Sow thistle is one of the most enduring weeds, which is not so easy to get rid of. Not often the question arises - on which soils does sow thistle grow, since it grows on any soil varieties, but prefers well-moistened chernozem, from which it is difficult to remove it. The fact that such a thistle and how this malicious weed, not by hearsay, every owner of the cottage or garden, because often have to wage with him a long and painful struggle. We will get acquainted and we will learn in more detail with the thistle and varieties of this weed, as well as learn how to destroy the thistle in the garden.
Description and types of crap
Osote - perennial, rarely - an annual herb of the Astrov family with a height of 0.5-1.7 m. The root system is powerful, densely ramified in the horizontal direction. Thistles are common almost everywhere in the Eurasian continent. Plant shoots with leafless upper part are both straight and branched, often pubescent with hairs. Leaves of blueness of rich green color with spiny-toothed margins, the lower row of leaves narrows and passes into the stalk. Flowers are small, reed, form baskets, surrounded by a wrap of various shapes. Thistle blooms from mid-summer to early autumn, after flowering a fruit is formed on the plant — a brown color, achene, with a soft tuft of white.
Important! Thistle seeds that have fallen deep into the soil, are able to maintain their germination more than 20 years, giving a chance to grow new plants with the onset of the slightest favorable conditions.
Sow thistle
Sow thistle or yellow - is a perennial 1.5-1.7 m high. The length of the main taproot can reach 3-4 m in length, and the lateral roots growing in the horizontal direction can be about 1 meter in length. Field thistle stalks are bare, hollow, branched at the top, with pointed gray-green toothed leaves on them.
Peduncles densely pubescent with spiny hairs. Flowers of bright yellow color are a basket with a jug wrapper, which form a panicle-like inflorescence. A sow flower looks like a dandelion flower, you can often see bees on it, who use the plant as one of the best honey plants. Sow thistle often grows on empty fields, river banks and vegetable gardens, the existing measures to combat it are very time consuming, but we will tell about them a little later.
Garden sow thistle
Garden sowing - grassy annual with a height of 0.4-1 m with strongly branched hollow stems. The leaves are toothed with a pointed end and separate-pinnate, softer to the touch compared with the leaves of the field sow thistle. The leaves on the top of the shoots are sessile, and at the bottom they are located on the winged petiole. Baskets of bright yellow color are large, with a diameter of up to 35 mm. But, unlike the field, they form a not very wide inflorescence. Seeds of garden osota - elongated brown color with fluffy hairs. The plant can be found in ravines, near rivers, in gardens and kitchen gardens.
Did you know? Up to 130 kg of honey can be taken from 1 hectare of tree planting.
Sow thistle
Grungy sow-thistle is a grassy annual with a height of 0.7-1 m with upright stems. The next tough leaves are solid, and slightly notched, and notched up to 15 cm long with sharp edges, on which spines are located. The upper leaves sit on the shoots with wide basal bases, basal - narrowed into winged petioles. Peduncle and wrap covered with glandular hairs. In the autumn cold snap, the stems and central veins of the leaves of a rough sow thistle become a red-violet color. The fruit is a smooth achene with a whitish tuft. It grows in vegetable gardens and gardens, on fields and along roads.
The benefits and harm of the thistle in the garden
Faced with a sow thistle in their garden, everyone begins to think about how to remove a sow thistle, because the harm of this weed is enormous. Sow thistle is, first of all, an undesirable guest in the garden plot, which quickly grows and displaces any cultivated plant that grows nearby, drawing moisture and nutrients from the soil. In addition to the death of garden plantings and harvest, the sow thistle greatly depletes the soil, therefore, at the slightest appearance of this weed, the gardener should decide how to take the sow thistle from the vegetable garden and do it immediately.
However, this weed also brings benefits - it is given to eat domestic herbivores, and many plots of sow thistles, such as aphid, often feed on sow thistles, sow tissue is rich in minerals, which will help enrich the soil when used as a compost or mulch. In addition, young leaves are eaten - they make tea, salads or cabbage soup, and boiled roots replace Jerusalem artichoke. Folk healers use decoctions and infusions of osote in the treatment of certain diseases.
However, no matter what benefit this plant brings, it has no place in the garden, and the fight against the sow thistle in the garden should not be postponed for long.
Important! The sapling includes poisonous substances, while working with this weed it is necessary to be careful of people with allergic reactions.
How to deal with thunder in the garden
Since sow thistles are propagated both by seeds and vegetatively, the question of how to get the sow thistles out of the garden forever becomes very urgent among the owners of the plots. An important fact is the resistant ability of the weed to start young shoots from each root of the damaged root system - this feature requires the organization of the fight against weakening the roots of the sow thistle. Three main methods can be distinguished: how to get rid of the sow thistle in the garden: mechanical, chemical and folk.
Mechanical weed removal
The mechanical removal of young sapwood bushes consists in its careful pulling out of the soil, it is advisable to carry it out in damp ground or with the help of a chopper to dig a plant out of the ground in order to avoid breaking off and leaving the root in the soil. Adult powerful bushes and their root system need to be dug deep, shaken up the ground and extracted found roots, with a single removal will not be enough, and you will need to repeat this process in 2-3 weeks.
How to get rid of sediment by chemical means
The chemical industry has long taken care of the convenience of gardeners and gardeners, creating such herbicides as Task, Glyfovit, Antiburyan, Lontrel, Chistopol and others. The use of chemicals in the fight against thunderbolt should be carried out in strict compliance with the instructions to the drug and with the use of personal protective equipment. This method of struggle has a significant drawback - herbicides can have a detrimental effect on garden crops and contaminate the soil, which is recommended to be treated only after the complete disintegration of chemical compounds.
Folk methods against thunder
A long experience of crop production will tell you how to effectively deal with the thistle by popular methods:
- Point sprinkling of sediment with kerosene, which, after treatment, will dry out and die, the main thing is not to allow kerosene to get on the soil and cultivated plants;
- regular root subcutaneous cutting of young shoots of thistles will weaken the plant, which will soon die off;
- good results are obtained by the cultivation of siderats, which will feed garden crops and weaken the roots of thistle;
- if the thistle blooms, it is necessary to break or cut the stem base, preventing the seeds from ripening and spreading.
Did you know? Broken thistle root is able to fully recover within two weeks.
Preventive actions: how not to give a bruise to get to your garden
Since it is difficult and very time consuming to fight against a thistle in the garden, it is better to prevent its occurrence in the garden. The use of dark polyethylene film, which in the fall covers the cultivated area of the vegetable garden as much as possible in the fall, pressing it with stones, has effectively proved itself. This method will destroy the weed roots, which cannot produce new sprouts.
When pulling out and digging up the sows, all plant residues should be removed from the site, and it is also advisable not to allow flowering of the sows and subsequent shedding of the ripened seeds. When autumn or spring digging of the beds, it is recommended to carefully choose the roots and their fragments from the soil, preventing them from letting out the young shoots.
Even if the treacherous weed got to your backyard or dacha, you shouldn’t get upset, prompt response and efforts will help bring out the thistle and prevent it from reappearing.
