Does any one know how to get rid of this demonic plant, it’s slowly taking over a local waterway, most of the literature I read said glysophate helps, but that’s toxic to water life. Any suggestions?
Does any one know how to get rid of this demonic plant, it’s slowly taking over a local waterway, most of the literature I read said glysophate helps, but that’s toxic to water life. Any suggestions?
Glysophate is toxic to aquatic organisms so I don’t think that would come in question. From all the literature I’ve read it seems like the other option is covering it, this would be expensive though and I’m broke and all of this is growing on public land and you have to cover it for up to six years. Another method I read about is a guy making a grid out of metal and placing that where the knotweed grows and the stems are cut as they grow thicker than the grid. I was just wondering if any one here has any experience with it.
This is along the banks of another river that’s downstream. Knotweed and one other plant as far as you can see. This plant is just as invasive and dangerous here as it is in NA
Fair enough, I wasn’t trying to be forceful about recommending pesticides, I sure as heck don’t feel comfortable doing that I was just trying to relay what I know about the effectiveness of different methods.
One useful perspective that this paper proposes is instead of trying to eradicate it with a nuclear pesticide removal option, treat it as a crop to be harvested and turned into things humans want.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8705504/
Of course this is a bit of an idealistic perspective, but one actionable item I think that would be possible is raising awareness that japanese knotweed is both a problematically prolific invasive and also as a potential raw material to make valuable things out of or at least create lucrative amounts of honey off of with nearby hives. Then one could envision a public policy where harvesting of japanese knotweed from public lands was allowed along certain conditions (depending of course on local laws and the local political realities).
I mean… even if it remains illegal to remove japanese knotweed or harvest in huge amounts that reduce its population significantly in an area… there is definitely an argument that who is going to stop you if you do it in a way that benefits everybody? Yeah someone eventually will… but idk. Just a thought.
I want to try the shoots next spring and see what they taste like, from what I’ve seen it’s so aggressive that keeping it in check somehow is probably the best solution. I saw there are some insects you can use, but I’m kinda interested in the electric method. I just started reading about this like two days ago.
https://oa.mg/work/10.5424/sjar/2020181-15542 Apparently you can also use it as a foliar spray and it helps against slugs. I’m pretty bad at reading scientific papers though.