Queen Anne's Lace

[Callieslamb]

This is the name I grew up with for this flower/weed. Perhaps you know it - it's a relative of the carrot, smells like ragweed and has teeny white flowers on long stalks that are blooming right now.

We visited our hay field yesterday to decide about fertilizing right now. The field is full of this stuff. Dh read that it's mildly poisonous but that most animals won't eat it. If we bale it in our hay - I can see them wasting a lot of hay and I certainly don't want the problem of this weed inhibiting fertilization in my sheep this winter. Our property is a long rectangle. One half of the length was used for hay and one for pasture. We squared the pasture up and hay a square. It's interesting that only one side of the field is covered in the QALace - literally, it's like someone drew a line down the middle and seeded the stuff. We've never seeded anything back there and we certainly didn't notice this stuff growing last year. So somehow, from a revamping of the field 6 years ago, this year we have a mess.

What should we do?
1 Mow it now, fertilize and then bale it later. Will the fertilizer just cause this plant to grow too? Or will it help the grass more and give us more % of grass in the hay that we have currently? It's at the end of it's flower seasong but just starting to make seed heads. If we cut it today, we can interrupt it's life-cycle a bit.

2. Just go ahead and bale it and let the animals worry about it - feed a different hay during breeding season.

3. Spray it to kill it. There is a expensive spray for it. What else does it kill though? I have some nice alfalfa in this part of our hay field. Or course, being a biennial, we're just spraying plants that don't know they are dead but I'd rather not have this stuff in our hay.

Any other ideas?

[Darren]

Once the stuff is growing in your field it has a tap root that enables it to survive cutting. How many cuttings it will take to kill it is the question. Continual brush hogging would eventually deplete the roots and kill it. Animals aren't normally supposeded to eat it.

The coverage is odd. Does that have anything to do with the pasture? Have you checked the soils in the two areas? I'd also look at a soil map (NRCS) to see if the queen anne's lace presence is indicative of differerent soils. Soil tests may also show a difference if you test for micro-nutrients.

Do you know how the field was used in previous decades? The aerial maps at the local Farm Service Ageny office might give you a clue. Those went back to the 30s. It's doubtful your agency office has anything that far back. But they should have maps for several decades.

I realize I'm not answering your question. Your description raises a llot of questions. Some of which may provide an answer in a round about way.

Weeds are indicative of underlying soil conditions. There's an outside chance you may have a micro nutrient issue that won't be solved by regular fertilization. There are books that interpret soil conditions based on the weeds found.

[geo in mi]

If you mow it before the seeds turn brown, you will greatly reduce next year's plants. The seeds come from the second year of the biannial growth of this plant--so, you will be leaving the roots in the ground to die--which they would do anyway. Baling it now(before seeds mature) will accomplish the same thing so far as the seeds go, and I have seen cows(don't know about sheep) nose through the QAL stalks to get the grass and clover.

If the seeds are already mature, then.....all bets are off until next year--at which time you will just have to watch it and mow before the stalks get too mature, or use herbicide triclopyr and/or 2,4,D which will kill the QAL and the alfalfa, but leave the grass. Could it be that the alfalfa is past its prime anyway? It doesn't last forever, and eventually the grasses and weeds will take over wherever the vegetation is thin.. Alfalfa will also be alleopathic to itself after a few years so, reseeding back to alfalfa can be done only after a few years of time in other crops. (This is why Roundup Ready alfalfa was developed, so as to keep a field free of any weeds and grasses and stretch all the available life of the alfalfa before it expires of natural causes--but I digress.... )

Best way to get control or QAL is to have a healthy stand of grass and no bare spots, plus timely mowing of the early second year stalks. Sounds to me like it's time for pasture/hay renovation with a good pasture mix, then fertilization.

http://www.na.fs.fed.us/fhp/invasive...annes-lace.pdf

geo

[NickieL]

You can eat the roots, tastes like a old woody carrot though.

[mekasmom]

It's great to pick and dry then decorate with. I love to spray paint the dried heads with white glittery spray paint and stick it in wreaths or on the tree. You have to dry it upside down in silica sand to keep the blooms all spread out in a cobweb type splash though.

[Molly Mckee]

Your county agent should be a better resource that a book that gives advice in general terms. I would do some soil testing to see where you are soil wise, and either cut and bale or cut and fertilize. I would not fertilize then cut and bale. you want the fertilizer on the ground not the grasses, and I wouldn't want the fertilizer in my hay so you don't want to cut, fertilize and bale.

[Haven]

I have a lot of this in my hay field right now too.

I thought i read before that Queen Annes Lace and wild carrot look a like but are 2 seperate things???

[m39fan]

The neighbors claim lime kills it and their fields ARE free of it. Of course, lime's not cheap and can mess with your soils PH so carefully consider it before applying.

HTH.

[Danaus29]

Queen Anne's Lace, wild carrot and domestic carrots are all Daucus carota.
Yes, biennial. Cutting the seeds now won't affect the flowers you'll see next year but will reduce the number of plants you'll have next year and flowers the year after.

I couldn't find anything about it being toxic. I know rabbits eat it willingly.

[where I want to]

And you're positive it's Queen Ann's Lace? I always take a second, third and fourth look at it because it can look alot like water hemlock. Shudder..............

[vicker]

The wild parsnip has a tiny, scarlet dot in the center.

[Vickie44]

I have baled it , when dry it doesnt amount to much . The cows picked around it .

[Bret]

My small herd eats many of the flower heads. I have a seperate small 5 acre field across the state road that I see from the barnyard. There is an area a couple of hundred feet across that is dense with Queen Anns Lace and it looks like snow at a glance. I started practicing with my schthe a few minutes everynight for fun and excercise. A couple more sessions and it will be cleaned up.

I will spray the field with Pasture Pro soon and it will put them in check for a while. I may have a haying restriction for a month but I don't plan on making hay any more this year.

As kids, we used to put the flowers in bottles with food coloring to make colored flowers.

We were cheap to entertain as kids. I still am I guess.

[Callieslamb]

Great info. Thanks all.

Yes, asking a question often just opens the door for more questions. I did a soil test last week. It came back yesterday and I went over it with my feed store guy- he's better than the ag agent. At least, he answers his phone. The extension service here doesn't. I trust this guy as he never pushes me to buy and always does his best to save me money.

The soil does need lime. It will be about $20 per acre so not so expensive. The rest of the nutrients look good except for nitrogen. So tonight we're putting lime and urea on it. Then, after it rains all day tomorrow DH will brush hog to cut off mostly flowers. The grass isn't very tall anyway so the fertlizer will be able to get to the soil. This is not ideal, but it's probably as important to get the fertilizer down with rain as it is to get the flowers taken care of. Next year, we will have to watch the flowers carefully. What we hope for - is that cutting will eliminate most of the stems in the hay and fertilizing will allow the grass to grow ahead of it since the QAL is at the end of it's season. Then, though the hay will still have some QAL in it - we can still get enough edible to make it worth the effort to haul the hay. Our last drought-stricken cutting was 35 little bales so hopefully with the recent rains and fertilizer we will be able to get a bit more than that. I was afraid the amount of QAL that's there would taint the taste of the hay so it's good to know that it will dry down to a lesser presence.

There's still a lot of good stuff in the pasture so we don't want to plow/till/reseed it yet. We do believe that the drought allowed for a lot of space in the grass giving the QAL the advantage. It's obviously better in a drought than our grass is. This land has always been pasture. From the time it was cleared of trees 100 years ago anyway. The former owners had horses- their family had owned the land since the turn of the century. We think 1/2 of the land was seeded in grass and the other half in an alfalfa mix. That the only account we can make for the stark difference in the two sides of the land. It went uncut all year last year until early fall. Perhaps the QAL has always been there - but before the grass got so tall that we just didn't notice it as much. For the soil test, I took samples from both sides in many places but I didn't separate them. So it is possible a micronutrient(s) is missing. I will ask about that but it's we're going to act on the idea that it's more likely that the pasture was seeded differently for each side and the pH is off enough to give the QAL just that much more advantage.

Also, another man near-by wants to drill some seeds this fall to revamp his pastures a bit but it's expensive to do so little of a piece so the feed store manager is getting us together. It wil lmake a larger order that will save on costs. We have some parts of the near pastures (not hay field) that are way over grazed so if we can arrange it - this will help that area for next year. It will depend on what kind of seed this guy wants to use and when. I'd love to seed some alfalfa on the 1/2 without it. That might not be possible while keeping costs down.

I've asked so many questions about our pasture over the last couple of years and we weren't able to do much about it. Now we can and are and it's pretty darn exciting. Except for that QAL problem, of course.

Thanks again for all the help.

[CarolT]

Something I have always suspected is that, when a placed is baled for hay or, more likely, has fertilizer spread, seeds from a previous field are stuck to the equipment and are reseeded to the next field. I really believe that's how some of these weeds suddenly seem to take off like wildfire. But that's just my opinion...

[Darren]

Originally Posted by CarolT

Something I have always suspected is that, when a placed is baled for hay or, more likely, has fertilizer spread, seeds from a previous field are stuck to the equipment and are reseeded to the next field. I really believe that's how some of these weeds suddenly seem to take off like wildfire. But that's just my opinion...

I agree. I see invasive species that seem to show up out of nowhere. Some I know are brought in by wildlife. Others I'm not sure about.

[Callieslamb]

We wondered about that. We did buy a used baler. I don't know if it was full of hay or not. If they were seeded in June would they be this widely spread and large by August? We have only had lime spread and that was 2 years ago. The fertilizer spreader we used last night was completely clean. They clean it out after every use.

[Ravenlost]

We have it in our hay fields, although perhaps not as much as you do. The horses have never minded it in the hay so we don't give it a second thought.

[Danaus29]

For QAL to be blooming this year it would have had to be seeded spring 2011 or earlier (delayed germination). The plants come up and just like carrots and parsley form a root only the first year and flower the second.

[CarolT]

Also, they may clean them out, but I've not seen them clean the undercarriage...

You may not notice the first couple of years when it's not so thick. By the time you notice, it's got a foothold. Not saying it didn't come in another way, I just often wonder...