Dave: Hi I’m Dave Epstein this is Growing Wisdom and I’m here today with Wayne Messet. When you’re holding I know this plant, it’s garlic mustard. I’m always pulling it out. We usually talk about plants you like, we don’t like this one.
Wayne: This is particularly the bad one and it’s anywhere in this region because it tends to grow everywhere. It seeds in readily and being a biennial it means it germinates one year and the flowers to next year. It’s very hard to control.
Dave: I was reading that the seeds can actually stay in the ground viable for up to 10 years.
Wayne: That’s right. It tends to be a very deep fleshy root that you need to pull out to control it and if you break it off it will grow from the root. So it’s a difficult one to even pull out. I can show you the flower stalk on it just beginning to form. Right at the tip of that you’ll find one or two or three flower stalks. Each one of them flowers for a few days a day maybe, it gets pollinated, the seed pods forms and within two weeks it starts dispersing the seeds.
Dave: So once you have this, you really have to stay on top of it to get it out of your landscape and if you have a small patch, you really want to pull it up as quickly as you possibly can.
Wayne: Yes, the other way that I’ve controlled it in certain areas is to spray out with contact herbicide which kills the leaves and you could do this in the winter time because it’s an evergreen so you can see it in December, if you don’t have snow on the ground and even though it doesn’t seem to kill it right away, it will not grow in the spring.
Dave: What’s one of other unique things that this puts into the soil?
Wayne: Well it got a toxin that it exudes through the root systems so it discourages other plants from growing and in fact will dominate the forest floor very quickly if it’s allowed to spread.
Dave: Much like a Norway maple.
Wayne: Yes, that’s right.
Dave: Now the good news is, there is some new research going on to come up with biological controls, things that will actually eat this and get rid of it.
Wayne: There’s an insect that chews on to the leaves and really weakens the plant and eventually will kill it. The problem with any biological control is that sometimes they control itself becomes a pest so they need to test this carefully.
Dave: Can I put this in the compost pile?
Wayne: It’s not a good idea. I’ve seen them root on top of the ground. The way that I like to do it is put them in the plastic bag, seal it up and toss them in the trash.
Dave: So learn to identify it, yank it out if you can, use an organic herbicide if possible to get rid of it and where you have large areas so that you may actually have to use a synthetic herbicide. Come back every week for all of our tips and some helps at growingwisdom.com.
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