evil, evil knotweed

I remember moving into my house and marvelling at this interesting copse of what looked like bamboo. It swayed gently in the breeze and seemed like a nice screen from the neighbors. A month or so after I moved in, though, it all withered and died, so then when the wind blew it made this death rattle sound. Very creepy.

It turns out that this bamboo-like plant was actually to be the bane of my existence, Japanese Knotweed.



Some characteristics of knotweed:

-spreads by a mass of rhizomes, forming a dense "knot" which while thick, simultaneously does nothing for erosion control
-crowds out all other vegetation
-invasive to banks of waterways as well as on land
-it's edible!
-1/4" of root matter can spawn new plants (see image below)



Funny how, once I found out it was a weed, I changed my attitutude towards it. Now, I'm sure you've all heard the saying that a weed is simply a plant that is in the wrong spot (from the human's point of view, not the plant's). And the plant is just doing what it was born to do, which is grow. And all that good stuff. But you know what? The knotweed needs to go. I've been working on eradicating it for several years now, and it's still here. That's freaky. And nothing else grows with the knotweed. Other than topsoil weeds. And that's just wrong.

Here's a pic where the knotweed invaded someone's home:



Ack!!!


Scientists are finding ways to kill knotweed. It's taking over parts of England and Wales, as well as parts of the US, so it is really not a good plant to have around.

Scientist have been trying out various forms of biological warfare, using pests and fungi and such that specifically attack the plant and leave other plants alone.



I plan to do the same approach as in previous years, digging up the roots and spraying the plants with Round-Up.
But I plan to be a bit more aggressive by really digging out as much of the root material as possible. I think that simply attacking the upper stem and leaves alone does very little, since the rhizomes will just try to resprout.

We'll see how it goes this year...