Welcome to Legal Tender Farm

Welcome to Legal Tender Farm

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Update on Nettle Erradication

I posted about various treatments for nettles back in June of 2010 ( http://tilemosaics.blogspot.com/2010/06/bulls-horses-and-nettles.html ), and it has occurred to me that I did not post a follow-up on how well the treatments worked.

I'm sorry to say that they did not totally erradicate the nettles.  We still regularly have bull nettles cropping up throughout the property.  Tom pulls them by hand.  And we have great patches of the Carolina horse nettle that he has to treat throughout the growing season.

Our next plan of action is to get our soil in tip-top shape.  We've had the soil tested to see what it needs and will be applying lime and some fertilizer in the coming weeks.  Then a regular regimen of mowing.  We have been told that if we fertilize enough, our hay will eventually choke out the nettles and other weeds.

We shall see.

Also, we've been letting the goats roam freely.  They like to eat the young sand burrs and the burr grass.  I think that has been helpful in keeping the burrs from taking over.

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