will only keep getting worse because I know that I wouldn't get around to pulling them as often as should be done if that is a viable solution (the pulling thing). If I wouldn't have so much garden space to take care of, it would be another story, but I try to provide for lots of butterflies. So being that I know I'd get around to spraying them more often than pulling (since it takes less time), I am going to spray them. I'd use the brush method but the bending over would kill my back, and it would be too much to scoot along on the ground doing all of them. So I'm just going to have to hope that the spraying does them in. If not, I guess I'll have to give up on that garden and plant it in grass and keep it mowed. The thing is, by tilling it before sowing grass seed we'd be spreading the roots around making more thistle plants unless it wouldn't matter anyway because it would all get mowed.

Regarding the passionvine, I stuffed some of the vines in 2 empty coffee cans (they're plastic) and poured the glyphosate solution in according to Bry's instructions in that thread (thanks again for pointing me to that...I read through the entire thread). It makes sense to me to do it that way...now if only there were a way to stuff Canada thistle in cans...lol. Either today or tomorrow I want to gather up some more vines to stuff in cans and give them a slow glyphosate poisoning like the others. I have so many little sprigs coming up that I don't really know if I should wait until the real small ones get bigger to stuff in with some bigger vines that aren't stuffed yet or just spray the very little ones the way a person would normally spray glyphosate or just let them go. I imagine that Bry didn't gather up every last bindweed vine that he had, so I'm thinking that maybe it's not necessary to stuff every last one into the glyphosated cans. I'm thinking that the ones that are stuffed in cans are slowly getting down into the root system, killing the plant, thus eventually killing the small sprigs that are just now coming up or are only a few inches long. It makes sense to me, but I have no way of knowing if that's right or not. I'm not really sure what to do with the ones in the grass either. I could either just keep mowing them down or spray them with lawn weed killer, although I don't have any and would have to go buy some. I'm not a big person on spraying, but these two weeds have got to go. Well, I don't know if passionvine would be considered a weed or not because it's a host plant for some butterflies, but the only one of them that I get around here is the Variegated Fritillary and even then not every year. I never found a caterpillar on the passionvine, so I'm guessing that they eat the violets here. I love the flowers that the vine gets, but I don't need any more things popping up all over the place to pull out.

I've been working on another weed here in my garden that's right behind our house (thus, I try to keep this garden the best looking since it's the one we see the most). I had gotten a lot of bricks free from a couple of people and have put in several small garden paths with them. There is a whole lot of garlic growing in the back of the garden right now and it's a VERY tedious job digging it out bulb by bulb (there are thousands of them), but if I don't do it, I fear it will just get worse and worse. Right now I'm digging them out of an area that was actually lawn (if you'd actually call it that...our lawn is more weeds than grass) and I'm turning into garden. This path is part of what was the "lawn", and then directly behind that is about a 3-ft wide (and about 20 feet long) area that I want to put my tropical milkweed in. The area isn't nearly as big as the milkweed patch where I didn't want to put the milkweed because of that #@*^ thistle coming up, so I'm trying to put it where I can find space here and there. As I'm digging out the garlic, I'm sitting in the path (right now ground but will be those bricks after I'm done with this digging) digging out the area where the milkweed will be planted, and I really should get moving on that as here it is July!

Anyway...new paragraph because the other one is getting long. Ha. I've been meticulously getting out this garlic, digging down at least 4 or 5 inches to try to get almost every one I can find. I know I'll miss some, and at this point I'm getting not to care as much about that because I'm really getting tired of picking out all of these bulbs or whatever you'd call them. Some are white and some are brown. I find some that are easy, maybe close to an inch across; others are almost miniscule. I didn't know another way to get rid of them, and besides, even if there is a way of killing them with chemicals, this way is better for the environment even though I'm spending hours upon hours getting them out of there. As I can see the tremendous amount of time that it's taking, I'd like to just skip doing the path where the bricks will be going to save on time because other things are getting neglected (other weeding, watering, house stuff, etc.) because this garlic digging is taking up almost all of my time (and killing my back in the process). Okay, after that long explanation....my question is...Do you think that the garlic under the bricks will be able to come up through them? How about if I put newspapers under the bricks before laying them down? I'd hate to put that path in and then find out in the spring that I have to take them all out to dig up that garlic too!

I've been butterfly gardening since 2005 and since I'm no young chick anymore, it's wearing me out. I really like doing it though. It's just that I wish that the weeds wouldn't be quite so persistant as they are. I weeded the pussytoe bed about a month ago and it looks worse now than it ever did. The one-foot poplar tree that I was going to dig out of there is now at least 3 feet high already! I have various kinds of plants that I was going to plant that I don't have space or time for now and if I can't find a home for them on the giveaway/trade forum, I guess I'll have to dump them, but such is life.

Oh, and I was going to say that being that I carpeted some places in the gardens, I've given a whole new meaning to "indoor/outdoor carpeting". HA!! Thanks bunches for your help, and sorry this got so long!

Cathy

Oh yeah, I forgot to say that I agree about jewelweed being so easy to pull out. That's one weed I wouldn't bother to spray. We have it here and even if I let it get 4 feet high, it's so easy to pull right out of the ground. I try not to let it go to seed, but I'm afraid that this year I won't get around to pulling much of it out and I'll end up with tons of it next year. As you might guess, there is lots of poison ivy growing in that area; however most of it isn't on our property. It's in the woods next to us growing up several trees and also on the ground all around them. Now, that I do spray when I see some coming up here because neither of us wants to pull it out even with gloves on. We get it pretty bad, especially my husband.

There just aren't enough hours in the day to get all of the outside and inside things done. I'm taking time out now to type my replies to you because it's been so hot outside today that I don't think I'd last outside too long if I'd go out to dig garlic right now. I'm also feeling a little better now after that deal with my tooth. I hate losing my teeth. :(

Hi, Cathy

Several things. In no particular order [grin]. Somethings more fun at the bottom....

>Dang, I hope I'll be forgiven someday for doing detrimental things to the environment.I'm one of the original, stubborn, pretty much 'organic' sort-of-pushy environmental people, just rising 60. But after the last decade when, through no particular fault of our own, we were attacked by trumpet vine, then pokeweed, and now Canadian thistle, I started doing some serious research a few years ago. Glyphosate/Round-up, when used **smart** in home gardening, is a tiny little blip of a non-problem. (This can be different in big commercial uses, depending....)

Using it limited and smart. Good job. It's always a matter of getting it into the root. Different methods for different kinds of plants. Vines, the can method sounds great! Spray the thistles! Thick stems like my old enemy, the pokeweeds, you can cut them down to a couple of inches, stick a wire or stick into the pith in the middle to open up a hole, and drizzle just a little bit down into the root.

>Well, I don't know if passion vine would be considered a weed or notThe true definition of a weed is a plant that is either "in the wrong place", or one that is **trying to take over my garden**!" For you, it's a weed.

The little garlic bulbs you are fighting.... I suspect they may be ramps, or another wild garlic/onion. If you are planning on bricking part of the area, don't even bother trying to dig them out under where the bricks will be! Newspapers will not work well over time, but plastic [sorry] under the bricks will block these. No more working so hard at digging these up.

Jewelweed.... Cool thing. If you brush against poison ivy, or are getting a new rash from recent exposure, crushed leaves or stem sap are great medicinals. Rub them gently on. Can stop the reaction in its tracks.

And I know it seeds in everywhere, but have you ever just *played* with the seed pods? Great fun!! When the seed pods start to look filled, touch them, and they *sproing* and propel the seeds. If you enclose the pod in your hand , and let it *sproing*, it tickles [grins], and then you can dump the seeds where you want.

I know you have been dealing with some of the *bad weeds*, not just plain old weeds. And that is crazy-making!!! But take a deep breath, and maybe a few more, and stop working so hard. Poison the thistles and the passionvine, squelch the ramps/garlic under bricks, when you get around to it.

And when the jewelweed starts to fill seed pods, promise me you'll play with the explosive pods!

And sit and listen to birds. And relax.

The passion vines are likely connected underground, so the ones in the grass you can't submerge in cans are likely to be killed anyway.

Your garlic might be allium canadense. Delicious! Cardboard would also (besides plastic) smother anything referred to as garlic. I know exactly what you're going through, only in reverse. I dug up a large patch of grass full of pink oxalis, which I wanted to salvage from the grass roots. I agree with Linda that you probably don't need to bother with it, just bury it.

To remove poison ivy sprouts, I use 3 plastic bags, the handle kind they give you at any store. Put your hand in and pull over your arm. Grab the PI, then use your other hand to grab the handles of the bags and turn them inside-out with the PI inside. Tie knot, discard, wash hands right away - just in case. You can't pull it with gloves unless you plan to throw the gloves away. Anything that touches PI gets the oil (urishiol) on it and the oil can stay potent on the object for a year if not washed or worn off.

Are you able to share some pics? I feel like your yard probably isn't as bad-off as you think, and I bet the good parts look nice. You could use some compliments and most people on here are pretty good at finding something positive to comment on.

Linda,
I've always been that way too, spraying as very little as necessary and even hated doing it. I still do dislike it very much. It makes me feel better your putting the glyphosate in perspective. So I guess we're not the most horrible people on the planet. ;)

Yesterday it was so buggy outside and we had thunder showers, as is the case with today, so I didn't get outside to gather up more passionvine to soak in cans, but I want to do that soon. I sincerely hope that this method works because I don't know what else to do to get rid of it. I'm just going to trust in it and I know that it will take awhile. I don't plan on gathering up every last strand of it to slowly glyphosatize, but I do want to try to get pretty much soaking up that stuff. Yes, I do believe you're right, to me the passionvine is a weed even though I think its flowers are pretty. When I planted it, I was under the assumption that it wouldn't spread like that this far north, but we all live and learn.

I'm so glad to hear that I won't have to dig out the garlic in the path. Putting down plastic won't be a problem for me...much less work than picking out a thousand and one garlic bulbs. I think it's garlic, but not 100% sure. I just know that that's what I think my grandparents used to call it (they lived here, and I actually was here more than I was at my parents' place growing up). You should have seen all of them growing this spring. :-O I also had dug them out last year too, and I had no idea that they'd come back that strong, which is why I'm trying to get almost all of them out this year (I mean in the area where the tropical milkweed plants will be). I know I'll have to dig more out over the coming years.

That's so neat about the jewelweed. I'll have to take time out and do that to feel the seeds pop in my hands. :)

Purple,
Okay, then I won't make a separate effort to try to get the ones out of the grass if the they'll be killed anyway.

Allium canadense, huh? Well, could be. Like I said to Linda, I just know that my grandparents used to refer to it as garlic, but I don't think she used it in any cooking if you can do that. I might just use both cardboard and plastic, maybe newspaper too. :) What the heck, the more the merrier. I have them here laying around anyway, and my parents just brought me some more of their old newspapers yesterday. I've been trying to use them to keep down the weeds at spots, but it's a lot of work because I have to also lay stones or something on them so they don't blow away. I've had a heck of a mess here already before I started doing that. I didn't even think about the possibility of them blowing around (duh) and I was chasing them all over the yard when the wind was blowing pretty briskly here one day a few years ago.

Yeah, I bet you had as much "fun" trying to salvage that oxalis from the grass as what I'm having digging out these garlic bulbs. I have to keep reminding myself that it should look a lot better next spring than it did this past spring.

That's a good tip about pulling out the PI. I'll have to try that sometime. Right now I'm pretty much overwhelmed with these other things I'm trying to get rid of that I don't want to walk around and find even more work at the moments, but I'll get there eventually.

I will hunt up some pics another time, but I'll definitely show you and Linda around my place. :) I'll show you weeds and nice plants too. I hope I don't post too many and bore you. I raise butterflies, which there goes more time. You'd be here for quite awhile if I showed you all of the butterfly pics that I have around here. lol I'll stick in some though.

Cathy

Killing Canada Thistle is a game of wearing the plant down, usually. Glyphosate will take it out, but requires repeated applications. It is most sensitive to treatment when it produces buds to bloom--just let it be until then and treat. This will really hurt it. The other time to really hit it is in the fall before first frost. In the fall, it will really take the glyphosate down into the roots and do a real number on all those underground roots. You will still have to do repeated treatments when the remnants try to regrow, but you can be successful in just a couple years.

Otherwise, frequent tillage to cut off everything that starts to grow--whether by digging out the plants, or just cutting them off every time they appear. You starve the roots and they will eventually die.

Purslane is low growing and not always a problem, but when it gets thick in the garden, it is stealing nutrients and water from your plants and will still stunt them badly. Pulling or digging an established plant won't kill it--it can lie there for weeks, then start putting down new roots so needs to be removed or buried. It is highly susceptible to a hoe when it first emerges, however.

In ground that is heavily infested with purslane, you can apply Treflan (trifluralin), the active ingredient in the herbicide version of Preen in the spring before emergence. It degrades quickly in sunlight so needs to be worked into the top inch or two of soil or watered in with at least 1/2" of water. You can grow transplants in treated soil (tomatoes, peppers, cabbage family members), plus beans, peas, onions, potatoes, radishes, and carrots, along with some others planted by seed into treated soil. Members of the squash family and beets are very sensitive to trifluralin, though, and corn is heavily damaged when planted into treated soil.

Cathy
>I didn't even think about the possibility of [the newspapers] blowing around (duh) and I was chasing them all over the yard when the wind was blowing pretty briskly here one day a few years ago. [grins] The picture in my mind was of you chasing *really big flapping butterflies* around the yard!!!

Purple,
Yep, the cardboard should work. Just needs to take long enough to break down to make sure the tiny bulblets die below it. Right on the poison ivy, as well. [Long story, not worth going into here.] I also do gardening for others, and one client had *serious* PI. Safely pulling it, along with runners is the best way. Not something for chemicals. They will 'kill' it. And all the remnants can still cause reaction. I would rather be able to *see* the problem.

Hi, beeone
I agree on the thistles. Just through genetic variation, some are more resistant than others. I have been *very* lucky. Most of them in the huge infestations have been very sensitive to glyphosate and, after a couple of weeks, have just died to black with no sprouts. Some, about 5%, have been more resistant. I have been, and will be, vigilant, and poison them as soon as they appear, and wear them down to exhaustion. The **last** thing I want to do is contribute to the population of round-up-resistant Canada thistles.....

For me, here, purslane is welcome. I wish I were infested with it. The leaves are so wonderful in salads! Here, for me, it is not so much a weed as a crop. But I know this can be a big problem in other areas.

beeone,
I guess I think the opposite of what they say in terms of the best method to kill off Canada thistle. I've read too that it's most vulnerable in the bud to bloom stage, but I can't stand to just let it go that far. I think I'll zap the stuff every time I see one, plus like I was told here, the carpet is helping too. Thistle can't very well come through carpet. If I have to keep the carpet down for 5 years, I will, and I just won't use the area in the meantime. I was going to put all of my tropical milkweed in that patch, but now I've been planting it in our one other garden. I was going to hold off on planting them until I dig all of the garlic bulbs out of the garden, but that could take awhile, so I started planting them the other day so I at least have a few dozen growing for the Monarchs and will plant over the next week as I get more of the garlic dug out. At least I know now that it's not necessary for me to dug them out where the path of bricks will be going. It is plenty to dig just with the area that's alloted for the milkweed. Imagine going through trowelful by trowelful picking out the bulbs in an area that's about 4' x 20'. It's not a huge area, but it sure seems like it when you're picking out garlic one at a time! :-O

After reading that a piece of root only an inch long can start a new plant of Canada thistle, I still don't understand how the tillage method could work. My way of thinking is that it would create an even bigger mess, and so tilling is out of the question for me. I will, though, be sure to zap it with glyphosate before we get our first frost, which will be in about 3 months. I'll be vigilant in trying to kill the darn stuff. I guess people not being vigilant is the reason why I ended up with it, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone else.

That's exactly what my husband said to me about the purslane, that I shouldn't let it go because it would take nutrients from my good plants. I was so glad that he got around to tilling that part of the garden for me, so that took care of the bigger part of that problem. If any try to come up between now and the next tilling, I can always hand pull them out. I just don't want them to go to seed because I imagine that they would be terrible next year and probably following years. I'm not fretting about them, but on the other hand, if hubby can till them other, I'm not objecting to that either. :) I've never used Preen or Treflan. I've always relied on my hoe, but it's hard for me to work with that nowadays with my back being the way it is. When I weed, I sit down and do it with a trowel, which takes a very long time.

Linda,
I'm sure it would have been quite a sight seeing me chase around those newspapers, and I have been known to chase butterflies around the yard with my camera, so I guess the newspapers would have been like big butterflies. :)

I'm with you on the wearing the thistles down to exhaustion and the sooner the better. Even though it is recommended to wait until the plants get bigger, I can't picture me standing by watching them grow and grow and grow.

Hey, Linda, if you're ever going through PA, stop by and I'll give you bucketloads of purslane! ;-) I don't know about other areas, but if you let it go here, I've found it grows like a carpet, covering the entire space of ground.

Linda, thanks for finishing my thoughts on PI! I totally forgot to say how the dead PI leaves are still able to get urushiol on you, and that's WHY I pull them out immediately.

I patrol the yard at least once a month and nothing is allowed to be deadheaded, propped, admired, or anything until I have visually scoured anywhere PI might be so I can pull any sprouts while they are tiny babies. Grape ivy sprouts give me quite a scare sometimes since they are so similar. Even so, I've managed to encounter urishiol somehow in the past couple days and rubbed it from my hand to my lip. I'm convinced it was a crispy dry leaf because I know I wouldn't be touching any live PI, PO, or PS! (Nasty sailor cussing!)

caterwallin, you sound like you're in a much better frame of mind in your last post. I'm so glad. You can only do what you can do. Just remind yourself how great it all is compared to if you did nothing! LOL!

>I've read too that it's most vulnerable in the bud to bloom stage, but I can't stand to just let it go that far. I think I'll zap the stuff every time I see one>

Yep, Cathy, you've got it! [grin]. The 'ideal
time' might be then, especially for farmers or people with large acreage. But *zap them now, and the resprouts when you find them*.... Works.

Ignore the garlic bulblets. [poof... no big deal. Squelch them. grins ]

The purslane, there may be a big mat, but it spreads from a smallish root connection. One pull is a big effect. Tilling works without spreading it [Except that my marvelous salad is chopped into compost!!! Ah, well. If you tried to ship it to me, it would get here, but it would no longer be food....]

You do sound better, Cathy. Take another deep breath, keep poisoning the bedarned thistles, whenever they stick up a sprout. [You *don't* need to do this daily, or even every few days. Once every week or two or three, just take a walk 'round, and spray them with the roundup. No panic necessary, lady]

For the others they are weeds, but not **bad** weeds. You have some know-how about how to deal with them.

My grandmother had three philosophical things that have kept me from going crazy over the years, although she would have worded them differently....

Enjoy life, and the living world around you. That is where you live, and living there feeds the soul.
Work smarter, not harder.
Don't sweat the small stuff.