How to deal with thistle in the garden

Weeds growing in summer cottages and household plots cause a lot of trouble for gardeners and gardeners. You have to spend a lot of time removing them, but they appear again. It is especially difficult to get rid of weeds that have a powerful root system. They safely survive frosts and droughts, unlike cultivated plants.

One of the most annoying and difficult to remove is garden sow thistle. What needs to be done to rid the land of a harmful plant, in what ways to achieve its destruction. All these questions concern not only beginners, but also gardeners with experience.

Types

In nature, there are several types of asot. Basically they are perennials (except garden):

• field;
• garden;
• pink (rough).

In the photo blooming garden sow thistle.

In this photo, thistle is pink.

According to gardeners, these are the most tenacious weeds, so getting rid of them is not so easy.

botanical properties

Sow thistle garden – grass, annual, 50-120 cm high. But in one season it develops a powerful root system, the central root goes deep. It is quite difficult to tear out thistle because of the fragility of the root. Even from a small piece of root, a new plant soon appears. Sow thistle garden has a straight smooth stem, hollow inside. At the break of the stem, you can see the milky juice that stands out.

Rigid leaves are arranged alternately. Compared to pink and field sow thistles, they are not so prickly.

The leaves are pinnately dissected or pinnately lobed. You can recognize thistle by the light yellow flowers collected in a basket. They are quite large, 35 cm in diameter. Flowering begins in early summer and continues until frost. Sometimes thistle flowers are confused with dandelion flowers.

In place of the bud, a fruit with seeds is formed, resembling a tuft. The first seeds ripen in early July.

This tenacious weed grows not only in the garden, but also in the country and in the garden. Favorite places:

• wastelands;
• fields abandoned and uncultivated for a number of years;
• river and lake valleys.

The plant likes fertilized soils, but does not neglect slightly saline and dry areas. The weed adapts to any conditions.

Useful or harmful sow thistle on the site

What is dangerous sow thistle in the garden

Seeing thistle on the site, gardeners and gardeners begin to come up with ways to destroy it. Tall plants with powerful roots harm cultural plantings in the garden:

• Firstly, garden thistle grows very quickly, if it is not destroyed in a timely manner, it will take up a large area of ​​uXNUMXbuXNUMXbthe garden or vegetable garden.
• Secondly, fast growing sow thistle needs a lot of water and nutrients. The weed will simply draw all the juices out of the ground, which will cause garden plantings to be without nutrition. Harvest can not wait.
• Thirdly, the garden sow thistle, if it is not removed, has time to “scatter” the seeds on the site.

What’s the use

Sow thistle is a useful plant, which not every person knows about. The medicinal properties of the plant have not yet been perfectly studied, but sow thistle has many useful substances:

• Vitamin C
• carotene;
• fatty oils;
• alkaloids;
• inulin;
• choline;
• tartaric acid;
• bitterness

Benefits of garden thistle:

1. Residents of the countryside feed the weed to animals.
2. The neighborhood of thistle with cultivated plants saves the garden from aphids.
3. Using a weed as a mulch enriches the soil with minerals.
4. Young leaves of the plant are an excellent ingredient for making tea, salads, cabbage soup. The roots of the plant are also boiled, they are not inferior in value to Jerusalem artichoke.
5. The medicinal properties of the weed have been known for a long time. Medicinal decoctions and infusions can be prepared from all parts of the plant, as they have medicinal properties.
6. If sow thistle grew on a strawberry garden, the berries will be fragrant and sweet.

Beneficial features:

But despite the benefits, it is not necessary to propagate the weed in the garden. How to get rid of thistle in the garden is not an idle question.

Methods of struggle

How to destroy thistle garden in your area? You can use different methods:

• mechanical;
• chemical;
• folk remedies.

Many gardeners believe that getting rid of grown plants in their garden, you can forget about the weed forever. But this opinion is wrong, since the garden weed propagates by seeds, and they can always be carried by the wind from a neighboring plot or from a field.

mechanical destruction

When sow thistle appears on your site, you need to take measures to destroy it.

It is best to crush the weed and use it as a mulch (green manure) or send it to the compost heap.

Many novice gardeners are interested in how to remove thistle from the garden?

Let’s try to understand this issue:

1. You need to start when the plants are still small. He still has a weak root, it is easy to pull it out. Garden weeds should be weeded regularly.

   

2. You can not cut the plant with a shovel. If the gardener removed the aerial part, and crushed the root into particles and left it in the ground, then the sow thistle will begin to grow with renewed vigor.
3. Trying to pull out a weed with a root is not worth it, because the underground part remains. It is best to use a flat cutter for the job to cut the plant below the ground. From above, the soil can be mulched or covered with a film, a piece of roofing material. This is the case if nothing grows on the site.
4. After harvesting, the soil is dug up to a great depth and the roots of thistle garden are removed.

Let’s remove both the tops and the roots:

Folk methods

The fight against thistle in the garden can be carried out not only by mechanical means, but also by folk. More gentle are folk methods. There are many options, but such folk remedies are most often used.

1. Spraying with kerosene. The plant is cut, and the root is poured with kerosene. This work can be carried out on a site where there are no cultivated plants.
2. If you have Merry Fellows flowers, they can be planted around the beds. Weed will never settle next to them.
3. How to deal with thistle with plants? Green manure is planted on a site that is too clogged. When they grow up, they need to be covered and left until next spring. During the summer, all weeds will die, while the soil will be enriched with nutrients from rotted grass.
4. There is another effective folk remedy: weeds are trampled and covered with cardboard, roofing felt, and garbage on top. There will be nothing left of the weeds.

Chemical attack

It often happens that a piece of land previously owned by negligent owners was bought. Neither mechanical methods nor folk remedies are helpers here. We get rid of weeds with chemicals.

Today you can buy a variety of products, including herbicides:

• Tornado;
• Hurricane.

You can use drugs in areas left under pairs or on paths. Cultivated plants must be covered during processing, otherwise they will burn.

Conclusion

Despite the benefits of thistle, its medicinal and medicinal properties, it should not be left in the garden. Fight him in every possible way. After all, one plant produces many brown seeds with fluffy tufts. They are able to scatter a long distance from the mother bush.

In autumn, after digging the ridges and removing the sow thistle root, do not loosen the soil. Let the seeds stay on the surface. They do not tolerate low temperatures and die. Keep the site clean, then the harvest will please.