grooming pepperwood

I've spent another fine day weeding at Pepperwood. On these outings you assist regular staff members in their sysphean mission to rid the preserve of various unwanted species. On other days, they labor to replace or increase the natives. Yesterday we went after Bull Thistle and Teasel.

As an old gardener, such projects fill me with admiration. I've had zero luck in thirty years eliminating any of a long list of unwanted plants from a city lot. In fact, some of our own plantings that proved poor choices continue to florish despite determined efforts. So I've more weeds than when I started... In these campaigns, I've become familiar with a vast armamentarium of control methods. And why so many? it's because none work all that well.

So setting out to remove floral pests from a four or five acre segment of the preserve seems madness. Happily, I love this kind of exercise; and bear no responsibility for actual results. The staff members are well-briefed and cheerful. And on this fair day in may with mild warmth tempered by nice breezes, it was wonderful.

And, mirable dictu, they seem to have made progress. My daughter was along, and noted that the patch we covered--south-facing hillsides with the intersection of two moist drainages--was formidably choked with Bullthistle last year. Not so obviously now. We were able to dig/chop quite a bit of what was left; and a very large proportion of the flowering teasel. Naturally, a great many rosettes of each plant remain; but they keep a staff member on the job to police these residuals.

Another idea they have is using Chyrsolina beetles to abate their St. John's Wort. We didn't get to this; and I'm sorry for that as we'd cans to pick up some of those fellows to distribute to fresh pastures. I understand some Chyrsolina have a lovely iridescence, and that would be nice to see. A most charming idea, to use insects to do your extirpitory
work; I've no idea how it actually works in actual cases. I've been told this method worked very well in Canada: but it's got to be easier to kill plants that much closer to the north pole. It's also not just munching bugs, but a leveraged effect involving their vectoring a microbial disease of SJ'sW. Thus, it may be more interesting than particularly effective to unleash the Chyrsolinae. Since they are a fact-based outfit, we shall see.

Posted on May 25, 2012 02:09 PM by icosahedron