“A year from now you may wish you had started today.”

-Karen Lamb

Before & After... and Before

The Stewardship Network's Garlic Mustard Challenge says it all just in the title of their annual event: this work is a real challenge. And it's easy to get discouraged when you are facing large stands of garlic mustard along with widely scattered outliers and just thousands of first year seedlings carpeting huge areas of land in front of you. They even reflect on this and offer some good advice in their blog spot (See: "So Much to Pull, So Little Time).

Myself, I find I have to keep looking at the cleared areas we have just  done, not the sprawling stand still ahead of me. Whenever I look at the patch I am working on and see what I am still facing (often after I have already started to feel the creak of my back and most of the joints in my body) I want to quit and take up a new cause. That's the truth, as much as I hate to admit to those thoughts and feelings. 

So, I look ahead: to the cleared areas, to the sight of the forest floor again revealed where we have pulled away the swarming mob of garlic mustard plants. This keeps me going.

Then sometimes after the job is finished at a site, I find we have only hit one part of it, and there's plenty of 'carpet' I didn't notice before. Shown above in the side-by-side photos is one site we just worked at today. Notice the mature plants stretching out ahead in the photo on the left and then compare that same stretch of ground after we finished pulling. Looks good, right?

Out of view in both photos, as it turns out, there's at least two other large stands located about 300 feet down the tree line. Then there's the seedlings covering so much of the area in between. This not the first time, or last I am sure, that this has happened to me. Hence, the cycle: before, after, before...and on it goes.

This is a problem where the disease model fits quite well. We are dealing with contagion. We cannot expect a cure, at least not anytime soon. We cannot be surprised at new outbreaks because that's how contagion goes. We can, however, contain it. We can still hope for a cure someday and in the meantime every 'case' we encounter is worth our effort. 

Our goal ultimately should be for 'garlic mustard free zones,' places where we will not tolerate it. How we choose those places, how many of them and where, depends on us. The important thing to remember is that we decide, not the invasives.

The Picture Keeps Changing...

Click on image to enlarge.

Here is an updated image, showing the spread of garlic mustard at Anderson Flats.

We knew this site had a good deal of sparsely scattered garlic mustard  but it was not until we went out looking for outliers that we realized how much we had already underestimated this particular infestation. If you click on the image and enlarge it, you will see that there are two additional, very large zones not shown before. The light shaded areas, one over by the public access parking lot and the other sprawling in front of and into the to Salmon Run Campground, are sections we scouted and worked on over the last two days.

Both of these areas have large 'carpets' of first year seedlings (about one centimeter or less in size). None of these little plants will grow to set seed this year but many of them will survive into next year to produce our next 'crop' to harvest. Both areas have thousands of second year plants, all of which will throw seeds this year if left in the field.

Such is the way with invasive plants. Their growth and spread is explosive. The picture keeps changing. At some point, if we stand by and just watch it, we won't even recognize it anymore.

Have we made a difference?

To answer that question, do the math: so far we have removed 15 bags of garlic mustard plants from this location. Each bag holds maybe 300 to 500 plants. Generally, each living plant is capable of producing about three thousand seeds. What do you think? Have we made a difference? I'd love to hear your answer.

500 Pounds

Today's garlic mustard pull at Anderson Flats yielded approximately 500 pounds of bagged garlic mustard, not bad for one day. If you look at last year's results from the Garlic Mustard Challenge, you can see we will be boosting the West Michigan Cluster's totals noticeably by the time we end our work this season.

There's plenty more to pull at Anderson Flats, at least another 500 to 1,000 pounds. 

SO ... we will be going back out there for the next few days until it is gone. This is a really big job at this location. Please give us a call if you can spare some time and we will work out our schedule to go with you.

The flats have thousands of second year plants, meaning we will have this location on our list for some years to come. It also means that right now the floor of the forest and wetland are blanketed with countless first year plants. The spread of this has also reached into the Salmon Run Campground and adjacent properties. Next year, we hope to get ahead of it with some spraying in the early spring.

The next pull date is this Saturday, April 21. We hope to see you there.

GARLIC MUSTARD PULL DATES SCHEDULED:

• ANDERSON FLATS - April 17 beginning at 5 p.m. Meet at the Anderson Flats Public Access on the Muskegon River.

• NEWAYGO RIVERSIDE PARK -  April 21 beginning at 9 a.m. Meet at the parking lot far end, near the fish sculptures and old waterworks building.

• VFW CAMP TROTTER - April 24 beginning at 4:30 p.m. Meet at the camp main gate on 86th Street.

Remember to bring gloves!

For the Anderson Flats pull you might want to wear waterproof boots since some of the pulling will be in the flooded woodlot area of the river flats.

Garlic Mustard in it's early spring growth.

With this early spring, we of course are seeing an even earlier emergence of this year's crop of invasive plants. The autumn olive, invasive honeysuckle, and multiflora rose seem to be leading the pack. Go anywhere, look anywhere and you will see them dominating the scenery.

Not as noticeable yet but just as far out front of the spring ephemerals, garlic mustard is getting its own head start on things. With this early and exceptionally warm spring, it seems we may have a smaller window of time in which to remove garlic mustard before it goes to seed.

Four locations have our attention right now: the Newaygo Riverside Park, Camp Trotter out at Bill's Lake, the Anderson Flats on the Muskegon River outside of Newaygo, and the Hungerford Recreation Area up in the northeastern part of the county.

Here's the story on our plans so far:

• We have a date scheduled for a garlic mustard pull at the Hungerford Recreation Area: April 11, 2012 (a Wednesday). The plan is to meet at 10:30 a.m. Pat Ruta-Mchan of the National Forest Service and work on about three 'hubs' of garlic mustard that Pat has been working on removing. Our exact meeting place is yet to be determined but I am assuming it will be somewhere up at the recreation area. I am assuming we will only need to put in two hours or so if we can get at least four volunteers working. Of course, if there's an interest we could arrange some car pooling ahead of time. If you can come to this, please let us know so we can know how to plan our day. 

• At the Newaygo Riverside Park, we expect to go out tomorrow, March 29, bright and early and apply spray and do some pulling. This infestation is much worse than we originally thought, so we expect to need to go back within the next two to three weeks to pull the more mature plants that escaped our first effort.

• Camp Trotter: we have been in touch with the VFW and they are agreeable to us coming out and working at their property. We have also attempted to contact the Bill's Lake Association to secure their help and cooperation. We are still awaiting word back from them. In any case, we expect to schedule a pull out at Camp Trotter at least within the next few weeks.

• Anderson Flats: this is a widely scattered infestation across several parcels of property and it goes into a wetland. We are still working on contacting property owners and securing permissions. We will let you know if and when we are ready to start planning for a removal at this location. If anyone knows owners down at Anderson Flats, please let us know who to contact.

Don't forget: this Thursday night is the time for our second EDRR informational meeting. It is at the Grant Public Library from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. This is a repeat of our March 3 presentation, so if you attended that, of course you don't need to come to the Grant meeting. However, if you know anyone else who might be interested, then please send them our way.

Welcome and thank you so much for your interest in working to control the spread of invasive plants in Newaygo County!

This blog post has been set up in order to make quicker and easier communication about invasive plants in our area.

We would like to encourage you to go to the MISN site and become expert in recognizing these plants so you can record any sightings of phragmites, garlic mustard, and Japanese Knotweed.   When you encounter these plants, please call and report the location, the size of the infestation, and the land owner's contact information if possible.  If it is a very small area, and you feel confident in removal methods let us know if you can handle it yourself.  Remember though, each plant has a removal method specific to that species, and sometimes the most logical methods only make the problem worse.

If you have a site that needs help for removal, or if you are uncertain of the best practice of removal, please call for help.  The warm weather conditions have spiked the growth of several of these plants, and we will need to act quickly to keep them in check.

We are presently seeking more volunteers, and have a second informational meeting scheduled for Thursday, March 29th at the Grant Public Library at 6:30 pm.  Please spread the word!  The more folks that are aware of the situation, the more of Newaygo Counties lands we can protect.