Ragwort and spraying

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fornema

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Better late than never our yard is having the fields sprayed, the ragwort is a losing battle, but I have pulled any plants I find that they have access to. Now when they are sprayed will this kill the existing roots that may not have been pulled out in their entirety? It seems worse than ever this year with the constant rain.
 
It depends what they spray with! If they use something systemic then it will be taken down into the roots and kill the whole plant. However, if they use something which just kills off the top growth then the little beggars will come back.
 
Usually you need a leaf for the herbicide to be absorbed by. You’ll have to leave the horses off for quite a long time especially if the plants are large. If they are at the rosette stage then it works best. They sprayed too late at my yard a few years ago and I had to fence part of my field off as it took forever for the mature plants to die and I had to spend ages removing the dead plants as dead are more likely to get eaten. The previous person in the field hadn’t pulled the ragwort properly and there were hundreds of plants. I left them as they kept saying they would spray and by the time they did the plants were mature. It was a nightmare to clear.
 
poiuytrewq said:
If you mean roots left behind from pulled plants no it won’t. It will only kill the plants of the leaves it lands on.
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This - the spray needs to hit a leaf to be taken down to the roots.

Sussexbythesea said:
Usually you need a leaf for the herbicide to be absorbed by. You’ll have to leave the horses off for quite a long time especially if the plants are large. If they are at the rosette stage then it works best. They sprayed too late at my yard a few years ago and I had to fence part of my field off as it took forever for the mature plants to die and I had to spend ages removing the dead plants as dead are more likely to get eaten. The previous person in the field hadn’t pulled the ragwort properly and there were hundreds of plants. I left them as they kept saying they would spray and by the time they did the plants were mature. It was a nightmare to clear.
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I had similar in one yard - the field hadn't been sprayed and the YM thought it was fine to put horses on a field full of dead ragwort as 'horses don't eat it'. I had to fence off safe bits and pull the lot by hand as the other owners were of a similar opinion. Awful.
 
Also need to be a bit careful as dried up dead ragwort is far more palletable to horses than growing plants so really need to spray and give time to work then pull up anyway.
 
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