Garlic Mustard in Newaygo County - Update

Garlic mustard pull at Devil's Hole (take Spruce Ave. north from M-82) today at 4:30 p.m. -- Come join us!! 

The Low End of the Curve

When you look into the subject of invasive plants, one of the first concepts you encounter is the so-called 'curve of invasion. The invasion curve graphically shows how these plants become nearly impossible to eradicate before we are even close to ready to react to them. It is based on the idea that invasives spread so fast that they outpace the public awareness and understanding of them as a problem. This dilemma is exactly what motivated us to start the Newaygo Invasive Plants Project.

The first documented presence of garlic mustard in Newaygo County that we were aware of was in 2009. I pinned the first data point entry for Newaygo County on the MISIN research map and very recently I have told people of it when we have done presentations to groups about invasives. After more experience with the problem, I now believe it has been here much longer than we originally thought and was here in the county long before our first sighting, possibly by some several years.

As of today, we now know garlic mustard to be widely spread throughout most of the county. It is:

• Along Maple Island Road north of Hesperia.
• In the Hungerford Recreation Area in the northeast sector. 
• Spread throughout much of the Croton-Hardy area.
• In the Riverside and Henning Parks in Newaygo.
• Along Croton Road near Pine Ave.
• In the pedestrian walkway park on the west side of Fremont and at various residential parcels
• Throughout the Bill's Lake area.
• On parcels in Grant Township.
• At the Anderson Flats area west of Newaygo
• Throughout much of the Devil's Hole river flats east of Newaygo.
• Located along Baldwin Ave. near 72nd Street in Garfield Township.

No doubt, garlic mustard is located in many places we have not heard of yet. What does this tell us about the current state of the problem? 'Widespread' is of course the short answer but I would say we are still on the low end of the invasion curve. This is not a small distinction at all.

Right now, garlic mustard is still a manageable problem, especially if considered from the perspective of its component parts -- the specific 'outbreak' locations around the county.

Making a Difference

The community has at least three notable accomplishments to celebrate. First, there's the Riverside Park in Newaygo. The April 21 Garlic Mustard Pull scoured it clean of second year plants. Second, the Bill's Lake area has shown rapid improvement, thanks to some very diligent, ongoing efforts by lake area residents and a recent organized pull that centered around the Camp Trotter location. Then there's the Hungerford Recreation Area, a beautiful camping/horse riding site in the Manistee National Forest. Thanks to US Forest Service work that Pat Ruta-McGhan has led, the Hungerford Recreation Area showed only small, scattered stands of garlic mustard when NIPP went there to help do another round of pulling in April. Of course, with all of these examples, there's more work ahead. Garlic mustard persists wherever it gets started. The seed bank stays viable for years, the seedlings are too numerous and small to eliminate completely in any single attempt at eradication, and outliers evade detection even when large groups have scoured known sites and surrounding areas.

But there's another side to these success stories, one that isn't immediately obvious to everyone but IS worth everyone knowing about. Wherever we have gone to work on garlic mustard to scout it out, to remove it, to inform people about it, we have seen a tremendous response. Neighbors start looking for it on their property. They go out together and scout it out and remove it. Experienced gardeners, landscapers and various outdoor enthusiasts tell us they never knew about the impact of invasives all around them. Then they go out and get busy on the problem. They pull garlic mustard, they report it, and they tell others about it.  

This kind of response generates the momentum needed to overtake what at first might seem like an overwhelming problem. Many well informed professionals and experts on environmental matters have pointed out that nature is not something we can actually control or manage, not in any real sense. For some, this idea might be a rationale for inaction, for giving up, just ignoring the problem because after all nature is just that: a force beyond our reach. But our experience has shown differently. We cannot totally eliminate any invasive plant. We cannot erect an imaginary wall that keeps out every noxious weed. We can, however, be clear about our values and what we want to protect. We can make a difference.