Homestead mailing list

[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

Lynda wrote:

> We had a whole slew of Canadian and a couple of other thistles at one place 
> we had.  The folks who owned the place before us had a dairy.  Cattle are 
> great spreaders of thistle seed.  However, the horses liked to eat the 
> flowers and within a couple of years we had no thistles.
>  
Annual thistles.  The Canadian just keep spreading underground.  But you 
know, I swear I was pricked by a Canadian (small, clingy, non-detaching) 
thorn when emptying out lamb rumens last fall, so maybe there's hope.

> Star thistles on the other hand are a major problem as they are deadly for 
> horses.  We are currently removing star thistle from our place.  We've 
> cleared 6 acres so far.  Patience and pray the back doesn't give out and 
> we'll get rid of the rest of it!
>  
Yeah, it's hard for me to keep track of which weed goes with which form 
of agriculture.   I remembered almost as soon as I sent it, that star 
thistle is a problem associated with ranching; the alfalfa people have 
their other weeds represented on the list.  But then, no one ever 
_wanted_ to grow star thistle, that I know of.  I'll bet that none of 
the "invasive" plants that I've praised would survive the summer unaided 
at your place, unless you have a stream bed for them.

> Got rid of the scotch broom, the Russian pea and the pampus grass ~~sigh~~ 
> I'm tired <g>
>
>  
Did someone plant the pampas grass at your site?  It's shocking to me 
that it's still sold at nurseries.  It must be one of their big money 
makers.  The central coast of California is now overwhelmed by it, but I 
didn't think it had reached too far inland as a weed.  For some reason 
it doesn't sprout from seed where I live very readily, but I may have 
noticed a few at the immediate coast.  Can you imagine planting that BS 
over acacia (I was told by some pampas zombs at a local nursery, that 
because acacia does too well here, I'm not "allowed" to plant it)?  
There's no record of acacia ever sprouting from seed here, but some 
influential pundit down in Monterey must have made a pronouncement.

Bill
S. Oregon coast