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milkweed gone !

showcrop

showcrop

Well-known Member
It just came to me this AM, field i'm working in has no milkweed. It was coming on strong, but three times in probably five years I went out with a 2.5 gal. sprayer of round up. didn't get all of it each time but persistence paid off.
 
I'll agree on that, persistence when applied thoroughly, can solve a lot of problems. I've gone and pulled by hand all the milkweed and other weeds from a 7 acre field with a new crop of oats after having been in corn for years, even with the spray application done by the sprayer when it was corn, funny how I've noticed a different variety of sumac coming up that I have only seen in other fields miles away, by seasons end they are small trees, taller than the corn. Combine goes right over em I think cause I never see any left after harvest. Then with other areas overgrown, the seed is there and it takes over, most anything left idle will become thick with golden rod here, especially if left idle after tillage crops like corn, seed blows in from surrounding areas.
 
I spent a couple of hours spraying milkweed and pulling some out in my fields. I'm gonna try to compare the results of pulling it up vs spraying.

Of course it rained 2 hours after I sprayed, it was waterproof roundup though.
 
Before spray, we had a lot of milkweed & sowthistle.

We had a _very_ dry year (actually 3 years were dry, but the 3rd was the worst), and grasshoppers were aweful. They sucked the juice out of anything green. Corn was down to 25bu an acre, normal was 125-150 back then. It was terrible dry.

There were very few milkweeds & sowthistles for a while after that year.

--->Paul
 
Neighbours had patches of milkweed in soyabeans, we all got a spray bottle and went walking in the field, just a little squirt on each patch and three of us did a hundred acres in three mornings when it was cool...not a milkweed to be found now, that was three years ago!
 
someone told me that goldenrod puts out a toxin that kills other plants,thats why you see huge fields of it if you just leave the fields fallow. dont know if its true or not.
 
It's a perennial, but the seeds are overwhelming, if you cut it after it's flowered and gone to seed, you need to have a screen on the radiator and clean often, loads up with thick fuzz. I have taken photos over the years of our fields where I have cut, some easily 6 feet tall in rainy years, nothing else seems to grow with it, though it can be in patches too, I have cut and kept cutting it in areas where grasses surrounded it, the grasses finally took back over, it's slow to start, so if something else is planted to shade it out, it will go away, I thought that if I got it before it went to seed that would happen, but if truly a perennial, it comes back, though I think that seed certainly reinforces it.

Apparently Edison made rubber from it, good lasting type rubber, funny how something literally requires no nurturing, comes back every year, does well with lots of rain, can produce something like rubber, somehow got bypassed, kind of reminds me of other similar examples, hemp, and alternate fuels/energy, you always wonder why it was never used especially if viable to use.
 
Billy,
The other good thing about milkweed; it is a very fine green vegetable if only the very tender top leaves are used. To me its taste is like a cross between asparagus and spinach. I had a big helping a couple of weeks ago; even my wife had to admit it was good.
 
after posting this AM I went out to mow for a custom job. It's been very dry here in NH and my fields aren't doing real well, but this guy's field is really tall and thick. it was all goldenrod just five or six years ago but none now. he limes it and fertilizes it and I hay it twice a year. I like to mow at 6-7 MPH but I probably didn't get over five in that field this morning it was so heavy.
 
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