Roll of Tackweed Carpet

Since the budget for the backyard has run out and we're waiting for the next tax refund to get back into serious backyard work, our incomplete project has become the home to many noxious weeds. Tumble weed, lambsquarters, mayweed, red-root pigweed and various other grasses have propagated and matured in the apparently ideal environment of our backyards sandy slope. But most the most abundant weed taking over the ample available square footage is tackweed aka. Mexican sandbur, Texas sandbur, bullhead, caltrop, goathead and puncturevine. Not only has this nuisance grown plentifully it has born its terrible fruit and has gone to seed. Today I went to attemp to tackle this plague armed with some leather gloves a shovel and oddly, a broom and dustpan.

I only have one large green garbage can so I'm going to do sections of my yard each week till the beast is eradicated. I started today on the left side of my property and neatly rolled the carpet of puncturevine up into a large goathead log. I then proceeded to sweep up the bazillion little devil tacks (seeds) that had dropped in the process probably only removing about 80% of my future tackweed problems. the log was too long for me to lift so I folded it in half. It was too heavy and awkward for me to lift still so I put the trash container on it's side and lugged the massive bramble ball into it. I uprighted the container and then swept up any remaining seeds I could find. I broke a sweat and hurt myself dragging the now heavy trash can up the sandy hill, but a large portion of my problem has been tackled.

I'll do another large section next week after the garbage man comes.