What invasive plant victories have you had?

Hi, all!!! For a number of years I had been fighting crown vetch in my garden, but last I got rid of it! Yes, it's gone, done, bye bye, vamoose!!! How about everyone else? What invasive plants have you managed to rid your garden of?

Steve

So far I think I have won the battle on Dame's Rocket, Garlic Mustard, Ox-Eye & Shasta Daisy, Vinca, and English Ivy. I might be down to maintenance mode on those.

Garlic Mustard.....I just dug out a pile of that the other day with a whole bunch still to go. That stuff tries to invade the garden every spring.......Dig it out and it still comes back.......

Gooseneck Loosestrife, Bouncing Bet - altho I love the smell, Bladder Campion - Silene cucubalis, Evening Lychnis - Lychnis alba, Ivy Leaved Morning Glory - Ipomoea hederaceae, and Flower of an Hour - Hibiscus trionum.

I've got Bouncing Bet too.......tried a few times to get rid of it...but it always seems to pop up again. Whats your secret to getting rid of it?

Steve

I just saw in my garden earlier today..........the crown vetch is back!!!
Doesn't it ever die? ARGH!

Steve

Kentucky Bluegrass, Flower of an Hour, Dame's Rocket, Ox-eye daisy...but I need to keep on top of them. Glad I don't have the crown-vetch problem!

Yeah....I should be able to get rid of it this year.....hopefully....
and it's not like it stays short, it grows up to like 2 feet!
move them to the back garden.

Steve

Victories? None. Some mildly successful salients against some of them.

Some of the worst offenders are not strictly speaking invasive, in that they're native here. Or sort of native. A big offender is saltbush, Baccharis halimifolia, which doesn't really belong here in the middle of the peninsula but tends to show up on disturbed land, like the former farmland I'm on. It's fairly attractive, with showy white flowers and fruit in autumn into winter, slightly greyish leaves, and dark rugged bark once it has a few years of growth, but it springs up easily from roots or seed, grows way quickly and is hard to get rid of. It can take salt spray and quite a range of temperatures, and has been used as an ornamental.

Sweetgum, Liquidambar styraciflua: it suckers. It sends up suckers twenty yards from the parent tree, or more usually the parent coppice. I have a whole grove that I suspect is actually only several distinct organisms: several acres of 40-foot skinny trees too close together and no more than twenty years old.

Native persimmon, Diospyros virginiana.. Funny how hardly any bear fruit (I know of only two trees on my acres that do), and how many suckers show up... not as big a wanderer as sweetgum, but more suckers to the running foot of root. Mow down the suckers and you get even more. If the #$%^ed trees would put their effort into growing ONE SINGLE @#$%ED TRUNK, I'd like them. The wood is great stuff, but you can't get any wood from thousands of wee suckers. It's a pioneer species on disused farmland, I read -- tell me something I don't know. It's dioecious, so maybe most of the trees generating the suckers are staminate-blossom (male) and so they don't bear. The trees get spots on their leaves -- some sort of disease? -- but they never seem to die of that. Oh, and the suckers don't even transplant well, so I don't think I can sell them.

Wild blackberries. Probably all the native species recorded in Florida, for all I know. Acres and acres of them. Small, seedy fruit that's bitter when there isn't enough rain, insipid when there's too much. Lots of thorns, which break off and end up in one's skin.

All of the above: mow them down, watch for the suckers from the roots, and when the suckers are big and healthy, spray them very very throroughly with Roundup Pro near the maximum recommended dose. And hope. There seems to be so much root that not enough of the herbicide can be absorbed by the leaves to poison much of it. There's something called root-raking which I gather involves a bulldozer with a rake blade. I am so tempted. This is NOT NATURAL. This is disturbed land anyway...

There's also the native maypop, which dies back to the roots every frost but comes up again the next spring. And the decidedly non-native annual hairy indigo, which does improve the soil but has to be mown down before it sets seed, because the seed will last for decades.

Mark., just venting really; hope a few people are amused at least

I'll think of all that next time I find myself complaining about garlic mustard :) I just planted a maypop last year that I grew my self. I'm not sure of its coming back or not though.

Honeysuckle, Chinese privet and Chinese Tallow, I don't think I will ever win the battle with these three. I'm only 26 and I guarantee I will be fighting them until I am too old to worry about it. LOL Camphor trees are starting to be a nuisance.

I've noticed Honeysuckle has been popping up for more and more for me too. I just found another bush today. I think buckthorns are my bigget enemy though.....they can't be pulled out, you just end up stripping off the leaves and hurting your hands :)

Steve