Invasive Species Case Study: Japanese Stiltgrass

Invasive species. Not a sexy topic, but an increasingly important one. Invasive species are often quite attractive, but they are strangling our ecosystems, deeply hurting their ability to support our native animals like songbirds and pollinators. Invasive plants are an important rpart of why our insect and bird populations are plummeting.

It turns out that native animals cannot really use non-native plants. Why? Because our native animals evolved in tandem with our native plants, animal bodies "learning" to neutralize specialized chemicals the plants produce or syncing the timing of their animal life cycles to fit that of "their" plants. This is particularly true for the young (a.k.a. caterpillars) of butterflies, moths, and skippers. And those same caterpillars are the primary source of protein that fuels the growth of baby birds.

Invasive plant species are non-native plants that really, really like it here and that are taking over entire ecosystems, displacing the native plants needed by our native animals.

While kudzu ("the vine that ate the south") is the poster child for invasive species, in this post I want to talk about a species that is less visually obvious but just as detrimental: Japanese Stiltgrass (Microstegium vimineum).

Frankly, I think that Japanese Stiltgrass is quite pretty, especially if it's getting enough water. So what's the problem?

The problem is that nothing eats Japanese Stiltgrass here in the United States, although presumably it is used by wildlife in its native East Asia. Unlike most grasses, this plant thrives in the shade - and it has taken over huge expanses of woodland understory in the eastern United States. Where Japanese Stiltgrass grows, it crowds out most other woodland understory plants, creating a pretty - but functionally useless - understory.

The forest floor here is carpeted with Japanese Stiltgrass - 
pretty, but useless to wildlife.
August 16, 2025

In our woodlands, you might as well carpet your ground with synthetic carpet for all its wildlife value once stiltgrass takes hold.

Japanese Stiltgrass is an annual, so all of the plants you see growing this year will die when frost hits. Like most annuals, however, it is a PROLIFIC reseeder and its seeds remain capable of germinating for multiple years. If it seeds this year, you WILL have it next year.

So how to get rid of it, especially if you have a lot of it? It's best to use a couple of its growth characteristics against it: first, stiltgrass seeds late in the growing season and, second, it's shallow rooted. So....

1). It's EASY to pull out. I start pulling out stiltgrass as soon as I see it beginning to grow in late spring. My mantra is "a year of seed equals 7 years of week", which is great motivation! I pull it throughout the summer. After several years of careful diligence, I have relatively little left in our 2/3 acre yard.

Here, Japanese Stiltgrass (with broader leaves) is mixed in with sedge.
August 16, 2025

A closeup of a sprig of Japanese Stiltgrass, 
showing its characteristic bright green color and
the slightly off center silvery stripe found on many leaves.
August 16, 2025

2). DO NOT mow it during the summer, as that will encourage it to set seed close to the ground. Wait until you start to see the flower/seed heads developing in late summer or early fall, then scalp the entire area, mowing as close to the ground as possible. (The seed heads look rather like crabgrass seed spikes.) If you do this - and time it well, the plant does not have time to regrow and set seed before being killed off as winter sets in and you've avoided a huge influx of new Japanese stiltgrass seed.

3). Some folks use a pre-emergent weed suppressant in the spring, but that will suppress ALL germinating seeds, not just stiltgrass seeds, so I don't choose to use this method.

NOTE: This is not a single year project. Like all invasive species, Japanese Stiltgrass is very good at spreading and colonizing. You will have leftover seeds in your soil's seed bank, plus new seeds will regularly come in from surrounding yards or "wild" areas on the feet of animals or on car/tractor tires or seemingly by "magic". If you are in an infested region, you will always have some stiltgrass trying to move in. However, you can get it under enough control that occasional hand pulling is more than sufficient to keep it out.

If you find Japanese Stiltgrass in your garden or yard, I highly encourage you to remove it and work to keep it out. If you don't, a little will quickly become a lot, as is the way with invasive plants - and the habitat value of your yard will decrease significantly. Best of luck!

Removing Invasive Plants - A Satisfying (and Usually Cheap) Way to Help Increase Biodiversity

All of those "pretty" white-blooming trees are Callery Pears,
better known as "Bradford pears".
This non-native has become quite invasive in many areas of the country.
Photo taken on March 23, 2025 in Williamsburg, VA.

Even driving down the road at 55 mph, you can tell that invasive plants have become a huge problem around the country.  I've begun to suspect that they are a major factor in the declining populations of both insects and birds, since they do not, generally speaking, support the native insect species that many birds rely on for food.

Japanese Wisteria (Wisteria floribunda) that has taken over a "wild" area.
Williamsburg, VA,  April 6, 2025

A closer look at the wisteria's stems strangling the shrubs and trees it's climbing on.
This is a heavy, twining vine that kills a lot of other plants.
Williamsburg, VA, April 6, 2025

Many of our invasive species are, unfortunately, quite attractive.  In fact, they were often brought here as garden or landscape plants precisely because they were so pretty.  The Mr. Hyde portion of their Jekyll and Hyde personality showed up later as they escaped cultivation and established themselves along roadsides, in wild areas, and in many other places where they weren't wanted.  Invasive plants are aggressive spreaders and are rarely eaten by native wildlife, allowing them to outcompete the native vegetation that does support animal life.  The result is large areas of lush, even pretty, vegetation that are actually unable to support much of any wildlife at all.

The good news is that, even if you're tight on cash, you can do a surprisingly large amount of good for wildlife and biodiversity simply by ridding your yard of these invasive species.  This opens up space for native plants to grow and, with more native plants in your yard, your biodiversity will increase.   Insects will show up to munch the plants (this is a good thing!), then other insects, spiders, birds, and more animals will show up to eat the plant eaters.  By removing invasive plants, you will also be limiting their spread, at least from your own yard. 

Be forewarned, though, that invasive species won't give up easily!

Let's start with the basics.  What is an invasive plant?  For starters, by definition, an invasive plant is non-native.  This is an important point - you can have aggressive native plants that spread more widely or rapidly than you want, but native plant species are NOT invasive, ever.  The other component of having a plant declared invasive is that it spreads extensively and rapidly, pushing out native plant species and causing economic damage and environmental disruption in the areas where it's growing.

Kudzu is the poster child of an invasive plant.

In 2015, researchers found that there were 755 species of plants considered invasive in the continental United States.  Unfortunately, more are being added to the list every year as previously "well behaved" non-native plants start escaping cultivation and going crazy.  Chances are high that you have at least a couple invasive species in your yard.

A seedling of Autumn Olive (Eleagnus umbellata)
Williamsburg, VA, March 28, 2025.

A row of large Autumn Olives down the road from us.
Williamsburg, VA,  April 8, 2025

Generally speaking, the older and more well established an invasive plant is, the harder it is to remove.  So....keep your eye out for seedlings and remove them as soon as you see them.  Recently for example, I found two Autumn Olive seedlings, about 12" high.  We've had reasonable rains and they were easy to pull out, but their roots were already almost as long as their stems were high.  If I'd let them get much larger, removing them would have been difficult.  As mature shrubs, Autumn Olives are 12-18' tall and wide.  Trust me, removing seedlings is MUCH easier.

Speaking of which, in one of my Facebook native plant groups recently, there was a post by a guy who had just purchased 8.5 acres in Virginia, 7 acres of which were forested.  He said that Autumn Olive made up about 95% of the understory in those woods and he was asking how to clear it out.  That's one of many, many examples of why invasive plants are such a problem.

Besides the Autumn Olive, here are some of the invasive species that I have been removing from our yard:

This lush looking, beautiful grass is actually invasive Japanese Stiltgrass.
Williamsburg, VA,  June 12, 2024

Japanese Stiltgrass (Microstegium vimineum).  Japanese Stiltgrass is an annual, but it is highly invasive in our area and quickly creates a carpet that chokes out almost all other vegetation on the forest floor.  This was the first plant I really targeted with a full scale removal project.  Even though our yard was not heavily infested, on our 2/3 acre, it took about 3 years to get the majority of it pulled out,  I still have to be vigilant, since the seeds remain viable for up to 7 years and since they are easily spread by deer and other animals, but now I can pull out the Stiltgrass as I do walkabouts, without making a special concerted effort.

A small patch of Ground Ivy beginning to bloom.
Williamsburg, VA,  April 8, 2025

Ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea), a.k.a. Creeping Charlie.  There is a lot of ground ivy in our yard.  I originally let it go because I rather liked its scent and it didn't seem overwhelming.  Then it repaid my kindness by starting to take over.  Now I pull it whenever I'm weeding in the area.  I don't usually make a concerted effort to go after it, though.

 

An English Ivy seedling shining in the leaf litter
Williamsburg, VA,  March 17, 2025.

Note the 2 large trees with trunks infested by English ivy.
These are probably the source of many of the seedlings in our yard.
Williamsburg, VA,  April 8, 2025

English Ivy (Hedera helix).  Thankfully our yard had no large, established patches of English ivy, but it is rampant in our neighborhood, including right across the street.  I regularly see seedlings, which are easy to spot in winter and early spring, given their evergreen foliage.  Around our neighborhood, the heavily coated tree trunks are looming reminders of how important it is to pull the seedlings up right away.  Note:  English Ivy doesn't start to bloom (and thus to set seed) until it reaches up into the canopy.

  

A small seedling of Chinese Privet (Ligustrum sinense)
Williamsburg, VA,  September 19, 2023

Chinese privet (Ligustrum sinense).  This generally unassuming shrub, widely used for hedges, tends to blend into the background except when it blooms in late spring.  Here in Williamsburg, Chinese privet lines the Colonial Parkway for miles, growing to 15' tall, allowing little else to grow where it has taken over.  I regularly find seedlings of this plant in our yard, which I pull as soon as I see them.  I'm quite thankful that this one hasn't established itself, since it spreads by both seed and sucker.

Seedling of Japanese Privet,
Williamsburg, VA,  March 17, 2025

The large, dark green shrubs/small trees are Japanese Privet.
This planting is also right across the street from us - and is probably our seed source.
Williamsburg, VA,  April 8, 2025

Japanese privet (Ligustrum japonicum).  There is a LOT of this large, pretty plant in our neighborhood, where it's generally used as a visual screen.  As with other invasives, this plant spreads readily and has essentially no wildlife value, despite its shining dark green leaves and generally handsome looks.  This is another species whose seedlings I find regularly - and which I pull as soon as I see them.  If you let them grow, expect to have a 15' tall and wide shrub/small tree in your yard.

Basal rosette of Asiatic False Hawksbeard
Williamsburg, VA,  March 17, 2025.

Asiatic False Hawksbeard (Youngia japonica).  There are certainly worse invasive species, but I've started trying to remove this annual/biennial as much as possible. To my eye, it's weedy looking and it has no wildlife value, so I see no point in keeping it around.  Asiatic False Hawksbeard forms a basal rosette which overwinters, sending up a tall bloom spike with small yellow flowers that quickly turn to seedy fluff.

 

Another beautiful invasive plant, this is an Ajuga bloom spike,
Williamsburg, VA,  April 4, 2025

Part of a patch of Ajuga starting to bloom.  
This area only had a couple plants 2 years ago; now it's about 12' across.
Williamsburg, VA,  April 4, 2025

.
Ajuga (Ajuga reptans), a.k.a. Bugleweed.  I remember helping my mother plant this attractive ground cover and later I planted it myself, but now I know a LOT better.  Ajuga will absolutely cover ground - and then spread widely well beyond where you want it, if you're not careful.  The first year or two we were here, I noticed a bit of Ajuga here and there, but I didn't worry about it.  Suddenly, last spring, I noticed it all over the yard, forming a couple large patches and blooming happily, getting ready to spread itself even more widely.  This spring, it's on my "got to go" list - and I just removed a large bucket full of it from one garden area.  There's lots more to go, unfortunately.

Vinca minor, looking very innocuous.
Williamsburg, VA,  April 8, 2025

Vinca minor taking over the forest floor.
Williamsburg, VA,  April 8, 2025

Vinca (Vinca minor).  This is another plant that I remember happily planting in my younger days.  It is also another plant that I noticed a few sprigs of in this yard 5 years ago, but paid no attention to.   Now we have a couple large patches of it and, like the Ajuga, it's been put on my "got to go" list.

There are many non-native plants that are not (for now) invasive, including camellias and peonies.  If these are well grown plants and I like them, for one reason or another, I let them be. Dr. Doug Tallamy urges us to aim for at least 70% native plants to support bird populations, so I don't have to be a purist.  I cherish the tall Chindo Viburnum hedge that provides privacy to our back yard and the gorgeous peony that has vivid magenta blooms and fills out so lushly each summer.  However, when these and other non-natives in our yard get unhealthy and die, I will replace them with native plants to support more wildlife.

Why a post on invasive plants now,  in the beginning of the growing season?  I find that late winter/early spring is a good time to notice many invasives in the yard and, as I plan for the coming year's plantings and transplantings, a good time to get to work on removing them.  It's rather like doing a spring clean, opening up the yard for new possibilities. 

That said, don't be too quick to dismiss a seedling plant that shows up in your yard as "just" a weed or invasive.  Try to be sure of the plant's identity before you weed it out.  I have received many "gift plants" from Mother Nature by keeping my eyes open and my PictureThis app fully deployed.  That, however, is a topic for another post.

I'm curious to learn what invasives you're finding in your yard - and whether you're having trouble removing them or not. 

The Restorative Magic of Rewilding

There's not a lot I can do to affect the outcome of global warming or to stop the biodiversity crisis.  That fact tends to keep me awake at night.  However, "not a lot I can do" is not the same as "nothing I can do".  I have found a way to make a difference in both crises, even if it is a small difference, and that way is right outside our home.  Even better, every day I can literally see the difference I'm making.

What's making the difference?  Rewilding.  My husband and I are doing our best to let the land we currently steward heal itself, restore itself.  Over the last 5 years, because of our restorative choices, we have gone from seeing no moths and few butterflies or native bees to seeing all of these and more regularly.

Tiny, but mighty. In this photo, the Thin-lined Calligrapher is feeding at Blue-eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium).   The larvae of this species of syrphid fly are fierce predators of aphids, while the adults pollinate flowers as they feed.

 

What does rewilding our yard entail?  Here are the simple steps that we are taking...or not taking, as the case may be.

1.  Leave the leaves.  Our yard is part of the eastern deciduous forest and it has many large native trees that grew within a forest setting, so they are tall and straight with few low branches.  In the fall, these trees drop LOTS of leaves, which we simply...leave.  Blanketing the ground, the leaves protect the soil from erosion, hold in soil moisture, feed the trees and other plants as they decompose, and provide habitat for an amazing number of animals.  While doing all of that, they also store carbon - and help store more carbon in the soil as they decompose.

As a caterpillar, this beautiful little Red-banded Hairstreak lived in the leaf litter and fed on the fallen leaves of various trees, such as wax myrtle and sumac.  Here it is nectaring at Blue Mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum), a native perennial.

2.  Minimize lawn.  In our case, there was no functional lawn in the yard when we moved in...so we didn't try to add one.  Ours is a shaded yard, which grass doesn't like, so we're choosing not to fight that battle.  If we had a lawn, we'd be managing it as a "freedom lawn", free from pesticides and fertilizers and welcoming low-growing native plants like violets and nimblewill.

3.  Let native vegetation grow naturally.  As new plants appear in the yard, I do my best to identify them.  If they are native, I generally let them grow with little further fuss..  Some of these plants have actually been growing here for years, suppressed and invisible because of decades of mowing.  Other native species have come up from the seedbank in the soil.  Many natives have come from seeds deposited by birds and other animals as they move through our landscape.  Plants like mayapple, frost aster, American pokeweed, rough-leaved goldenrod, nimblewill, and numerous tree and shrub seedlings have appeared "on their own" in one of these ways.

The Late Boneset (Eupatorium serotinum) in this photo is an example of a native that seeded itself into our yard.  I found I loved it almost as much as this Eastern Tiger Swallowtail does, so I transplanted a second one from our daughter's yard and bought 3 more to add to the area.

4.  Remove invasive plants.  Perhaps surprisingly, this is an extremely valuable step.  The importance of native plants is that they have co-evolved with and are eaten by native insects and other native animals, so they support animal life.  Invasive plants, which are aggressive non-natives, don't get eaten and therefore have no limits on their growth and reproduction.  Invasives can take over entire landscapes, smothering the native plants in the process.  Think kudzu, the vine that ate the South.  It's like having plastic plants as far as supporting birds and other wildlife are concerned.

The lush green grass that's carpeting this woodland floor is actually invasive Japanese Stilt Grass.  An annual that seeds heavily, stilt grass rapidly takes over and suppresses almost all other vegetation.  Nothing eats it, so the forest floor essentially becomes a green desert where it grows.  We had a fair amount of stilt grass, which I have worked hard to suppress by hand pulling.  There will always be some, but right now it's easy to keep under control as I work on other things around the yard.

5.  Avoid using pesticides (including insecticides and rodenticides), fungicides, herbicides, and artificial fertilizers.  ("-cide"means "to kill").  Your rewilding landscape will re-establish its own balances and counterbalances, remaining much healthier than it ever could be by using toxins and artificial chemicals within it.  The only exception to this rule is the judicious use of specific herbicides, if necessary, to help remove particularly problematic invasive plant species.

Doing its best to imitate a half-eaten stem, this inchworm is one of many caterpillars that now call our yard home...that is, they call it home until they get eaten or until they pupate and change into moths or butterflies.   Inchworms are the larvae of geometrid moths;  this one is feeding on Rough-leaved Goldenrod.  Dr. Doug Tallamy reports that 95% of all woodland birds raise their young on insects, especially caterpillars.  If you want birds, you have to have caterpillars.   If you want caterpillars, you can't use insecticides.

This is what happens when you "sit on your hands" and don't use insecticides.  See that little orange "bug"?  That's an oleander aphid on swamp milkweed...being eaten by the larva of a lacewing!  There was a pretty good crowd of oleander aphids for a little while, but the lacewings and syrphid flies moved in and feasted.  Within a couple days, the oleander aphids were gone.  If you want lacewings and syrphid flies to do your pest control, you can't use insecticides...or even squash or wash off the aphids.

6.  Plant native plants that fit our specific ecosystem community.  In our eastern deciduous woodland yard, for example, we have added blueberries, beauty berries, Christmas ferns, bloodroot, mayapple, and pawpaw, among others.

Here a Variegated Fritillary is laying an egg on a decrepit looking Common Violet (8/3/24).

7.  Observe what's going on!  It's so common for gardeners to be "all work & no play" in their gardens, but I consciously and regularly take time to walk around, just to look and learn - and to take photos.  This is how I find new species appearing and it's an important way I figure out how different plants and animals are interacting.

A case in point.....

There haven't been many, but each summer or fall I usually find a monarch caterpillar or two on the Swamp Milkweed (Asclepius tuberosa) that I have planted around the yard.  I found this one and a sibling in early September.  True to form, after a few days the caterpillars disappeared.  I always hope they've pupated and flown off successfully, but it's rare for me to know with any certainty.

In this case, I was luckier than usual.  At the end of October, I noticed this little bit of "debris" in amongst the seed heads of this Late Boneset (Eupatorium serotinum), located about 15' away from the swamp milkweed where I'd observed the monarch caterpillars 7 weeks earlier.  If you look closely, you'll see that this is an empty pupa, with the monarch having successfully hatched.   Presumably, by the time I found this bit of evidence, the monarch was well on its way to Mexico.

8.  Learn.  Then learn some more.  There are so many fantastic resources these days, from books to YouTube videos, from our local native plant societies to online seminars, from native plant nurseries to websites, from podcasts to Facebook groups.  Fellow wildlife gardeners and rewilders can be especially fun to learn with and from.

After years of seeing this book, I finally read it this summer - and it was amazing.  It's about an English estate whose owners were losing money in traditional agriculture, so they decided to "wild" it.  Even though the species discussed are British, the concepts are universal and I learned an incredible amount from reading it.  I'll never look at an ancient, half dead tree the same way again.

9.  Put up signage in your yard to showcase what you are working to accomplish.

We put up this "real estate" box near the road to share updates about why and how we are rewilding our yard.  I try to put out new updates several times a year.

10.  Share news of your discoveries and successes with others, through photos and Facebook posts and conversations.  Who knows?  You may even want to start your own blog!

August, 2023, was the first time we saw this beautiful species in our yard.  It's called a Common Buckeye and the caterpillars feed on Wild Petunia (Ruellia sp.) and Plantain (Plantago sp.), among a few other species, both of which we now have in our yard.   Here the adult is nectaring at Hairy Elephant's Foot (Elephantopus tomentosus).

Are my husband and I making a difference?  Yes, I know we are.  

From rarely seeing any insects when we first moved in (fall 2019), to documenting over 550 species of animals in the yard during the last 2 years, it's obvious that our yard is now supporting much more biodiversity.  The majority of those newly documented species are the all important insects.  Does that mean we are overrun with "bugs"?  Not at all!  I actually have to look hard to see many of the insects living here. A huge proportion of insects, it turns out, are predators on other insects, working to keep our little ecosystem balanced and functioning smoothly.

Not only are we making a visible difference through our choices, this is frankly fun.  We see small iridescent green bees and big yellow striped swallowtails, robber flies and lacewings, tree frogs and skinks.  A wide variety of birds hang out in our yard, providing a background chorus for much of the year.  Our grandsons are becoming excellent birders and sharp observers of the natural world.

We can't save the entire world by ourselves, but we can do our best to save our little corner of it.  The more of us working together on wildlife gardening, even rewilding, the larger our impact will be.

Damn the Torpedo Grass, Full Speed Ahead!

We made an unpleasant discovery a couple days ago:  our lower terraces, next to the water, are infested with a particularly nasty invasive grass called torpedo grass, Panicum repens.  This stuff is like huge Bermuda grass, on steroids.

From 10 feet above the surface, that doesn't look all that bad, I guess.  But, up close and personal, this stuff is wiry, open, 2+ feet tall...and ugly.  You can see that it's almost completely covered the east terrace in the above photo, taken on October 4th last year.  Frighteningly, when I looked a bit further back, here is a photo I took from the deck stairs only 3 1/2 months before the photo above.

In late June, the torpedo grass was only claiming about half of the eastern lower terrace.  Where DID this horrible weed come from?

It's not that I didn't know the terraces were full of "weeds", it's just that I didn't realize how invasive one of those weedy plants actually was.  I am particularly in debt to National Invasive Species Week this week, because it was a post made about torpedo grass by our local Extension Office during this educational event that made me look a little more closely.

Believe it or not, I believe this was one of those serendipitous events in life.  I've been working down on the western terrace, weeding out the dewberry, Vasey grass, countless oak and hickory seedlings, a popcorn tree sapling, and remnants of ragweed and Bidens alba so that I can actually start making some garden beds in the area.  Here's the area I've been working in, taken last June....

...and here it is 5 days ago, after I put down my garden gloves for the day.

I had just found a rhizome of what I now know is torpedo grass, growing under a big clump of Vasey grass near the water's edge, and I was too tired to tackle the big clump without a break.  So there is some torpedo grass on the west side terrace, too.  I won't know how much until I get back in there, tackling the rest of the early successional vegetation that has established, but at least it's not a pure stand, like it is in the east side.

I am so glad that the article on torpedo grass came when my awareness of what was growing on the lower terraces was fresh!

Now I want to echo David Farragut's famous cry, "Damn the torpedoes!  Full speed ahead!" and start planting in this area!  Common sense, however, tells me that then I'd have nice plantings that would still be infested with torpedo grass.  Soon they would look like very nasty plantings, indeed.  The first line of business is now to get rid of this invader as soon as possible.

Research on this unprepossessing plant is not reassuring.

Like so many other really unpleasant invasives, this one was purposefully brought to our country by the agricultural community to provide "better forage" for livestock, probably in the late 1800's.  It certainly grows without pause.  Unfortunately, however, it turns out that grazing animals don't actually like it much, unless it's really young and tender.  Meanwhile it, apparently, really likes life here in the Gulf Coast region, where it has no known enemies or constraints on its growth habits.

One suggested common name for this grass is "creeping panic".  The Loyola Center for Environmental Communication says that it's "akin to Attila the Hun" once it's established.  Dan Gill, a gardening columnist for the New Orleans Times-Picayune put it this way, "Torpedograss is not difficult to eradicate: It is nearly impossible to eradicate."

Have I mentioned how unhappy I am to have found this plant on our property?

There are photos of this monster growing in deep water on the web - up to 6' deep, according to the sources.  So far I haven't seen signs that it's in the lake behind us...yet, but it's right next to the sea wall.   If we don't get it stopped now, it will be in the lake in the very near future.

According to various experts, manual removal is almost impossible because it (like so many others) will resprout from any tiny bit of rhizome left behind.  The rhizomes can grow as much as 2' below the soil surface.

Chemical treatment is therefore suggested, with the standard array of herbicides listed, but multiple treatments are apparently almost guaranteed to be needed.  I hate using chemicals, but we're breaking down and trying them, in a very targeted way.  Greg mowed a few days ago (before we realized what was there, actually), then burned the center.  This afternoon, he treated the edges that hadn't been burned with concentrated Roundup.  We'll watch for green-up in the burned area and/or in the edges and then we'll re-treat, probably in about 3 weeks. 

One idea I'd love to be able to try, if this didn't feel like such a dire emergency already, would be controlling the torpedo grass with a different plant, an aggressive native that might be able to outcompete it.   I was reminded of that option when I saw this post, by Nancy Lawson, The Humane Gardener:  "How to Fight Plants with Plants".  Her experiences made me remember that Greg and I noticed ragweed outcompeting field bindweed, many years ago, in an abandoned soybean field after we seeded it to native grasses and forbs.  Right now, the biggest problem with using plants to fight plants for handling our torpedo grass problem is that I have NO idea what might outcompete it.  Unfortunately, I just don't have time to experiment, either, if I'm going to keep the torpedo grass out of the lake.

A Satellite Garden for Pollinators...in Boston

Several years ago our son purchased a condo in Somerville, Massachusetts.  As is typical in a large metropolitan area, there isn't much land around the building, but Sean's been talking with me about creating a pollinator garden on the small plot that he has.  Over the 4th of July weekend, we were finally able to make that happen.

Here is the space that we started with.....

Of course, since we're talking an area that has been built on for over a century, there was plant material already in place.  Most of it was exotic, if not exotic AND invasive:  black swallow-wort (a vine related to milkweed), Vinca minor, white sweet clover, crabgrass, fescue, and a cranesbill of some sort.  We removed all of these except the cranesbill, which didn't seem to be invasive and which was creating a nice small carpet with a few purple flowers.

Then there were the native plants:  an oak seedling, 2 maple seedlings, lots of hay fern, and and a couple violets.  Pretty as the hay fern was, it was obviously too aggressive for this small an area, so we reluctantly removed it.  There was still plenty of it on the north side of the house. Of course, the tree seedlings had to go, too.  This is definitely not a big enough space for an oak or maple tree.  We did try to keep the violets...although they got pretty mangled during the whole process.

The large shrub at the north end of the garden space is an old privet which technically belongs to the next door neighbor, so we didn't try to do anything with it.  There is black swallow-wort and Boston ivy growing up in it, as well as a maple seedling or two, so Sean will have to keep a close eye on it to keep those plants from infringing on his new pollinator garden.

My biggest concern for this project was finding appropriate, non-pesticide treated, native plants to form the biological base of the new garden.  Searching online, I located Garden in the Woods, a nature area run by the New England Wildflower Society.  It's in Framingham, which isn't too far out of the city, and they sell native plants.  We fired up the cell phone navigation system and made our way out there on Saturday morning.  Woohoo!  Paydirt!  Even in early July, long after sensible people have put in their new gardens or renovated their old ones, Garden in the Woods still had a nice selection of Massachusetts' native plants.  My only regret in going there was that we didn't have time to hike their trails.

On the way back, with Sean's car mostly full of native perennials, we stopped at Russell's Garden Center and bought a few tools, compost and mulch (plus a small butterfly milkweed).  Now the car was really loaded down.

I should have taken a photo of the car, but I didn't think about it. I was too psyched about getting busy, digging in the dirt.

Luckily for me, I got to be the "consultant".  Sean did the vast majority of the actual physical labor, but I got to get my hands dirty enough to feel like an integral part of the project.  The steps were pretty basic: we pulled out and discarded all the plants that we didn't want, making sure that we got as many of their roots as possible, then we spread a layer of compost over the open soil to be worked in as we planted the new perennials.  Fortuitously, the soil turned out to be better than I expected.  Next we placed the plants and Sean dug the holes - same depth as the pot, but twice as wide - before he planted each new garden member carefully, being careful to loosen the root balls as appropriate and to water each one in thoroughly.  The final step was to mulch.

By Sunday afternoon, here is what Sean's new pollinator garden looked like....

The plant list includes red moss phlox (Phlox subulata 'Scarlet Flame'), red bearberry (Arctostaphylas uva-ursi), cranesbill (Geranium sp.), violets (Viola sp.), lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium), wild strawberry (Fragaria virginiana), foxglove penstemon (Penstemon digitalis), Nicky summer phlox (Phlox paniculata 'Nicky'), showy coneflower (Rudbeckia fulgida), spike blazing star (Liatris spicata), Magnus eastern purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea 'Magnus'), wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), poke milkweed (Asclepias exaltata), common milkweed (Asclepias syriacus), and New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae).

The poke and common milkweed will move around;  Sean will just pull out any that come up in a place that he finds displeasing.  Hopefully the monarchs will eventually come to visit - and maybe even to lay eggs.

The garden is planted fairly densely;  the look will hopefully be "cottage garden" in style.   I'm really excited to see how it grows and matures over the next few years.  Most of all, I'm looking forward to seeing the pollinators that it will be supporting.  Every little bit helps!

Learn From My Mistakes: Crown Vetch

I probably ought to make this a series - heaven only knows that I've made plenty of mistakes over my time gardening.  Others might as well learn from my hard-headedness!

So, moving on to this particular example....  Last year I was cleaning out an area where a large Austrian pine had succumbed to pine wilt.  We had had the pine removed earlier last spring, leaving a large area that was bare of almost all vegetation and coated with pine needles.  This area was right next to the northeast corner of the house, so it seemed like a logical expansion for the front flower bed.

Of course, as is typical under a large evergreen, there were a few seedlings that had grown up from seeds dropped by birds, thoughtfully provided with a little bolus of fertilizer to help them establish.  We didn't want any large trees growing that close to the house, so removing the tree seedlings seemed straightforward.  However, as I started clearing out the stray clumps of grass and other plants that had managed to claim a spot, I found a small start of a beautiful, almost ferny, low growing plant that seemed to be acting as a groundcover.

Greg loves groundcovers and is constantly on the lookout for a particularly special one.  You know the type of plant he wants, the "perfect plant":  it will grow luxuriously enough that it outcompetes any weeds, never needs to be weeded, and forms a thick, lush cover, but it won't outgrow its space or choke out any wanted plants growing in or near it.  (Yeah, I know, an impossibility, oxymoronic in fact, but a gardener can dream, can't he?!)  I showed the plant to Greg and, indeed, he did like it, so I let it grow.

I hadn't identified the plant yet, but it had come in naturally and it was quite pretty - providing a ferny effect - but obviously very hardy and definitely providing good cover.  Neither of us were too concerned about leaving it for a while.  Eventually our mystery plant started blooming, and the blooms were attractive too.

In fact, the blooms allowed me to identify the plant as crown vetch (Coronilla varia).  I knew that this species was planted along highways and other roads for erosion control, and something was tickling my mind about it maybe being a problem in some way, but the Kansas Wildflower and Grasses page didn't raise any red flags for me.  The blooms only made it more attractive.  The plant seemed to be staying closely confined, so I let it be.  After all, the prairie environment is harsh enough that many "overly aggressive" plants elsewhere behave more reasonably for us.

Boy, was letting it alone a mistake.  By last fall, I'd decided that I really didn't want such a rapidly spreading groundcover in that spot, so I tried to dig it out.  Shortly after I thought I'd got it all out, I found new sprouts coming up all over the place.  By now, the plant was definitely spreading out widely and it was beginning to impinge on several small wildflowers I'd planted during the summer.  I dug out it all out again just before frost...and kept my fingers crossed over the winter.

I guess that finger-crossing isn't a particularly effective eradication technique. Wishing and hoping evidently don't work either.

I spent today doing my spring-time clean-up on that bed.  The crown vetch has now spread to an area about 6-8' in diameter.  Greg and I have decided it's time to pull out the Roundup, much as I dislike resorting to that option.  I trust that, by carefully using it, we'll be able to eradicate this infestation, but I sure wish I'd gotten rid of the crown vetch when I first realized it was developing as a "groundcover".  Live and learn.

My "live and let live" attitude towards unknown plants has served me well many times, but sometimes it reaches up and bites me.   This was one of those times.  I'd suggest getting rid of crown vetch immediately, if you ever find even a sprig of it in your garden.  A classic example of "Do as I say, not as I did!"

Johnson Grass War, Round 2

One of the "gifts" left to us by the previous owners of the house is a mess of Johnson grass where the old lagoon used to be. I can only suppose that it came in with a load or two of "topsoil" when the lagoon was filled in...about a year before we bought the house.

Greg's been spraying the Johnson grass regularly with Round-up over the last 4 years, but it hasn't seemed to have much effect. This year he didn't get around to spraying it at all...but it's the one area where the drought and the grasshoppers actually helped us a bit: the drought kept the Johnson grass from growing wildly, and the grasshoppers seemed to love the newly developing flower/seed heads.


After 4 years, there's still about the same square footage covered by the Johnson grass as when we moved in, but the overall area it's in has spread outwards. The grass is no longer a solid mass; it's more scattered about. New clumps are developing out in the prairie grasses nearby, and I am bound and determined to halt the spread of this obnoxious invader before it moves any further.

So, with nicer weather, I've decided to try a different tack. A lower tech, lower cost, higher personal investment sort of way, compared to Round-Up. Yesterday I took a large black plastic bag, a pair of gloves and a pair of clippers, and I started to attack the mess using good, old fashioned methods: by deadheading (and throwing away the seedheads) to remove as many seeds as possible, followed by pulling out or cutting off as much of the biomass as possible.


A couple hours sufficed to let me deadhead all but about 2 dozen plants near the center of the old lagoon. (We've made a burn pile there, so some of the seed heads are currently inaccessible without clambering up on top of a tottering pile of branches and dried weeds.) It took almost 2 full bags to hold all of the seed heads. At least those puppies won't be starting new infestations next spring!


Today I started pulling out some of the plants. I've filled a wheelbarrow with stalks and as much of their root system as I could get...but I've only managed to pull out an estimated 5% of the Johnson grass so far. Every little bit I can get rid of gets me a little bit closer to my goal of eradicating this junk from our yard. I know that I'm not getting all of the root system, and therefore I know that the Johnson grass will return. However, I'm hoping that I'm weakening it overall and it will return with less vigor. At which point I'll attack it again. I strongly suspect that I'll be reporting about this battle for several years to come!