Spray ragwort protocol

D50 is what we use. You spray at the rosette stage in the spring. Frost will hamper the kill and all plants must be fully dead before cattle can graze it again

Sprayed a good bit of it last few years with forefront and it’s as good as gone now. Let cattle back in after 2 weeks. They won’t eat it unless they are starved and I think they have to eat a fair amount of it for it to do them any harm.

I sprayed d50 in April.

Funny that, just came in from pulling an acre. Wasnt too bad with it, took about an hour. Handy that the weeds dont go too deep

There is a very tight window for spraying. Because you need to keep cattle off for so long you will end up with a meddle if it’s too late into the spring, during the summer it’s gone Ito stem extension.

september is probably your best bet

A very satisfying job, especially if there's a touch of moisture in the ground.

Some clever engineering man should develop a tractor mounted ragwort lifter. I've a feeling something may already exist, but not the finished article.

"Never closer the whole rest of our lives" Seamus Heaney

He can say it more eloquently than I ever could!!!

Pulled it for years and never saw any improvement year after year. Spraying was all that worked here.

I don't own a sprayer and tend to be busy in March when I should be getting it done..they are gone too strong now and starting to go to seed so just said we'd try this..hope to spray anything that reappears in autumn now, and maybe spring again..

I had good success in another field by pulling them, but to be fair they have kept coming back year on year in these 2 particular fields..

Making a big effort to get every last root out withthe garden fork, hope that might make a difference!!

Looks like ragwort to me, just not common ragwort.

Comes up as marsh ragwort on plant net app, although I thought that would be a bit more stemmy.

Purple stems would be a characteristic of ragwort particularly towards the base.

There are 4 common verities here and probably several less common varieties. They all have the yellow flower and purple in the stems in common, some are bushy and some more stemmy.

I ve been pulling ragwort this last few years, I would have almost none now thankfully. You might get the odd 1 near a few neighbours ditches that the seed would have blown over. An old boy told me a few years ago that it takes about 5 -6 years to get them out of land by pulling them, as the seed that falls this year wouldn't grow a plant for 2 -3 years. The roadsides of the country are destroyed with them.