Teasel

holyrabbit · January 2021

Hi.

I'm quite new to gardening and I've just started sowing Teasel. Mainly for its wildlife benefits and would like to plant it in my garden in April.

I have quite a small garden which has a small lawn and a few plants.

However, after reading into the plant species online, other people have had issues with the plant spreading around their garden.

Is Teasel quite invasive? I'm more a casual gardener and don't want to be pulling up teasel seedlings for years.

Hope anyone can be of help and also would like to know if anyone else has experience growing Teasel in their garden?

B3 · January 2021

The seedlings are easy to identify and pull out. Are you aware that a teasel is a very big plant for a small garden?

josusa47 · January 2021

I grew teasel a couple of years ago for the wildlife, and I had plenty of bees and wasps feeding on the flowers. But the goldfinches, which are supposed to go crazy for teasel seeds, never gave them a second glance. Now I have hundreds of seedlings, all over the garden. They are easy to identify, but not necessarily easy to get out: most of my seeds found their way into crevices between paving slabs, or cracks in concrete. I can only scrape off the leaves, I can't uproot them.

bertrand-mabel · January 2021

A very interesting plant and full of history.

We have it in our garden but it is quite large.

The colour of the small flowers are lovely and as said the insects are attracted to them.

If you don't want them to spread too much cut back the flower heads before they seed.

we haven't though had problems with them seeding all over the garden.

Bilje · January 2021

I have teasels too, i get gold finches on my bird feeders but have never seen them on the teasels. They do self seed but not all that much, I just leave a couple of seedlings in each border and easily weed out the rest.

wild edges · January 2021

They eat them in my garden but generally in late winter and if the feeders are crowded or empty. I read somewhere that the males tend to prefer teasels but the females don't bother with them as much. Maybe if there's nothing to keep the females in the garden then the males are less likely to browse the teasel heads? I've also found that they grow smaller if the soil is poor but if the soil is too good they get top heavy and don't survive the winter winds as well. Lavender probably has just as much wildlife value though and the finches also like the seeds from that.

I took this photo in late March when the teasels seemed to be very popular with the finches.

Image: https://i.postimg.cc/sDmf1HmX/03-24-19-goldfinch.jpg

holyrabbit · November 2021

Sorry about the late reply.

Wow that's a great photo wild edges. Would love to attract more birds into my small garden.

I decided not to plant the teasel in the end and have got for a nice climbing jasmine to fill the gap.

Thank you everyone for your great advice!

Teasel

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