Now I have something I want to plant there. (A large hosta) But I don’t want to deal with this coming up around a major plant.

I tried spraying it with Round-up yesterday, and can see no difference! I don’t know how fast it works, though.

Is Round-up the best approach, or should I try smothering it with wet newspaper and mulch? That’s what I use to kill grass before digging a new bed. If the latter, how long is long enough? I’ve only done it over the winter. Thanks!

This is one plant I try to jump on when I see them, regardless there are usually a few plants that try to get started here and there. The seeds probably come in on the bags of leaves or grass clipping I collect at the compost site, or they could hitchhike on a dog, deer, or my pant leg.

It's a bummer to see this plant colonizing the roadsides and along trails around here. It's covering the floor of some of the woodlands at the nearby Minuteman National Park (where the colonists fought the British during the Revolutionary War). It's so invasive.

I think roundup is a fertilizer they have watered it down so much. I use vinegar mixed with salt.

Martha

Vinegar and salt, interesting, marquest. Just straight white vinegar? How much salt? I'd like to try that on the grass popping up between my patio blocks. .

But what I do is keep a squirt bottle with me when I walk the gardens with white vinegar, and 5 tablespoons of salt. I use it in my walkway, on any weed coming up between the bricks and my never ending poison ivy.

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is relatively benign and breaks down when it contacts the soil (however in should not be sprayed in wetlands, because the surfactant is toxic to aquatic life).

The patent on Glyphosate expired over 10 years ago, so generic is available much more cheaply than the "Roundup" brand. Not to mention Monsanto sux. I bought a large bottle of concentrate called Kleenup online.

The best time to spray, pull or weed whack Garlic mustard is in the early Spring before it is sending up the flowering shoots. As docmom said, it is easy to spot the evergreen clumps before native plants have emerged. Once it flowers it should be bagged and disposed of, because it has the ability to set seed after it's pulled.

I pulled a bunch at my rental house a couple weeks ago, and they're sitting in a plastic bag getting baked in the sun. I'm hoping to bake the flowers so that it doesn't set seed and be able to compost the plants, rather than put them into the waste stream.

For the garlic mustard in particular, I usually just pull it. For my particular experience, it is usually along the edges of the yard, under the woodland edges, etc., and the soil is very loose there - sometimes the GM actually seems to be rooted only in leaves! So it is easy to pull in that situation. I haven't had to deal with it in many other situations so it may be harder.

I always wonder - if it's in flower, and I pull it, and I throw it in the woods, will the seeds still form and then reseed? Am I shooting myself in the foot by throwing the flower heads into the woods...?

Dee

:)
Dee

If the patch isn't too big, I would opt to manually remove the plants. We use hand removal methods on pretty good sized patches and you will see a decrease in density over time.

good luck.

Martha