Yesterday I finally finished spraying the weeds in the pastures for this year. Well, maybe. I find that I can miss some weeds. And the Canada thistle weed has a tendency at times to pop up another weed or two from its root system when other weeds have been sprayed and are dying.
My pastures are about 36 acres. The hayfield has no weeds. Because of the trees in the pastures, and the herbicide I use is also for snowberry bushes - a woody plant, the herbicide can also affect trees. So I use a backpack sprayer to spot spray the weeds and do not drive around broadcasting the herbicide in the air and ground to kill weeds.
The tank holds 4 gallons. As you can imagine spraying this way takes much long than if I just drive around blasting herbicide in the air. And I only want to carry this tank only for a few hours, and not all day.
I started the weed spraying back when I was still irrigating in July. There were breaks at times as some days I had other stuff to do. When I got back to spraying I often would go over areas I had sprayed days earlier. That way I caught weeds I missed or new weeds that popped up.
Once irrigating was done I tried to spend more time spraying weeds. I wanted to be done spraying weeds, but I also wanted to cover all the pastures. Unsprayed areas can get more weeds the next year.
When I got to the south pasture I made great progress. One tank covered 60% of the pasture. One or two tanks left and I'd be done. Nope. That didn't happen. Many tanks more were needed. The SW corner of the pasture has lots of Canada thistle weeds. Then I got to the island and was surprised at the number of Canada thistle and bull thistle weeds. I even spent time one afternoon just pulling or mostly cutting the top of weeds that had or were starting to go to seed. At this point spraying the weed will kill the weed but not stop the seeds from spreading. I removed and gathered the seeds and got rid of them so they would not spread.
Then yesterday, my last day, when I got on the island I heard sounds across the river on the neighbor's land. I looked and saw a black bear cub climbing a pine tree. After the cub got up a distance then I saw the mother bear at the bottom of the tree. Then the mother climbed up the tree. Once the bears reached decent branches they moved to the branches. Then I noticed there were two black bear cubs in the tree. They sat up there looking at me. Better there and not trying to chase me.
Also, I now know in the future to not try to climb a tree to avoid a black bear. Those bears climbed the tree really fast. Much faster than I could climb.
I didn't have my camera when I saw the bears. Today I went back - no bears - and took a photo of the tree. The red arrow points to where the mother had climbed. The cubs had climbed higher.
I went back to spraying. By the time I was done spraying it was starting to get dark. I didn't go back to look at the tree and never saw the bears again.
Here is my island. As you can see the trees are not made for climbing. Also, they are mostly hawthorn trees.
I even found Canada and bull thistle weeds among the thickest part of the trees, even where the grass doesn't grow. Being hawthorn trees it made it hard at times to get close enough to spray the weeds. I had a few hours left today after taking the photos. I spent time cutting some of the hawthorn tree branches. I didn't make a dent on the number. I got poked and got bloody on my hands by the thorns, and ended up pulling a half dozen or more thorns out of my boots where the thorns went through the boots and reached my feet.
I'm glad to be done spraying. Still, I may come back in a week or so and spray again to find the weeds I had missed. We'll see if that happens.
I had a few areas in the north and middle pastures that had yarrow weeds. They were sprayed but they were starting to develop seeds. Now that those weeds are dead tomorrow I plan to go out and pull and dispose of those weeds and seeds.
