Persimmon Island Update: Mother Nature Gives an Assist

As I perused my pictures and past blog posts this morning, I had to laugh at myself for all the "project" names I've created. It's Mr. Freeze's fault. I have to use unique names for our project areas to avoid any circular discussions with Mr. Freeze, otherwise, I find him just aimlessly driving the tractor around trying to find me. HA! But, I've found that using statements such as, "you know - meet me at THAT area where the multi-flora rose and autumn olive were taking over", just does not pinpoint anything, because we have so many problem areas with this stuff.

I am absolutely terrible at getting 'before' and sometimes 'after' pictures of our projects. But, last week, Bob decided to bush-hog a path through Persimmon Island, so we could see what was growing and finish eradicating any remaining non-native plants, if needed. After he cut a path, I was stunned when I walked through to get an idea of the effort.

WOW!

Flowers, flowers, flowers - lots of yellow flars everywhere! Removing all the non-native plants has allowed the native flowers to spread into the partial shade areas.

Native Indian Grass, Tickseed Sunflower (aka Bearded Beggarticks / bidens), goldenrod and New England Asters in bloom.

I was hit in the head repeatedly by the thousands of Pennsylvania Leatherwings flying through...for some reason they really love these flowers. The bumblebees are much better at avoiding my forehead.

A bumblebee on one of 11 varieties of sunflowers / bidens in Missouri

Today, I walked through to start a more targeted eradication. With all the flowers and native plants & trees in here, it is no longer an option to do broad swaths of herbicide application. So, I got out my treatment bucket, my gloves and my cutters. I started with the hundreds of new cherry tree sprouts. While the cherry trees are native, I have other goals for this particular grove: Silky dogwoods, spice bush, river oats, etc., so the cherry trees here have to go.

I cut all the sprouts and treated the cut stumps with a small paint brush and a highly concentrated mix of glyphosate. Using Tordon in this area is no longer an option, since the roots of everything in this small area are likely intertwined together and I don't want to kill the fragrant sumac, persimmons, plums, nor the hackberries that we worked so hard to liberate from the mess!

A small bucket with my herbicide, a paintbrush as an applicator and my chainsaw oil. This prevents me from turning over my main container and accidentally spilling any on the ground.

I practice very careful treatment with the paint brush when there are undesired trees growing up right next to stuff I want to keep like the fragrant sumac.

A rogue cherry tree growing up in the middle of the fragrant sumac. It had to go.

I was disappointed to find some winter creeper had re-sprouted, so I did have to bring in my sprayer and treat it. This stuff is a nuisance and almost as bad as Japanese honeysuckle. It hides on the earthen floor of shaded forest areas until there's such a large colony of it, and then it takes a lot of effort to get rid of it.

Winter creeper - a non-native climbing vine.

I also managed to do a few small sprays on some of the very small twigs of Autumn Olive that had re-sprouted after Bob's mow.

Autumn Olive - a non-native shrub.

After carefully re-treating the non-native crap, I was able to get my camera out and enjoy all the flowers and the bugs that were landing on them.

Pennsylvania Leatherwing and a bumblebee share a flower.

 

View from the south - before:

View from the south - after:
 

Goldenrod, New England aster and Indian Grass have now spread into the area we have removed multi-flora rose, Autumn olive, winter creeper, and Eastern red cedar trees.

View from the north - before:

Removed several large Autumn olive bushes in this area, along with multi-flora rose.

View from the north - after:

The bidens and goldenrod are starting to march into their new growing space!

There were a few people that didn't agree with our approach of removing the Eastern Red cedar trees, but we needed to clear them so that we could have better access to the earthen floor. That's the only way to remove ALL the invasive plants and to have more scattered sunlight for the stuff we'll be planting next fall.

View from the West - before:

View from the West - after (not exactly the same angle as I didn't remember the last photo I had taken from the West):

A large bank of bidens.

There were also some very pleasant surprises in the grove.

It looks like "Gary" - our resident groundhog - has decided to move in now. Not sure if he's still living here, but he certainly enjoyed the area for a time. And we name all our groundhogs, "Gary", so yeah, we're sure it's "Gary" who moved in.

Gary the Groundhog's home.

I also found a couple of new native plant volunteers - White Vervain, that has started growing since we cleared here! Yay! 

White Vervain - Verbena urticifolia - native

And these, "Whirling butterflies"

Whirling butterflies - Oenothera lindheimeri - native

After finding winter creeper and Autumn olive still growing in here, we probably need to wait another season before re-planting with native shrubs. I really want to get everything in this fall, but that would be too risky. Patience grasshopper...patience!

For tracking my progress, I've added links to my videos we've taken of this area as we've progressed.

Persimmon Island - Phase 1 - December, 2021:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9gjH0lJ2RY&t 

 

Persimmon Island - Phase 2 - November, 2022:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzGbzB9XfHg&t 

 

Persimmon Island after clearing everything out during the winter 2022-2023.

https://youtu.be/kVbbQLVKCPM?si=iZVviIRt7eIlyEgS

 

 

 

Eliminating Invasive Honeysuckle - Phase 2 Begins

This past summer was so hot & dry and we have been in the worst drought we've ever had on Gobbler's Knob since moving here in 2007. If we don't get some rain soon, I'm not sure our fish will survive the winter freezes. The west side of the pond is, at best, 4' deep, and the east side is down to about 8' deep....with no substantial rain in the forecast.

There's absolutely nothing I can do about it, so I've decided to focus on the plans that we made for this Fall. This past Spring and late Winter, Bob and I spent some time identifying the areas where we need to start the battle with invasive Japanese honeysuckle. Depressingly, it looked a bit overwhelming - my shoulders and neck ached at the idea of trying to manually rake and pull it out. Fortunately, avoidance of strained, twisted backs, is the "Mother of Invention". Bob fired up the tractor - the brush hog on the back and the teeth on the front bucket would work nicely for the first attack. 

After stripping its vines off the trees, uprooting and mowing down as much as we could, we burned some of the spots.

Japanese honeysuckle vines after being pulled back from the trees with the tractor, then brush hogged.

I'm not sure how effective the burning was, but in my mind, we set it back. Besides, it felt good to set fire to something that is trying to take over and kill all the native plants. ha! At the very least, when it greened up again during the summer, it would be nice & low - perfectly setup for phase 2.

It took a great deal of constraint on my part as we walked past the honeysuckle patches this summer as they thrived in the heat, regrowing their leaves and trying to advance again. It is truly tenacious.

The only thing that made me feel better and gave me hope that waiting was the right thing to do, was attending the Missouri Prairie Foundation online classes on how to deal with invasive plants, such as honeysuckle. Their advice from the class for someone with an already-established prairie, spray the honeysuckle in the fall after the first frost (when everything else has died back)- with Glyphosate. My husband had been to all the safety & training classes for using such chemicals/ herbicides so that he could use them as part of his Land Care business and knows how to use this stuff, so he knows all about how they work. These chemicals are important tools to use in the fight against invasive plant species that, if allowed to continue unabated, would wipe out all our native trees, forbes & grasses, in a true environmental disaster. Anyone that has ever driven on I40 into the West side of Knoxville, TN would be shocked at the way the non-native, invasive Kudzu has literally smothered thousands of trees along the highway.

With all the misinformation and emotionalism around the use of "Round Up" and other weed killers, it was so refreshing to discuss this topic with true *Conservationists* in the public domain that had extensive knowledge in its *proper* use.   

Here's a link to the herbicide table and application rates that was shared with us during the presentation:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RTGGztqSIKR9djB9wrSgVnomKRD4c1YN/view

Thanks to the prep work, the growth stayed very low - perfect for the coming murder rampage I had planned for the fall.

This 75' foot long and 30-40- wide section on our East field has a thick, low mat of honeysuckle. The Indian, Big Blue and Little Blue grasses are struggling to fight through it...and losing. They're only able to sprout around the edges of the advancing honeysuckle vines. This is a view from the south. NOTE: All pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.

The same section, view from the north.

Further north, a strip of honeysuckle has gotten a foothold...not for long though. Hold tight, I'mma coming. One clump of little bluestem has managed to grow up (far right of the picture, 1/3 of the way down - now light brown-colored)

Another 50' north, around the corner, we brush hogged & pulled the vines down here too. Perfect for the coming spray-a-thon.

On to the west side of the property - this is the area that we cleared out last year (more about that here)
We dragged this cluster out and burned it. The honeysuckle came back, but the grass got a little better start here.

This west cluster in the Savanna is only 40' from the one above.

Now we wait to see the results. I am not a patient woman, but a great distraction is found in shopping the Native Seed catalogs and planning the next phase.