Help-Thistles are everywhere!!! How to get rid of them?

Question

Hi all,
My new house has thistles mixed in with plants and shrubs around my house. They penetrated the mulch and I am starting to see some patches in my front lawn. I have pulled them-they grow again-I pulled and shot round up in the hole-they grown back-a little yellow-but still growing-any suggestions??? I have thought about taking all the mulch off and laying down black tarp-but I dont want to destroy the "good" plants.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated!!

Answer 1

Pulling out thistles is futile, as you have discovered. Even a tiny bit of root left behind will resprout. You want to prevent thistle seeds from spreading, so cut off the flowers and seed heads of the thistles but leave the stems and leaves standing.

Round Up works on green growing leaves, not the soil. It is absorbed through the leaves and travels to the roots to kill the plant and it will get all the roots, so Round Up is a very good herbicide to use for thistles.

Spray the Round up on the leaves of the thistles. If they are too close to other plants, use a small paint brush to paint the leaves of just the thistles. Round Up takes about 2 weeks to work and thistles are hard to kill. After applying Round Up, wait 2 weeks and reapply to any thistles that are still green. You may have to repeat this 3 or 4 times.

Learn to recognize thistle seedlings and spray them with Round Up too. It will work better on small plants.

Answer 2

You may need to hire a lawn care service if you can't get rid of them on your own...Plus with a service - they should "guarantee" results so you can keep having them come out until you are satisfied. Also agree with the other posts that you have to get ALL of the root or it will grow back.
We have been battling these for 2 years in our new home and we are finally winning - after we called ChemLawn and had them spray for them (it has taken several times) But hopefully by next year they will be GONE! Yeahh!
Good Luck!

Answer 3

Thistles have very deep faucet roots, and digging them out using an previous kitchen knife is returned-breaking for particular. the only painless thank you to tug at them is under the leaves, on the muse, in spite of gloves on. Pouring boiling water on the leaves will kill them, yet which potential many journeys returned interior for extra warm water till you have an prolonged heavy-accountability extension twine (A kettle takes purely approximately 15 amps to run, and the longer the twine, the extra drainage of potential.) Spray a nil.5-and-0.5 combination of bleach and water on the leaves purely - in some days they are going to start to shrivel. attempt to choose for a cloudy windless day, since solar weakens the chlorine in bleach.

Answer 4

Unfortunatly the only sure way to get rid of thistles is to dig them up, root and all. And you have to make sure you get it all or it wil come back. And they do spread something terrible. It will take some time but it is possible to get rid of them. After you dig it up spray some systemic root killer in the hole just to be sure.

Answer 5

Do NOT pull things and then spray with Round-Up! That has to go on the leaves. Let them grow out a bit, and then spray.

Answer 6

They are close to impossible to remove. Our local Master Gardener recommends putting on a plastic glove, then a cotton one. Dip you hand in Round-Up and "wash" the leaves. You must be persistent. Also, use a pre-emergent in the spring.

Answer 7

Use round-up Brush and poison ivy killer, the one with the yellow top. It will do the job. Just be aware that it will kill everything the spray gets onto. I've used it on woody vines and it works.

Answer 8

You have to pull those out of the ground, and be sure to get all of the roots to the plant, or it will grow back.

Answer 9

when pulling them out, use a weeding spike and water deeply before pulling so that the whole plant + roots comes out.