Thursday, November 29, 2007

My Battle with Three Corner Jacks

In both my back and front yard, I have three corner jack's (or caltrop) which means that going outside without shoes on is just asking for punishment. It has decided that now is a great time to start to grow, personally I think it knows that this is a busy time of year and it has a good chance of being left undisturbed and allowed to grow, flower and set seed (in the thousands) then die off and pretend it was never there, with the seeds lying in waiting for an unsuspecting foot to come along (OUCH!!).

And a close up of one that is just about to flower:

I'm going to beat it at its own game, I have made myself a rule that if I go outside and see a group of plants at least a few of them need to be pulled out and fed to the chooks, and I also have my "sacrificial thongs" which live by the back door.

A simple walk around the back yard will result in the base of the thongs being covered in three corner, rub the thongs together over a bucket and "tada" another hundred or so plants that will not grow.
Eventually I will get them to a manageable level.

3 comments:

Scarecrow said...

Hi ButterflyGirl
We had these here when we moved in too. I set out to pull up everyone I saw, you get to know the baby ones!
We rarely get them now but they do still come up where we've put horse manure sometimes!
Good luck getting rid of them.
:)

Vanessa said...

Hi Scarecrow,
I think I will have them for a few years to come but with perseverance I hope I'll get the numbers down, and with my "sacrificial thongs" I have been able to collect a lot of seeds that wont get the change to grow. I think I am a bit optimistic to think that that 10L bucket will get filled, but I'll keep going.

Kaviare said...

I found this post by googling how to get rid of these pests! How are they going now in your garden? Our backyard is COVERED with them, and advice ranges from burning them to just diggin up the top three inches of dirt. What's your experience?