At the extreme east end of our property, including some of our next-door neighbor’s property, was a huge infestation of glossy buckthorn (Frangula alnus). It had wound itself down an old stone wall, with roots 1-2 inches around. It was a monster. I had avoided it. Somebody had to deal with it. On a cool day, with little to no chance of rain, I cut and treat several stumps.
The prior year, I had taken several pods of milkweed seeds from the back acre, and spread them around the top part of the slope, above where all the knotweed was. It worked! A whole bunch of milkweed came up. It smells great. The butterflies love it. The groundhog likes to munch on it. It’s a great plant.
Slightly further up the slope, a young Osage Orange (maclura pomifera), on the left, and Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis), on the right, are enjoying the posh accommodations in the nursery area:
I would never have believed it! 2013 is the first year that the phragmites in the pond is not a ginormous problem. BUT, were we still removing stems? Yes. Were we still digging out rhizomes? Yes.
In May of 2013, Justin and I really went after the west end of the pond. I spent a couple of months in early spring, trying to tease old dead bittersweet vine fragments out of the trees.
Despite taking every precaution of placing every bittersweet fragment onto a tarp, then onto the burn pile, the bittersweet would continue to resprout. Still, we made a valiant attempt at completely weeding the west end of the pond.
Before (which is really a “during” photo, as we’d been working on this area for a year or two):
After:
It was just inconceivable that we were able to do this, when in past years, this area had been an impenetrable jungle of invasive plants, vines and shrubs.
For instance, in 2009, I couldn’t have even taken the above photo. It’s taken from the SW corner of the pond. See how the phragmites takes a turn, as you’re looking out at the SW corner, in the photo below? See the tree behind them? If I had been standing where I stood to take the photo above, I would have been in the middle of a huge patch of phragmites!
That’s right; we had interior restoration going on as well.
As expected, we had some resprouts of phragmites, in the densest stands. As the level of the pond recedes, you can see that we still have some work to do, removing dead stems. It’s an ongoing project!
At the pond’s W end, we are still removing bittersweet, multiflora rose, and old pieces of dead vines from around trees.
Here’s something new. Perhaps it wasn’t new, we just couldn’t see it before, because it was covered up by so many invasives. I found it growing in a damp area, where phragmites had been, where I had spread seed heads of cattails, and some had actually grown. This is beneath where the willow was, on the E side of the slope.
I think it’s Equisetum arvense. It’s native; some people consider it a weed. It’s supposedly hard to get rid of. Go Botany says it’s an “important component of the spring and early summer diet of black bears.” I guess I should be proud that our ecosystem appears capable of supporting a black bear…but I think I’ll pull most of this. Anything that comes up in a great number, I’m a bit suspicious of, but I’m hesitant to get rid of all of it, just in case it’s important for something.
