Do You Battle a Invasive Plant ? NY Ban Sale of Certain Plants

[baymule]

@Ridgerunner thanks for the heads up. I have cardboard! Will save all paper horse feed bags too. I won't have near enough, but what I do have will help. I plan on planting cover crops as well. It will take me some time and several planting seasons. Garden at at old house was rock hard dirt when I started, ended up as rich loose garden soil. Do you reckon burning off the garden area first would help?

 

[seedcorn]

I'd kill it first with round up, then burn, then till.

 

[Nyboy]

Bay did Brunt ridge send you the berry bushes?

 

[baymule]

@seedcorn no roundup for me. I don't use it, but burning I can do! @Nyboy, berries to ship in March, just in time for snow to melt!

 

[catjac1975]

@Ridgerunner thanks for the heads up. I have cardboard! Will save all paper horse feed bags too. I won't have near enough, but what I do have will help. I plan on planting cover crops as well. It will take me some time and several planting seasons. Garden at at old house was rock hard dirt when I started, ended up as rich loose garden soil. Do you reckon burning off the garden area first would help?

I have read that burning is bad for the soil. It kills the good pathogens.

 

[thistlebloom]

See Bay? All that old carpet you hauled off would have come in handy right about now.
Now you know why it disappeared so fast from your curb!

Cardboard is great though, maybe when you're in town you can talk to a store and get some of theirs.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I bet you have cardboard after a move! Just put some mulch on it to keep the wind from blowing it around.

I'm just going to think out loud about the burning. Realize I don't know what I'm talking about, just guessing and assuming and maybe occasionally accidentally saying something wise or at least not too stupid. Occasionally.

You have poison ivy, head high weeds, and vines. I assume the leaves and weeds are dead. That's going to be hard to turn under unless you have a big turning plow and something big enough to pull it. Maybe you do since you have that new toy. Turning it under would be good. it will rot in place er, compost in place. You have to be politically correct in how you phrase these things. The poison ivy and maybe the vines, depending on what they are, will not be killed by turning under. They will sprout back from the roots and maybe by sending out roots at the vine leaf nodes but at least the bulk will be out of the way. Still, turning it under is my favorite if you can. With those roots and maybe vines not being killed by turning under, I think you can see why Seed mentioned Round Up.

The other options if you want to plant this year are to mow it off and remove the bulk of that stuff, maybe to a compost pile or a separate burn pile, or try burning in place. The weeds and probably vines should have already dropped most of their seeds, but they will still have several. If you compost it, you will be adding seeds. Composting will cook a lot of those seeds but no matter how much you turn a pile of compost, you'll never cook all of them. This will not kill the roots of the poison ivy and maybe the other vines still in the ground. Still this is my second preferred option.

If you burn poison ivy, anyone that is allergic and breathes the smoke can get it in their lungs. Think about that.

If you burn it in place, you will cook any seeds still on the plants. A flash fire will probably kill some of the seeds on the ground but probably won't kill all of them. A lot of the seeds will have worked their way into the ground and not be on top. If you get a hot sustained fire you will cook some seeds deeper down. There will be a lot of seeds buried deeper, but Dad used to sterilize his tomato and tobacco beds (where he sowed his seeds to start them) by piling up brush and burning that, then being very careful to not disturb the soil very deep when he sowed the seeds.

Fire will burn organic material in the ground. It will also kill microbes, good and bad, in the soil. How much it burns or kills will depend on how hot and sustained the fire is. A flash fire won't do much. You can get some nutrients from the ashes but a lot of them are converted chemically when they burn and float away as smoke.

So what should you do? I don't know but I know better than to try to tell a woman what she should do. You'll decide and It will work out somehow.

 

[seedcorn]

@Ridgerunner love one of your last lines. U r a smart individual.

@baymule understand hate chemicals. So do I but hate PI worse. U r talking decades to kill it using burning, pulling it. Working ground will spread it.

I need to listen to the smart one, good luck with war.....

 

[Nyboy]

I vote for goats, the babies are so cute . People rent out herds to clear land.

 

[seedcorn]

Follow goats by hogs to till the earth?