Ragwort - solid ground

[Highmileagereindeer]

Digging removes the root ball. Pulling risks leaving broken roots, which will regenerate. Barrier H is vinegar, which like salt, is not good for the soil. It is supposed to be a notifiable weed, and if everyone, including the local authority, were to make a good effort over the next three years, it would make a big difference. Our pasture hasn't been sprayed for the past twenty years, and last year we started to see wild flowers and plants coming back. I'd be reluctant to turn the clock back twenty years and spray.

 

[Sinibar]

Digging removes the root ball. Pulling risks leaving broken roots, which will regenerate. Barrier H is vinegar, which like salt, is not good for the soil. It is supposed to be a notifiable weed, and if everyone, including the local authority, were to make a good effort over the next three years, it would make a big difference. Our pasture hasn't been sprayed for the past twenty years, and last year we started to see wild flowers and plants coming back. I'd be reluctant to turn the clock back twenty years and spray.

totally agree, I have a field that is full of orchids and vetch , thyme and lots of others so have just weed the ragowort by hand with the ragfork . Being a farm I need a license to spray and hate seeing unlicensed people on quads happily weed wiping with no PPE and right next to watercourses

 

[meleeka]

I found some ragwort in the corner of my field yesterday and it's about 6ft tall! I've never seen such a tall plant before and currently wondering if I'll be able to get it up. If not i'll just chop it off as low as I can.

 

[Exasperated]

I'm on clay and just about managing to twizzle the ragfork in & get plants out without too much earth. My bugbear is no one is doing the neighbouring field and I can see yellow bobbing flowers on the plant.

I'd just break it off at ground level and get it out properly later when there's been some rain. I wouldn't ever salt the ground, it just poisons the soil. Or use bleach, let alone in a field where horses are grazing (?????).

Have you discussed this with next door? If they won’t engage -
Report the neighbours!
Particularly your contamination is coming from them, they are breaking the law.
But do it quickly, preferably yesterday: the neighbours will be given notification and a grace interval in which to act, and the damn stuff is flowering and seeding earlier this year.

 

[Exasperated]

Digging out ragwort is not a waste of time if you do it year after year. I have many fields as I have cows and only a few ponies now. I do it with the rag fork every year and the fields I have been doing for many years only take me an hour or so now. Cutting of the stem , thats not going to remove the leaves which are also poisonous and of course invasive, cutting it just makes it smaller but more vigorous the following year. One of my neighbors has been topping his ragwort for years and now his field is thick with it, instead of grass. If I leave a hole after pulling or digging a big bit out I just go round with some grass seed. Spraying is good but you have to remove all the dead leaves later. It's hard work and no body ever wants to help me but it works. If I see any ragwort with the cinnabar caterpillar on it I leave it for them to do their work. I have 8 fields between 11 and two acres, and I start long before it flowers, I just have one corner of a 6 acre field to finish now and a three acre field that was bad when I took it on two years ago , I expect it will be a lot of work but the rest are all clear of it now

About your caterpillars, when they eat down the plant, are you saying it never re grows? Seems a bit unlikely?
There aren’t any cinnabar moths round here, nor their offspring to deprive, altho there’s ragwort aplenty.
But even if they were artificially introduced, how would they get on top of the problem? In pasture and crop, you just don’t want it growing back.
100% agree that simply cutting the tops off ragwort is a hiding to nothing, altho the field might temporarily ‘look better’ to some people.

 

[Sinibar]

About your caterpillars, when they eat down the plant, are you saying it never re grows? Seems a bit unlikely?
There aren’t any cinnabar moths round here, nor their offspring to deprive, altho there’s ragwort aplenty.
But even if they were artificially introduced, how would they get on top of the problem? In pasture and crop, you just don’t want it growing back.
100% agree that simply cutting the tops off ragwort is a hiding to nothing, altho the field might temporarily ‘look better’ to some people.

Im not sure, there were masses of them in my other neighbours field and because he is not the neighbor who tops it they decimated the ragwort that year and the next year not many came up. The guy who topped his still had loads. I caught loads and moved them 60 miles to some grazing I have and not one moth or caterpillar there the next year

 

[Sinibar]

Im not sure, there were masses of them in my other neighbours field and because he is not the neighbor who tops it they decimated the ragwort that year and the next year not many came up. The guy who topped his still had loads of ragwort . I caught loads of 'ragwort fairies' that I call them and moved them 60 miles to some grazing and not one moth or caterpillar survived to the next year

I can find the edit button so editing this

 

[Surbie]

Have you discussed this with next door? If they won’t engage -
Report the neighbours!
Particularly your contamination is coming from them, they are breaking the law.
But do it quickly, preferably yesterday: the neighbours will be given notification and a grace interval in which to act, and the damn stuff is flowering and seeding earlier this year.

It's on the same yard...

I'll nip in before the seedheads form, take a couple of big bags and pull the plants/remove the tops if it's not been sorted by then. My horse used to be in there and after 2 years I had it pretty clean so it's a bit sad to see it reverting.

Digging out ragwort is not a waste of time if you do it year after year. I have many fields as I have cows and only a few ponies now. I do it with the rag fork every year and the fields I have been doing for many years only take me an hour or so now. Cutting of the stem , thats not going to remove the leaves which are also poisonous and of course invasive, cutting it just makes it smaller but more vigorous the following year. One of my neighbors has been topping his ragwort for years and now his field is thick with it, instead of grass. If I leave a hole after pulling or digging a big bit out I just go round with some grass seed. Spraying is good but you have to remove all the dead leaves later. It's hard work and no body ever wants to help me but it works. If I see any ragwort with the cinnabar caterpillar on it I leave it for them to do their work. I have 8 fields between 11 and two acres, and I start long before it flowers, I just have one corner of a 6 acre field to finish now and a three acre field that was bad when I took it on two years ago , I expect it will be a lot of work but the rest are all clear of it now

Absolutely agree with this. I check my field all year round for rosettes and remove them. I now get fewer plants, though this year seems to be quite bad. We have both the common & the silvery ragwort here.

I've said this before, but I was previously (briefly!) on a yard where the YM allocated my horse to a field with standing dead ragwort in it and was surprised when I refused. It was about 6 acres, and while the YM and other 2 liveries with horses in there were happy I fenced off sections and cleared it, no one else helped.

 

[Gloi]

We had a field for my friend and i's ponies. At first it was a mess of nettles ragwort and two types of thistles. We dug the ragwort and strip grazed it. My pony started pawing the thistles into a mush then eating them. Then he started on the nettles and eventually the others joined in. He even learned to destroy the big spear thistles. We gradually got less ragwort each year as we were pretty scrupulous but the ponies completely cleared the field of thistles and nettles with their stomping.

 

[Exasperated]

Im not sure, there were masses of them in my other neighbours field and because he is not the neighbor who tops it they decimated the ragwort that year and the next year not many came up. The guy who topped his still had loads. I caught loads and moved them 60 miles to some grazing I have and not one moth or caterpillar there the next year

Right, so it sounds like cinnebars don’t relocate successfully, haven’t even managed to migrate next door-but-one! certainly there’s surplus ragwort all over the UK to get their teeth into, they must be over-faced.
Think we’ll carry on the struggle as before, then......

Im not sure, there were masses of them in my other neighbours field and because he is not the neighbor who tops it they decimated the ragwort that year and the next year not many came up. The guy who topped his still had loads. I caught loads and moved them 60 miles to some grazing I have and not one moth or caterpillar there the next year

 

[Highmileagereindeer]

Last summer I contacted Dave Goulson at Sheffield University to ask why we had no cinnabar caterpillars on ten acres of yellow. He replied that the egg laying was cyclical, and we may go a couple of years without seeing any, and then only see them on two or three plants.

 

[Exasperated]

Last summer I contacted Dave Goulson at Sheffield University to ask why we had no cinnabar caterpillars on ten acres of yellow. He replied that the egg laying was cyclical, and we may go a couple of years without seeing any, and then only see them on two or three plants.

So, neither reliable nor effective method of ragwort control! And clearly not short of food. Always worth knowing when faced with earnest, anti-herbicide, Ragwort Protection League, types. Thank you.