Maggie's Farm

Knotweed - Suddenly I've seen three separate articles in one day about it.

Since we moved from England we knew all about the mortgage problems there in relation to having knotweed.

Then when we started clearing brush in our US place, we discovered that our neighbor really liked the stuff as a ground-cover -- had actually planted it intentionally. In the time since planting it had spread enthusiastically onto our land and we had a very tall established stand.

The trouble with knotweed is that it is persistent. Well so am I!

Since it is a plant with rhyzomes, you need to "kill" it fully, and not leave a bit of root or rhyzome behind to regenerate. So for me this indicated judicious use os a systemic herbicide, which is what we did.

I bought a pint of concentrated glyphosate from the farm store and mixed it according to instructions in a sprayer. Then before work on clear days I'd carry a big sheet of cardboard to hold behind each leaf I sprayed to avoid overspray problems, and just make my way through getting spray on each convenient leaf as I went. As this was repeated for many clear days of the summer, the stand appeared to thin and die back. We had distributed lots of native wildflower seeds over the area so that the following spring there would be some other ground cover beginning to establish. Treatment continued as before.

Now, about once every two years, we find a single knotweed plant trying to grow, and we've been dealing with that the same way. Of course now I've learned that my first port of call in dealing with plant issues should be getting the advice-sheet from whichever state ag-school has written about dealing with that issue, and I'm pretty sure in hindsight that if I followed the advice from PA it would have been more effective, faster with less effort:

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/nrcs142p2_017951.pdf