Argh! Thistles!

I always say, "Better living through modern chemistry!"

I heard that the roots of creeping (canada) thistle can be eaten. I'll try it this weekend and see how it tastes.


Edit: ran to my car to get my edible foregers book and found that you can eat all parts (after removing the thorns of course) leaves and stems (raw or cooked) taste like celery, flower petels can be eaten sprinkled in salad, roots maybe be boiled, sliced, and stir fried. Outter green bract of flwoer buds can be steamed and eaten like artichokes.

And then I did a search and found this:

http://www.northernbushcraft.com/pla...stle/notes.htm


Hmm...I guess I have a new veggie in my garden.


I might try turning the roots into flour and do some expirimenting eh? In case of SHTF, something "invasive" would actually prove useful as an edible.

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It's not that I don't like mankind, I just like nature a whole lot more.

Thistles are pretty much round-up resistant.

I got rid of mine by pulling and pulling and pulling. A dusting of wood ash then piles of leaves left on the garden for a year works great too. Not chopped or shredded leaves, you need to use whole leaves.

FYI

Roundup is killing long before there is any visible effect on any plant. A week or more, is about right before leaves or stems start truning brown. With 24D, it will be willted tomorrow. 24D is a better choice anyway for thistles, as other poster's have stated.

Give it some more time to work.

Mow, use 10% vinegar! Mow, mow, mow. 10% vinegar.

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If vinegar worked you'd see farmers using it on a large scale.

I think the op has discovered that the first mistake was to chop up the roots.
Whenever I see a thistle I hit it with 5% round up. For the hay ground I spray Cimmeron-max with a non ionic surfactant, it flat spanks the thistles and bind weed.

A non chemical solution would be a dense cover crop that would choke out the thistles something like buckwheat.

The truth is you never really kill the thistles, you just force them to move. I know a retired farmer that had chased the same thistle patch around a field for forty years.

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The best of men is only a man at best.

We have our crop almost under control after it took over most of two pastures and invaded the other three. We have used 24D with dicamba and spray as soon as the rosettes form on the ground in the spring and fall. We don't allow grazing for a month after spraying.

Pigs.

I love thistles. Thistles have beautiful flowers.
I hate thistles. Thistles are a major physical pain to bump into in the brush.

But worse than thistles is burdock. Burdock burs get into sheep wool and destroy the year's crop.

Fortunately, pigs absolutely love burdock and thistles. Hard to account for tastes, they must have tongues and lips like steel. They eat all of ours they can get to. I hand kill the little other I find. We used to have lots of thistles and burdock. Now we have almost none.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa

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