Large Scale Central

Invasive Plant

Gardening
#1

I am beginning to clear cut this area for my RR. This plant is Known as Ruellia brittoniana, common name Ruellia. in my area the flowers open every morning are drop by 5or 6pm. I really like the plant, but it is incredibly invasive

You can see the plant has grown under the brick and is sprouting all over in the lawn. I should have acted a year or 2 ago, but now the whole plant is coming out. It took a couple of hours of digging, then waiting a week and re digging to clear out most of the roots

this is 2 weeks later, I went through the area with a shovel looking for roots again and found this , not as clear as I hoped , but the green branch on the right near the top are 2 roots sprouting… This is going to be a bear to kill, I am guessing about 6 months of digging and spraying with Roundup to kill it , not counting the digging up the grass side to kill it there too. Looked at both sides of the card to this plant to get the name and nowhere on it did they warn you it in invasive. Oh well, the fun side of garden railroading, and gardening.

#2

In my area its Buckthorn trees. The red berries have an extremely high germination rate. Cutting the tree does not kill it. You either need to pull them up by the root or cut and poison them.

The undergrowth of my yard was all Buckthorn:

Seven years of pulling trees after every rain and we have the Buckthorn under control.

Now I need to work on that Creeping Charlie! (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-yell.gif)

#3

Geez,

I will stop complaining about morning glory. BTW invasive species is a distinctly defined term. It does not mean an aggressive plant, it means a plant tat will out compete native vegetation. So many plants that should be considered invasive are not labeled as such because they do not do well in a native setting but they will certainly take over your yard. We have two different species of Yarrow that you can kill with a nuclear explosion. Both sold at plant stores and neither considered invasive. But this stuff is now everywhere. As is lemon balm

#4

Minnesota DNR has this to say: http://dnr.state.mn.us/invasives/terrestrialplants/woody/buckthorn/index.html

#5

Well there you go that’s an invasive species and by the looks of your yard it is.

#6

Yeah, it is similar to Morning Glory, in that the roots go everywhere and it difficult to kill. Funny thing about morning glory, my mom has it on a fence, she got it from a catalog and I was reading in the catalog that Morning Glory cannot be shipped to Arizona. So I guess we dont want THAT plant here , but the Ruekkia I have will do just the same, it just doesnt climb likemorning glory.

#7

There are many different types of morning glory. This stuff we have is in no way ornamental and is in every-way an invasive weed. I don’t believe it is native here but it is everywhere and dang near impossible to get rid of. But for the most part it is also pretty benign. Doesn’t really choke things out and you can keep on top of it. But its prolific thats for sure. I wish I could ship you this product we use at work it will kill that bush. We sprayed it about 30 feet away from some Ponderosa pines that were about 50 feet tall and it killed all three of them. Killed the neighbors hedgerow also. That was an expensive oops.

#8

We have a lot of bamboo that invaded our yard. That stuff is very prolific and very hard to kill. We had a company cut some down and haul it away (very expensive) and it started to put up shoots again. It can be poisoned, but Agent Orange is hard to come by these days! We now have a big area of the shoots and stumps covered with tarps. We read that it will kill it in about a year by starving it of sun light and water. Also the heat under the tarp will help making it SUFFER!

#9

I made the mistake of planting a wildflower seed mix that had Crown Vetch in the mix. It took me a few years of pulling every crown vetch leaf I saw, with as much stem as I could, to beat it back to the point where I think its gone. I think, but I won’t know for sure until I either see it again, or I don’t.

#10

Barberry, Japanese Stilt Grass and Multi flora rose are the three biggest invasive species here. The Barberry is nice because the leaves are small and they drop in winter. The Multi-flora rose is the worst, you get caught in one of those, good luck getting out.

#11

Gee, I planted barberry. Its a pretty little plant. And since something has been eating it, its not taking over anything. Its just sort of hanging on.

#12

David Maynard said:

Gee, I planted barberry. Its a pretty little plant. And since something has been eating it, its not taking over anything. Its just sort of hanging on.

Wow Im surprised something is eating it. It is a nice plant but it spreads all over and if not pulled when you see it, it will take over.

#13

well the area it is in will be turned over about every 2 weeks or so and I am pulling up the brick as I work out the roots in the lawn, I will add some more pictures of the aggressive plant as I dig this weekend

#14

Shawn Viggiano said:

David Maynard said:

Gee, I planted barberry. Its a pretty little plant. And since something has been eating it, its not taking over anything. Its just sort of hanging on.

Wow Im surprised something is eating it. It is a nice plant but it spreads all over and if not pulled when you see it, it will take over.

The deer around here will eat anything.

#15

My on going battle with the Ruellia round # 5. I have dug up this area about 4 or 5 times pulling out small, less than 1/4" pieces of root that are sprouting , sprayed roundup on the grass side of the bricks a dozen times and after being too hot to do much outside for the last month , this is what I have. It looks like trying the nuclear option is the only way to rid the area of this AGGRESSIVE , not invasive, but dang irritating plant, I am tempted to watch for someone spraying the blue stuff highway depts use and asking for a small jar of it. I am about to start cussing at this plant.

#16

I know one method that would work since they use it around here to sterilize the mushroom soil to get rid of any unwanted seeds.

Cook it.

Dig it up, place it in a metal cement mixing tub and build a fire under it.

The mushroom industry here has built special trucks that look like cement mixing trucks that have steam lines run into them. They load the barrel with the soil, close it up, and turn on the steam. Kills all the unwanted weed seeds.

Might seem a bit drastic, but it might work. Just an idea.

#17

Pete,

Use Round Up on the dirt area and a Broadleaf weed killer like Ortho Weed Be Gone on the lawn. The broad leaf weed killer will not harm your lawn. The healthier you get your lawn growing (fertilize) the fewer weed problems you will have. Over time the Round Up will do it’s job, as will the Ortho.

#18

Pete,

After re-reading your original post. Do not dig up the weeds, you’re spreading the problem, any little piece of root will sprout to life. Round Up and Weed Be Gone work by translocation to the roots. Let them do their job.

#19

Dan,

the picture above is AFTER using about a quart and a half of Roundup on all and anything that sprouted. as you can see the area in the grass has nice healthy Ruellia growing again and the alraedy sprayed several times dug up area are still sprouting nice new bright green healthy looking plantsI might try putting black plastice over the area and see if AZ sun will cook it for me. I am guessing part of the problem is the water from lawn sprinklers helps rejuvinate the root pieces.

#20

Pete,

Please re-read my last post.

Pete,

After re-reading your original post. Do not dig up the weeds, you’re spreading the problem, any little piece of root will sprout to life. Round Up and Weed Be Gone work by translocation to the roots. Let them do their job.

Poisons work OVER TIME and REPEATED application. Every time you dig you create more of a problem. Treat the Lawn with broad leaf weed killer and the dirt with a Round Up. Remember Translocation to the Roots.