Nature's Edge - Buckthorn and Garlic Mustard - October 2005

Fall is a great time to assess your property – especially your woodland and determine what needs to be done. Many lots in the Village are heavily infested with buckthorn and garlic mustard. Fall is a great time to work on removal and eradication of these two evil plants!

Buckthorn Removal
When the other trees in your woodland have lost their leaves – buckthorn will still have its leaves. Cut the buckthorn to the ground and immediately paint the stump with a high concentration of herbicide. You can purchase a herbicide at the garden center or hardware store that is specifically made to kill woody plants. Oil based herbicides can be used into the early winter months. Otherwise you can use water based products such as Round Up. These products are good as long as the weather is relatively warm during the day and the plant is continuing to take in water. Apply the herbicide directly to the stump being careful not to get the herbicide on any other plants. If you do not herbicide the stump immediately after it is cut, you will create a source of dozens of new sprouts next spring.

Once the cover of buckthorn is gone and the sun can reach the soil, you will have some small sprouts of buckthorn that will come up in the spring. In early spring, before the other plants have started to come up, you can herbicide these small sprouts and control the return of buckthorn into your woodland. Each spring, fewer and fewer sprouts will come up and eventually you will have a beautiful woodland free of this noxious plant!

Garlic Mustard
Garlic mustard is a biennial plant that creates a rosette the first year, produces seed the second year and dies. In the fall you will see the mature first year rosette sitting patiently underneath your other woodland plants waiting for its chance to bolt in the spring. Fall is the time to take matters in your hands and keep this plant from producing seed next year when there will be thousands and thousands more plants to control.

When the other plants in your woodland have gone dormant, garlic mustard will still be green. It is easy to spot with its rounded leaves. An herbicide designed to kill herbacious broadleaved plants is best. Care should be taken to direct the spray to the specific plant and to avoid windy days when the spray can reach other plants you don’t want to kill. A spray application of herbicide to this rosette in the fall will kill next year’s crop and its prolific offspring! A repeat application will be necessary in the spring to catch the next batch of rosettes. Watch for it to come up in early spring before other plants in your woodland have come up. Herbicide it and you have relieved yourself of a tremendous amount of work for years to come! (NOTE: Garlic mustard seed is viable years after it is dropped.) You may get more rosettes in the future, but there should be less every year as the seed supply is extinguished.

Buckthorn and garlic mustard take over the woodland and create a cover that native plants cannot compete with. These plants are not native to our area and have no known predators in our area. As a result, our beautiful native plants cannot grow and flourish. Our beautiful oak woodlands are disappearing from the landscape because of buckthorn. It is up to us to protect our native heritage – if we don’t, who will?