Farmers Weekly Review

Ah, the winding down of summer. The sunflowers are at full blast, and the roadsides are flush with the last of the beautiful sky-blue chicory, the beginnings of bright yellow goldenrods, the purple asters, and the two devils — teasel and ragweed.

Both of these weeds are true brutes. Teasel with its stems so strong it can tie up an IDOT mower; ragweed — both giant and common — is the real reason your eyes are itchy; your throat is scratchy and your nose just won’t stop running.

These are the weeds that are at their worst this time of year. Teasel creates dense mats of plants so thick they are almost impenetrable. And ragweed is in flower now, but so deceptive. The flowers are green, and you really don’t see them. But you certainly feel them. The pollen of ragweed is one of the most highly allergic pollens.

Let’s take a look at these two to understand them and learn best practices for eradication:

Teasel is a biennial. These are plants that have a two-year life cycle. The first year, they send up a flush of green base leaves which are the vegetative parts; the second year, they add the reproductive parts — the flowers and eventual seeds.

Desirable biennial flowers you may know include hollyhock, foxgloves and sweet William. On the flip side, biennial weeds you may know (but would prefer not to) include burdock, Queen Anne’s lace, evening primrose, common mullein and teasel.

Now here is the trick, that biennial lifecycle helps us with easier eradication and less proliferation of these weeds. If you can catch them in their first year, and either manually rouge them out (but beware, they have a deep taproot) or chemically, you have not only eliminated that plant, but the potential for that plant to get to the reproductive stage next year.

If only it were that easy, though. One teasel flower, according to Penn State University, can drop up to 3,000 seeds. They don’t tend to travel far but drop near the mother plant. So, when they germinate and grow, these tough plants form a dense thicket of teasel, making eradication difficult if not impossible.

Over the years, I have seen IDOT mowers more than once, stuck in colonies of teasel, that is how difficult it is to access, let alone eradicate.

Teasel, as many weeds, is tolerant of a wide range of acceptable conditions. Teasel likes it sunny, but is adaptable to both dry and wet sites. Teasel is most often misidentified as a thistle from the look of its flower and stem.

There are two species of teasel here in Will County — common and cutleaf (Dipsacus fullonum and D. laciniatus, respectively). Common teasel is the most familiar here, with pretty lavender flowers with large claw bracts surrounding the single flower. Cutleaf teasel has white flowers with shorter bracts.

Teasel can become a towering weed, up to 8-feet tall. Even though it is an invasive brute, just like with many imported plants, it served a purpose in times long ago. Where ingenious people would look to nature for food, medicine and tools.

The foreboding sharp-looking seedpod of teasel was put to work in the world of fabric-making. The seedheads were used to card wool for spinning and to pull on the nap on fabrics so it could be trimmed to be even.

Another (and actually continued) use of teasel seed heads is for floral design. Under the category “if you can’t beat them, craft them!” — Carefully taking those pinchy teasel seedheads and putting them on a wreath form and spraying them gold or silver, makes a stunning holiday wreath or dried floral arrangement. Just remember when you tire of that crafted piece to put it in the garbage or burn pile, never in the compost bin.

The good news, though, is that teasel isn’t found in the average backyard. It is more of a ditch, roadside weed. But the other brute of today’s discussion, is found on roadside and backyard alike. Ragweed.

Ragweed-again two varieties common and giant (Ambrosia artemisiifolia and Ambrosia trifida, respectively) are incredibly allergen producing. Unfortunately, poor delightful goldenrod often gets the blame. It is like if you are considered a suspect because you were in the store when it got robbed.

We all notice the showy, bright flowers of goldenrod, but no one sees the devilish trident, green flowers of ragweed. The trouble is, they enjoy the same habitat. So, you sneeze and take yet another allergy pill every time you see goldenrod. But you are blaming the wrong plant.

Goldenrod has very heavy pollen; ragweed has incredibly light pollen. Goldenrod pollen does not get disturbed unless by a pollinator. Pollinators love goldenrod. The real culprit of allergy season is ragweed pollen. Those inconspicuous green flowers you barely see? One ragweed blossom can contain 3 billion grains of lightweight pollen.

This pollen is easily disturbed by the slightest breeze, and according to the Allergy and Asthma Foundation of America, ragweed is the most common weed allergen. So, what to do?

First, identification is everything. If you learn to identify weed leaves early on, you can pluck them out before the plant even thinks off creating a bloom. Common ragweed has a fern-like foliage. Giant ragweed has a large bold tri-lobed leaf.

Fortunately, both of our ragweeds are annuals. So, if you can eradicate them before seed dispersal, great! And that is NOW, even if they have grown to full height — for common ragweed that is 4-to-6 feet tall. Giant ragweed lives up to its name and can grow to 12 feet, but some university resources indicate it can grow to 20 feet.

Regardless of the size, get it out. And again, this is not for composting, but unlike teasel, is not for the burn pile either. Burning ragweed can also disperse the allergen, so the trash is where ragweed should go.

When in doubt, throw it out.