toad flax blues

[sickle hocks]

Should have seen it coming I guess. Took on twenty acres of a quarter that’s been rented out and farmed zero till cereals and canola. The guy sprays like it’s going out of style so I figured the field would be relatively clean for a fresh start.

Seeded most of it to various grass and grass legume mixes, a bit of fall rye and some oats. Being a newbie i didn’t recognize the yellow toadflax right away, thought it was an annual I could deal with.

It has Really proliferated under the zero till regime…I think he suppressed a lot of the flowering with herbicide, but it’s reproduced vegetatively and it’s pretty bad. I was hoping to save the least infested areas of grass by hand pulling. Then mowing the heavy infestation just to stop seed set and buy myself some time. Then it started flowering about three weeks before they say it’s supposed to here.

Also thinking of just writing it all off and working everything under, keeping it worked all summer and spraying round up in the fall. (yeah i know, but this piece of land isn’t going to be able to go cold turkey on herbicides, i’ll have to wean it off…) That would set it back a lot but not kill it. And I don’t really have the tractor or tillage equipment to do it.

Really wanted to graze that land, but you need to quarantine cattle for days if they are grazing in a place with seed our you will spread the stuff to the rest of your land, and i definitely don’t want to get it in my native grassland.

Maybe a desk job in town. Save up for a mango plantation somewhere sunny.

Seriously.

[Andy Carson]

Sorry to hear about your troubles. I have had a tough year too. This isn’t easy stuff to do and learn. I am gaining an appreciation for the 50-60 year old lifetimes farmers who still “run things by” thier fathers when they make tillage/planting plans. There’s a science to all this, but there is also much skill, strategy, and artistry. We can try our best to understand the science, but I am also learning that so much comes from experience too. I have made friends with as many farming neighbors as I can and always try to pick thier brain about what I’m doing and what they think my challenges might be. A few think I’m a little odd to be doing all this with animal power, but still there is much to learn. I really wish I could ask questions of the “old timers” who used animals in my area. That might require a trip to the nursing home… Actually, maybe that’s not a bad idea… Mentors are always nice and one who knows the ground you are working and the very local challenges would be a great resource. I don’t, for example, have toad flax. I have lots and lots of toads, but no toad flax :). Best of luck in the future, really. Just because it’s hard does mean it’s not worth doing!

[near horse]

Not to make light of the situation but don’t forget “the path to success is built and paved with the failures”. As Andy said, experience is invaluable but also built on a lot of trial and error.

Sicklehocks – weed populations left over from or generated via previous farming systems can be a real pain to deal with. I’m an advocate of using whatever means you need to get it under control.

[sickle hocks]

Hey, thanks for the moral support, I guess I needed that… Today feels better as I have got the decision over with. Sacrificed what I had sown, had a neighbour ‘nuke’ it today, will hit it again late in the fall. It’s pretty hard, maybe impossible, to control yellow toad flax with smother crops or just tillage or good grazing management, and I don’t want an uphill battle for the next twenty years. One more season of chemical might just give me a fighting chance to make this work more organically in the long term.

I’ve been waiting to make my First Big Mistake and this was it…not recognizing it when it first popped up and stopping seeding right away. Should have walked the field with an old hand and talked it over.

It was staggering how fast it was for him to swoosh through twenty acres, a matter of minutes after a good month of getting it all seeded!

On the Plus side:

I at least got to see how my seeding worked for different stuff, and it looked like things had germinated and were doing pretty well.

I saved three acres of a pasture mix…separate field and not too badly infested, i hand pulled T.F. and will stay vigilant.

I’ve got a good strategy sorted out for keeping it from invading my native grassland.

I’ll have extra time this summer to do some training work with the horses, and get some shoeing in.

cheers, I would add a smiley but they don’t make one just right for this kind of day…
m.

[drafthorsey]

Well you’re most likely going to almost fail against this little plant. Yellow toadflax is one tough hombre that can keep going either by seeds or underground rhizomes. Darn stuff grows along roadsides and even in old railroad yards. It’ll take on most other plants and win, especially with the native varieties which includes whatever your trying to grow. The rhizomatous habit makes getting rid of it almost impossible. In other words, leave even a piece of root and it all starts over again. You can spray but sprays are at best “iffy” according to what I’ve come up against. Fall spraying seems to work best up in Colorado. Picloram has been the most effective herbicide anyone I’ve talked with has used. But if you spray during rainy season, the stuff dilutes. Graze it? I’ve read dalmation toadflax is “mildly toxic” to livestock. And you’re right about quarantining the livestock, heck if you plow up the stuff, wash everything or you’ll bring it home. I don’t envy you. This stuff likes it where nothing else grows. Rent a flamethrower. It won’t help but you’ll work off some stress.

I’ve had similar battles with yellow bamboo someone thought would be good for erosion control. You know it’ll take quite a jug of vinegar but that works on bamboo and other stuff. But 20 acres …. wow! Good luck, new lease?

[sickle hocks]

Well, That brings back some bad memories from last summer… (strained smiley here). And we had just worked up the courage to really commit to the place and give it a really good try here.

Just to update, I had someone spray the whole works with roundup, hopefully before too much of the toadflax developed viable seed. Then suddenly I ended up with a half decent volunteer crop of round-up ready canola. The neighbour and I seriously considering combining it, it looked like it would have ran pretty good. But there was a concurrent explosion of wild buckwheat, which would have made combining a tangly nightmare. I disced it to take out the buckwheat before IT went to seed. Then we got dry, but at least some (hopefully most) of the toadflax recovered enough to be big enough to hit with fall Roundup.

As an ecologist it was fascinating watching the field go through these convulsions once I had released it from the previous herbicide / zero till regime. As a wannabe farmer it was pretty disheartening.

So we’ll see. I’m hoping I’ve knocked it back to some reasonable level. I”m resigned to living with a low level infestation forever, I just hope it doesn’t overwhelm me again. My plan is to try to not let it go to seed (mow or graze), and to try and starve the rhizomes with smother crops or really shallow cutting tillage that doesn’t drag it everywhere. But it is everywhere anyway. Lots of crop rotation and green manuring and grazing. Sweet clover and rye? Spray the bad spots for a while if i have to. Or heavy straw mulch and plant pumpkins or fence in the bad spots with pigs or turkeys or something.

PS my cows eat it pretty good especially when it’s young, so that’s something…
pps i really wonder if last summer did anything to exhaust the seedbank out there, or if it’s just scratched the surface??

[drafthorsey]

I zeroed in on this Toadflax post because in several areas of the country I’ve had to deal with one plant or another brought in as an ornamental to say a local nursery and folks put it in their gardens. Next thing you know everybodies got some.

We went to a friends place in Colorado a few years back and he told me the horror stories of the stuff. It was taking over some 120 acres of his and a neighbors spread in an area. I’ve had to try and deal with bamboo, vinca major a stuff that looks like english ivy but stays on the ground, and New England is overrun run with a similiar flowering plant that someone missed from the old country. Heck starlings and grackles are imported along with pythons in the everyglades, but I’m getting off message. Toadflax is such a concern in the Dakota’s if you spot it the state will help you out. I couldn’t believe the states trying to eradicate it either. Washington has a moth that’s providing some control but California, where it was introduced as low water plant or xerascape, is having an awful time of it in some parts.

What gets me is the height it grows to. 5 foot is a pretty good sized flower in my book. And the stuffs from Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Romania so you know the soil is sparse in some areas at best. And the methods they are trying really take time, here’s a clip from one site I found: Intensive clean cultivation can effectively control Dalmatian toadflax. Cultivation methods must continue for at least two years, with eight to ten cultivations in the first year and four to five in the next year.

I like your idea of canola, switch grass, or even corn if it wil shade or choke it out. Glad to hear the cows will at least munch on it, burro’s might be better suited, or goats. But if the guys in the next fields aren’t on it like you are ….. wow. I even thought of maybe really improving the soil to choke it out. Afterall weed killer is basically a super fertilizer when you get down to it. What it does is cause a plant to outgrow itsself. Post made a weed killer for bermuda grass which left even large leafed tender plants like Iris alone but I found nothing for toadflax anywhere.

I like all your ideas for animals on the patch. Hogs do a pretty good job on whatever. We had an old fellow out here who dug himself a stock pond that wouldn’t hold water. He threw 50 hogs on the acre and a half and they tromped it down pretty good and the next thing you knew he had himself a big old pond. Maybe the freeze and the plowing this winter will help, but bless you and good luck.

[dominiquer60]

Regarding vinegar, it is sold as an herbicide in strengths stronger than the grocery store 5% acidity, but it is strong and full protection is highly recommended.

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