There goes the neighborhood

[HoLeChit]

@GnometownHero pretty much summed it up. You don’t want to exclusively use burning to kill them. Sandspurs grow faster than anything else, so if you burn the yard, it just allows the sandspurs to have less competition when regrowing.
What I have done:
Chop grass real short
drag carpet over ground. A few times.
Spray heavily with herbicide, let everything die. Last I heard fire doesnt always kill the seeds.
drag carpet
put down lots of quality topsoil and fertilizer, sandspurs hate good soil and thrive in sandy soil.
plant the best grass you got and baby the crap out of it, like your life depends on it. It kinda does.

So you kill everything, remove the seed, enrich the ground, and then go all out on trying to establish enough grass to choke out everything else.

Also, if you mow sandspurs a lot, they just produce seed pods faster and when they're shorter. Its counterintuitive. Ask me how I know.

If you are a "waste not, want not" kinda guy, I have heard that the seed pods are high in oil content and have similar nutritional content as soybeans. I also heard that people have made high octane gas, as well as porridge from it? I can't find much on either, but you might be sitting on a goldmine if you have the information needed.

 

[harley128]

Finally escaped Calirado and closed on my house in Crawford last week. What can I do about the sand burrs. Is burning them out the best bet?

Welcome aboard! Isn't Crawford where Joe Cocker had a house? And café? Mad Dog café?

 

[Snattlerake]

Never heard them called sand burrs since growing up in TX, we just called them 'stickers' and the small white ones 'begger's lice'. All of them are a royal PIA! Carpet trick sounds legit!

I would think it would spread them out more. When I see em I hoe them out of the ground and spot spray Roundup on them Kill them, kill them dead!

 

[AKmoose]

I HATE those things, MSMA then burn after their dead so they can't stick.

 

[Dumpstick]

Sandburs are a relative of crabgrass.

Anything that controls crabgrass will control sandburs.

If you use MSMA, spray in May, then again a few months later. Msma is a post-emergent.
Burning in fall is a good idea to at least burn the sharp stickies off the seeds.
But, it will take years to clear them out.

Beware, the seeds remain viable for years. Whenever a pocket gopher moves dirt up out of its burrow, it is moving viable sand burr seeds up.


All that said, I have been manually removing them for years. I use a small hand hoe and chop them out. It's slow, but it's free.

 

[greytdanehouse]

I lived in Buffalo Creek

Welcome to Oklahoma. What part of CO?

 

[greytdanehouse]

Welcome aboard! Isn't Crawford where Joe Cocker had a house? And café? Mad Dog café?

 

[Forgalspop]

This past summer I decided to get rid of sand burrs in our back field. I used MSMA to kill them and other weeds, including crabgrass. Went over the field multiple times after the weeds and sand burrs died with a bagging mower and burned all the bagged up seeds and weeds. I then drug a piece of carpet and blanket over the area multiple times to gather burrs that were missed.

I am sure there will be more to come up and I will hit them with more MSMA. MSMA does not kill the Bermuda grass. It will brown it a little. I used 2 tablespoons per gallon of water in the sprayer. I think 1 tablespoon would have been adequate.

I then rotor-tilled the whole area and then smoothed out by dragging a wooden pallet around behind the riding mower.

I have re-planted one area with Bermuda and Dutch White Clover. The clover helps condition the soil and also chokes out other weeds. This area is very poor soil. Red Oklahoma clay.

I am working in sections and will finish planting next summer.

 

[Forgalspop]

Sandburs are a relative of crabgrass.

Anything that controls crabgrass will control sandburs.

If you use MSMA, spray in May, then again a few months later. Msma is a post-emergent.
Burning in fall is a good idea to at least burn the sharp stickies off the seeds.
But, it will take years to clear them out.

Beware, the seeds remain viable for years. Whenever a pocket gopher moves dirt up out of its burrow, it is moving viable sand burr seeds up.


All that said, I have been manually removing them for years. I use a small hand hoe and chop them out. It's slow, but it's free.

Yes, It is a ongoing process.

 

[ConstitutionCowboy]

"Nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

Woody