It’s been a bad year around here for goatheads and I curse them daily. Anyone have ways or words of support to eliminate them?
Current plan is burn when it’s cooler and then pre-emergent spray/weed killer in early spring. All help/thoughts welcomed!
Burning doesn’t really work, but it is quite satisfying!
Perhaps you can spray enough, but I haven’t gone that route because i don’t want to expose the animals or kill the other vegetation. So I’m no help there.
What does work, is going out with a hand trowel and digging up the whole plant with the tap root BEFORE they flower and definitely before they go to seed. You’ll need some serious gloves because even before they flower odds are good that when you grab the base of the plant there will be at least one intact goathead sitting right there to stab you. It’s so much work, but you’ll get so fit with all of that squatting and digging and pulling!
Flip flops are also amazing at picking up the goathead seeds. There has to be some way to build that concept out into a goathead collecting roller. You should develop one. I’ll buy it. It wouldn’t even have to be that good. Just helping pick up the really sharp ones would be amazing.
1 Like
Funny you mention this as the below video recently popped up on YouTube for me. I had never heard of goatheads (not sure if we have them in Ontario, and I certainly hope to never encounter them as they sounds like nasty little things).
I am a terrible gardener, do not take any advice from me but here is a link to someone eminently more qualified than I: https://youtu.be/LanQ8uz99WY
Flip flops are also amazing at picking up the goathead seeds.
those seeds can remain dormant for up to ten years, that one of the reasons it so hard to get rid of
Yikes! 
Glad I have not seen those on my (Midwest) farm!
I found rhis:
https://gardenerdy.com/how-to-get-rid-of-goathead-weeds/
Depressing article about weeds:
