Has anybody had to deal with these much especially after leaving for a while? I don't know why but our place was taken over last month when we left. We got back after a month to find our entire yard swarmed with them. We skipped to the front door every day and skipped out to the car if we needed to go somewhere. We had to live with this for days. It wasn't too painful but it was a nuisance so we waited a good week until we could get weedkiller because we were low on time. Even during this, my 5 and 8 year old boys were still running around in the garden amongst those goatheads for up to an hour on end. They would never even flinch while running over them, which is impressive even for me. Only after they finished playing would they stop by the back door for a minute to pull countless of those things out of their soles. I guess running on soft grass makes them tolerable when stuck on your feet, otherwise they are really annoying and push into your skin when you walk. I asked them if it annoys them, they said that stopping to remove them would waste time so it's better to go along with them until later. According to my oldest boy, "They are not a big deal mom, they don't hurt much!". It's a wonder what tough feet can do. What are your experiences with goatheads?
I hate those things! Your kids might be stepping on small ones. You hit a big one, and you'll know it.
There are these burr things in my yard; we always called them "cockleburs" when I was little and they'd be all stuck in my cats' fur. But when I googled cocklebur just now it came back with a picture of something else.
We had tons of those things in the northwest. On one particular day, while on a fishing trip, they were so bad they were puncturing my Tevas. They would also give you a flat on your bicycle.
It's weird. You don't see them often where I'm from Today I learned what a Tevas is Good point. The ones in our garden were not too bad. They were still pretty prickly and annoying, like little needles. Those things wouldn't come off as they ran around, so they always had their entire foot covered in them from the toe to the sole.
I've had a lot of experience with goatheads. Trust me, if you want to never see them grow back in your yard again, pull the entire weed out of the ground by the roots. These weedy plants can reseed rather easily and grow back the following year, so pulling these weeds the moment you see them is important. The weed will have those small yellow flowers when they're growing, but by the time those flowers die off, the prickly pieces (the part they call the goathead) become hardened and can then puncture almost anything they touch. Putting weed killer on them can keep them from growing further, but the prickly parts will remain so that's why pulling the whole weed out of the ground is your better option
Ah ok, thanks for the tips. Sadly, I had to have a back surgery about a few months ago (don't want to go into the details) so I can't weed them and my husband doesn't have much time so we're just going to have to hope the weedkiller deals with most of it. If there are a few goat heads around, that's fine, but once I'm more healed up, I can work on cleaning up.
This is Tribulus Terrestris and aside from being considered a natural viagra it is the darnedest plant from hell. Its name became synonymous with suffering, hard times and .. tribulations, right. Tribuli were also nice four-legged war spikes used since the ancient times to cripple horses and foot soldiers, and italian mafia still uses them (made from high gauge steel wire) to blow the tires of pursuing police cars.The form of the seeds of tribulus is so perfect to inflict damage that we copied nature's landmine, of course making it worse. Ancient tribuli modern stuff I hate goatheads. They are hard to spot and once I got both feet full of them. Their thorns are not only sturdy but also extremely sharp, to the point that they will prick your fingers while you extract them from your feet. They also seem to prefer hard, dry soil, where they can do the most damage to our soles lodging themselves all the way in. If they don't exist in your place, you're lucky. These things will make you fall on your ass to take'em out, and pray that your ass won't land on another bunch of them. Because this shit happens.
Woah, those look demonic. The goatheads we have are bad but not as bad as the one at the top. Ours are smaller and sort of hurt, but they prick you while you walk so they are really a nuisance that you just ignore and then remove them later on. Those ones up top do look horrible. And just last night, we discovered that a lot of them were growing around the garage side door so there's that.
We've sprayed most of it away but it keeps coming up almost immediately and neither me nor my husband are in a position to manually remove them. Luckily the ones we get are nowhere near as bad as the ones in the image above, but are way more similar to these: Tribulus terrestris - Wikipedia Really annoying and pretty annoying but it's just easier to tolerate them on your feet than to remove the plants themselves at the moment. The kids seem to not mind at all and don't even acknowledge areas that have goatheads growing, they just run right through them or whatever. They always have their feet completely covered in them, way way more than the foot in the image above but they only bother removing them all before coming inside, because I will be pretty annoyed if my floors are covered in goatheads. They are crazy but they seem to be ok so I let them be.
They must have fantastically tough feet if they can run through anything like those things. Those look demonic. Luckily we don't have them here in UK either (I hope!). The worst things are acorns, which are nothing by comparison.
I’ve had them totally ravage the tires on my mountain bike. But stepping on them barefoot? Yikes! I can’t imagine.
Heh, that must suck. Wouldn't you have to get new tires? The little ones are a nuisance but I've never encountered a big one before.
The bigger ones are pea-sized and they're nastier when still green because the spikes are super sharp... oh I forgot to say they're serrated.
Oh really? The ones we have spikes that are probably 1/16 of an inch. Too thin to really penetrate past the skin but definitely sharp enough to be annoying, hurt and not come off unless you pull them off.
Yesterday I went for a mini hike along the river taking advantage of a short break in the otherwise constant rain of the last weeks, and aside from marshy meadows and flooded fields, as soon as I hit a dirt and gravel path tribuli welcomed my soles points up, but thanks to the rain many of them were sodden already greatly reducing their offensive potential. Then rain came pouring down like crazy. Again
It's goathead season again. I found 4 of these weeds in my yard yesterday. Pulled them out by the roots, sorta pricked my finger pulling one out. If you see a weed that has yellow flowers like this, put on a glove, get down and pull it out of the ground. Your bare feet will thank you!
