Toughest weed to mow?

[whistlepig]

Not saplings or trees. Just an old fashioned weed. For me it's chicory. I just mowed a small chicory infested field today that I hadn't got to yet this year. The chicory was shoulder high. I had to mow it three times before it stayed mowed. It's almost like trying to mow wire.

 

[DT86]

I mowed some thistle for a guy last week that was over my head, probably about 7' tall. I had the same problem, it didn't want to stay down and bogged the tractor even in third gear. The absolute worst of it I mowed twice, in opposite directions. This time last year I baled hay for him in the same field, there were a few thistles but nothing anywhere near this bad.

 

[dmccarty]

I once saw a guy mowing a lot full of Thistle. That stuff was at least six feet tall and the lot was totally packed with that stuff. The lot was owned by an absentee owner and a neighbor decided to mow it down before the Thistle flowered. The guy had a finish mower. :shocked: He needed a rotary cutter if not a bulldozer to take that $%^&*() down. He made multiple passes but it seemed that most of the Thistle was just pushed down by the tractor. He sure was tearing up that mower.

Later,
Dan

 

[gwdixon]

The toughest weeds that I mow seem to be in the field that is currently being mowed!! :laughing: :laughing:

Seriously, vine-type weeds tend to be the worst around here. They wind around the spindles of Bush Hog style mowers and are too dense for flail-type to get through (the flails rotate out of the way).

Haven't ever mowed a thick stand of thistle but it sounds unpleasant from reading the above posts.

 

[fordmantpw]

Haven't mowed thistle, but goldenrod is pretty tough. Especially when it's dry. Right after we bought our property, I tried to mow our field with the MMM cutting as well as the brush hog behind me cutting with my BX2200. The crap was 4'+ tall, and the cutters just couldn't quite cut it (pardon the pun), so I had the neighbor cut it with his 10' brush hog. He had to cut several places twice.

 

[creekbend]

Regarding Thistle: I rarely get Thistle growth in my two pastures, but when I do, I take a shovel and dig the whole plant out, roots and all. When only mowing, it seems like I'm only spreading the Thistle because there are more plants later in the same general area. This is why I chose my eradication measures. Works for me. BTW, I drive the Golf cart in the pastures and have my shovel next to me with a large bin to put the plants in. This process would be tiring if I had a large amount of Thistle.

 

[dmccarty]

I have sprayed Round Up on Thistle. Sometimes Round Up actually kills the Thistle. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

Somewhere I read that archeologists in the UK use the Thistle to locate old human buildings. The Scots have used the Thistle as a symbol for gazzilions of years and its use is supposed to have started when some Viking were sneaking up on some Scots in the middle of the night. The barefooted horn head stepped on some Thistle, yelled owwie and the battle was on. I have always wondered if people planted Thistle around their houses in Scotland as a form of barbed wire? Why else would it be around ancient home sites? :confused3:

Thistle does have a very pretty flower. I would not mind it so much if it was not so danged invasive.

Later,
Dan

 

[LD1]

Cant say I have ever ran into any "weed" that was harder to mow than dense grass. Man does dense grass really bog the cutter down...

If you consider things like rose-bushes or "brier" patches as weeds, I'd have to day that.


If we were talking about an actual finish mower on a lawn, I'd have to say buckhorn (or at least thats what we call it around here)

 

[k0ua]

Poison Ivy.. :shocked::laughing:

 

[LD1]

Poison Ivy.. :shocked::laughing:

That stuff is easy to mow...its the side effects that suck

Unless you try mowing the ivy growing up a tree:laughing: