Last year we had some thistles in our garden, but this year, when the new greenery appeared, our garden is about 1/4 full of thistles!!!!! Ahhhhhhhhh!!!! No good! So what to do? Some internet and book research seems to show that the thistles are awfully hard to get rid of...and we didn't want to throw a bunch of herbicides in our garden. Several authors suggest removing the green parts above ground (four or more times, as they keep springing up!) in order to deny the root any products of photosynthesis (and hopefully eventually to kill the plant).
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| The culprit, our enemy! |
Wow, that sounds like a large undertaking, especially since a pretty large portion of our garden (maybe 1/4) is covered in this green monster.
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| See all of this green! Most is thistle (a little dandelion thrown in,) |
We dove right in and did the first cutting session, cutting off the green parts where they emerge from the ground. With gloves, of course!
Ouch, so many prickers!! (our gloves are only rubber on the fronts and mesh on the backs, so we got a lot of pokes on the backs of our hands!)
A couple of hours outside (in thankfully very nice cool dry weather!) and my daughter and I ended up taking out five 5-gallon buckets full plus five large bowls full. Hopefully we'll only have to do this 3 or so more times to rid our garden of this pest!!!
Wishing you success
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