[Music] welcome to the 14th annual garlic mustard workshop at the city of Minnetonka presented by meat janet van sloan natural resource specialist I'm responsible for habitat restoration and invasive species control among a number of other things for the city of Minnetonka I've been working here for 14 years my background is in urban and community forestry and horticulture plant identification teaching consulting certified arborist and the lake garlic mustard Illaria petty alotta is a North American noxious weed before we get started with the average growth of garlic mustard I would like to show you an exceptional year where garlic mustard became huge in the fall of 2015 we had warm temperatures in November and December up to 60 degrees all the native plants were dormant and the garlic mustard continued to grow into the winter photosynthesizing and producing huge tap roots that was pretty crazy typically the roots of garlic mustard don't get this large but it surely freaked me out and I just wanted to show you how much how crazy you can bet him yet what is an invasive species I'm gonna cover that throughout this talk in general in but in general the definition of an invasive species is a plant that comes from another continent that did not evolve with our current ecosystem our native plants and birds and animals and pollinators all co-evolved together with checks and balances where they can tolerate one another's browsing eating and advancing and mutating and changing altogether when a plant comes from another continent and it did not cobol with what is here it can all of a sudden grow uncontrolled because nothing eats it no insects eat it no animals eat it it can take over and displace our native plants very rapidly garlic mustard is one of them here's our outline for today we're talking about what is it invasive species we already did that a little bit some garlic mustard facts the native range where garlic mustard came from plant life cycles review because everyone is on a different page some people don't know the different life cycles that we have out there in the woods garlic mustard biennial life stages in detail garlic mustard plant identification features in detail and finally control methods so garlic mustard was introduced in North America from Europe it was brought over to the United States as an edible garden plant it's extremely nutritious right up there with spinach and chard Europeans use it as a pot herb it was first recorded in North America in 1868 in Long Island New York here are some facts well going through quite a few facts plants non-native of course it's fast growing rapidly spreading herbaceous plant meaning it dies back to the ground completely in the winter time it's a cool season biennial that forms dense colonies cool season biennial means that really thrives in moist cool conditions if it gets real hot and dry and droughty in the summertime it will simply stop growing and kind of go dormant with green leaves above the ground why is it so successful in North America I explained a little bit about that already that nothing eats it so it can out-compete our native plants there are no known natural enemies in North America studies have been showing this it's self fertile so it does not require cross-pollination one single plant one single seed that is carried on the fur of an animal or in the boots shoelaces of someone walking through the woods can drop on the soil produce one plant and after the second year of its growth can start in brand-new patch when it sprinkles seeds on the ground garlic mustard grows on sand loam and clay soils it's extremely diverse its drought tolerant and it loves moisture generations of the first and second year plants overlap both generations can be observed from late April in Minnesota through July so why is garlic mustard bad I already explained that it can take over native plant habitat and here's a good example of that you can't see the ground layer the shorter wildflowers underneath these tall 2 foot tall garlic mustard plants crowding out our natives if if the garlic mustard patch stays in the woodland for up to 6 years or more the native plants are not allowed to photosynthesize and they eventually just disappear what else there's one flowering plant in this situation when we have a diversity of native plants there are different bloom times there are different pollinator insects that specialize with those different blooms and the different pollen the different heights all kinds of different different aspects of interactions with different species MPB ins reptiles and birds in the food web are all affected by a monoculture of one plant rather than a diversity of plants one plant can produce up to a thousand seeds Caeser viable in the soil up to twelve years so once a plant has dropped seeds in the soil that area will have to be monitored for 12 years that's a long time and beyond into perpetuity really in the situation that we are in in the city of Minnetonka now because garlic mustard is so widespread where to garlic mustard come from its native range is from United Kingdom United I'm here over to the Ukraine and Romania and a little bit up in Russia also Nordic no native to North Africa this map shows a study that was done in 2014 where countries could voluntarily report where they had garlic mustard in their country there were 16 countries that participated and this is the range map the original range shown here is just what we described earlier and this is how widespread garlic mustard is in the United States in the year 2000 it was in 34 states and four Canadian provinces now as of 2018 or 39 states including Alaska where garlic mustard has been found this is the range map for garlic mustard in the United States one thing that's a little bit deceiving st. Louis County is our largest county in Minnesota and when it gets highlighted on a map the whole county shows up I don't believe that garlic mustard is in the Boundary Waters yet I hope it is not usually when the whole county of st. Louis County is highlighted it usually means something in the in the Duluth area here's a plant life cycle review because people who are watching this video have differing backgrounds I'm just going to review what is an annual biennial perennial and woody perennial we have them all in the woods and I will show you examples an annual is a plant that hat goes through its complete life cycle from germination to death in one growing season think of your annuals that you plant in the garden that are frozen but we have also that are frozen at the end of the season we also have natives that germinate in the spring and are dead by the fall biennial an example is a garlic mustard which we'll explore thoroughly a biennial lives for two growing seasons not two full years it'll germinate the first year and the second year by the end of the growing season it will die if all the functions of the plant have been completed normally I will explain a perennial is a plant an herbaceous plant that dies back to the ground in the winter time but the roots remain alive and it returns year after year some perennials are weak perennials and don't live too long some are strong perennials and live for four decades a woody perennial is one that does not die back to the ground of course it has woody parts drops its leaves and grows year after year our example in this workshop is our native Virginia creeper which is very important for occupying space that would otherwise be occupied by garlic mustard talked more about that later so the biennial life cycle of garlic mustard is in two growing seasons the first year the seedling germinates and it creates a rosette of leaves on the ground stays low its stature is the size of a violet plant in general in general this is called a rosette it's visible in the summer and into the fall the plant over winters green will see pictures of that later the second-year plant starts out as a rosette early in the spring and then the bolting stage starts where it sends up a flower stalk it flowers it produces seed pods after the flowers are expanding and continuing to grow the seeds ripen and disperse once the plant seeds ripen the plant has a hormonal message to die if the seed tops are cut off that hormonal message does not get through and the plant does not die so you can extend a plant's life by cutting off and preventing seed production [Music] plant dies once the seeds have been distributed here's a photo that was exclusively not a photo an illustration by Leonard Fuchs in the 16th century he Allah straighted the root of garlic mustard and it's sure enough a general average root of garlic mustard has an S curve in it this little side branches off talk about pulling it later now usually the the top of the taproot extends out of the ground at least a half an inch it's easy to pull to put your fingers around the top of that tap root and pull it out slowly leave identification we're gonna have quite a few photos with identification the first year plant in the rosettes age and even the beginning of the second year in the rosette stage the plant is or the leaf is orbicular meaning it's almost completely round like an orbit around the earth which is not completely round the leaf margin is key we'll talk about that in detail in it with another slide it believes are bright to dark green kidney-shaped to round with a wavy toothed margin veins are indented into the leaf surface so they look a little bit wrinkled you can see that here the leaf size is variable going into the fall over the first year if there's a lot of moisture these Follies can be huge I've seen them the size of a paper plate in a drought year they might be the size of a quarter or a half dollar here we have the first year garlic mustard leaves and some look-alikes that grow in the woods very common look-alikes in the spring when most of the wildflowers have not yet emerged all of those shown on this page are up and growing at the same time as garlic mustard and so it's critically important if you don't have a huge patch to know that the teeth on the margin of the leaf around it at the top of the tooth and rounded at the bottom of the tooth they're like waves on the ocean rounded at the top and rounded at the bottom if you compare it to wild violet these are tiny little teeth that you can barely see don't have this characteristic here's a buttercup that's rounded at the top but pointed at the bottom of the truth here's creeping Charlie the most common look-alike with garlic mustard in the rosette stage when the leaves are small again leaves are rounded at the top and pointed at the bottom another thing about creeping Charlie is that it trails along the ground it's a runner these little runners that trail along the ground and root at the nodes does not really does not have a tap root garlic mustard has a tapper I added this photo because motherwort is not same shape as garlic mustard it's a palmate movie nation has palm movie nation so if you look at this vein and this vein they're coming out like the fingers of from your palm there's a center point and all of the veins main veins run out from there it's a maple like leaf but deep indentation in the leaf surface is similar to garlic mustard and people want to know what it is this is also an invasive species it's not nearly as important to remove or as as common as garlic mustard eventually you would want to get rid of this plant as well the second year leaves are a little bit different from the rosette leaves when the plant is in the bolded stage and growing up on the stem the plant leaves become more Delta deltoid or triangular shape and the teeth become larger the leaf size decreases toward the top of the stem now I'm going to show you 10 slides that show all the stages of growth of garlic mustard from germination till death so here we have in April of most years and early May garlic mustard is germinating at the same time that the second-year plants are going to begin to bolt so here we are the cotyledons are very uniform and the very first seed leaves here's one right here very first seed leaves look like a garlic mustard they can grow as dense as bean sprouts you find at the grocery store tremendous amount of germination extremely bitter it's not important to remove these seedling plants because by the by next year 80 to 90 percent of these are going to be dead out of competition what you really want to do is be moving the second-year plants more on that later so here's April germination alongside the second-year plants that are in the rosette stage when the plants go into the fall they stay green under the snow if we have snowmelt in the middle of the winter or no snow cover derelict mustard is a frost tolerant freeze tolerant plant some leaves will freeze and some will continue to grow so in those warm years like we had in 2015 the taproot can get larger and larger when the snow melts in the spring the plants are already green and all they need to do is perk up just like this the new leaves have a very distinct garlic odor or onion odor when they're crushed if you're walking through the woods you'll all of a sudden smell the air aroma and springtime there'll be a rosette in the spring of the second year until there's enough growing degree days that stimulates the plant to bolt bolt is sending up a flowering flower stalk here's the very early stage of bolting a new stem tiny little flower buds at the top all of these are in the flower bud stage the flowers the flowers start out as kind of a disc shape many little flowers in an inflorescence which is a cluster of flowers these four small white petals and most people don't get close enough to look at the stamens the stems will continue to evolve as the flowers progress the lowest flowers the outside flowers as you saw here these outside flowers roam the edge of the disk flower first the central flowers flower later as the stem continues to elongates a leeks are formed these are little seed pods from the Bears first flowers that originated is continuing to flower and grow and now we have these little seed pods starting to form they will start out small with nothing inside of them they will get larger and longer they look like mini green beans and when they're mature they will have little bumps on them which indicate a ripening seed inside if they're in full Sun as the plant is starting to break down once it's got ripening seeds it sends a hormonal message to the plant that it can start to shut down it's completed its life cycle then it can turn brownish brownish yellow in full Sun in the woods it will simply turn a straw color do not weed whack or spray at this stage I'm going to talk about control methods and weed whacking is one but it's not a very good control method we'll talk about that but never we'd whack or spray at the stage when seeds are ripe if you spray and you weed whack the spray the flats already dying so that's a waste of chemical if you weed whack you're simply going to be distributing these stocks which are gonna quickly open up the seeds and the whole life cycle starts over all of that effort is wasted there are about 4 to 16 sleek's per plant depending on how much sunlight the plant gets and how much competition it has in the woods with other plants depend on how how large it yes so here's where the plants are turning yellow shutting down just like the one on the left I showed you before the life cycle is completing the plant is starting to die but the seeds of course are alive I already talked about the no weed whacking so finally when the seeds start to disperse I like to tell people to get your garlic mustard out by the fourth of July very easy date to remember and typically very close to the fourth of July the seed pods start to split open these are called Sol weeks in asily k-- there's a little a little ribbon clear ribbon of tissue in the middle that's a line of seeds is this is originated on each side and this this the outside the outside comes off and the seeds spill out seeds travel in shoelaces in on the fur of dogs on the fur of deer their hooves raccoons any mammals that are in the woods that are bumping into these plants when they're dispersing seeds the seeds can attach to fur very easily in the morning dew when there's some moisture they get stuck they if you're walking through the woods they will easily get stuck in your shoelaces on the bottom of your shoe of your boots seeds live in the soil up to twelve years that's called the seed bank so if you pulled all your garlic must you have much garlic mustard to look for in the future because there is a seed bank from plants that have fallen the seeds will disperse in Minnesota in our area from July to September I have seen in the winter time a few seeds left on a seed pod but almost everything is is fallen by autumn and so here we have the dead flower stalks where with the seed already dispersed this was a hot dry summer and so the seedlings on the ground that germinated in the spring are going to vote next year but what I want to show you here is the dead flowering stock you can see that in the winter time if you're gonna buy a new home you're gonna look at a piece of property and you want to know if garlic mustard is on that property you can see these dead flowering stalks with little open sleeks and no seeds remaining they can survive heavy snow and heavy rain despite their small size so you can still see them in the woods if you know you've got it you're gonna have work to do in the future so here's the next generation completed one full year of its lifecycle and here's the next generation on the ground they can be small leaves in the fall or they can be huge depending on the moisture this is a dry situation this is a moist situation you're moving to the control methods for garlic mustard we're gonna cover manual manual control which is hand pulling or digging mechanical which is weed whipping there are advantages and disadvantages fire something most residents will never use herbicide and biological control which we do not yet have I have to say this every single spring we get calls during garlic mustard season about buckthorn the first question I ask people is do you have garlic mustard on your property do you know what it looks like in May and June and the Twin Cities it's time to forget about buckthorn and move the garlic mustard we do have a buckthorn workshop multiple per year two in the fall one in September and one October and one in March I try to schedule the workshops in Minnetonka at the appropriate time to take your knowledge and go out and do the work right away buckthorn in the growing season is pretty miserable work but removing your garlic mustard is extremely important and usually at least in Minnetonka they are both growing in the same habitat so manual control hand pulling and digging is the best way to control this plant it's chemical free and you can reduce a lot of your work by getting it the plant out when it's in the flowering stage if you try to remove this plant before the flowering stage the tapper it holds into the soil holds to the ground more tightly and it usually needs to be hand dug with the trowel once the plant has spent energy bolting and flowering there must be a little bit of a shrinkage of the taproot that makes it come out easier especially if the soil is moist so try to do your pulling in the early flowering stage or even the flower bud stage if you pull at this time which has already passed in Minnetonka for 2020 you can leave the plants in the woods if and only if no seed pods have been formed yet the roots are soil free and no soil contact the plants need to be left high and dry on top of a log or a rock or something that gets them high high and dry and they can dry out a little if you look up at the canopy of the woods and see a little Sun poking through try to make sure that a place that it's going to get a little bit of sunlight these are our volunteers working at Civic Center no no Mills Park and leaving them high and dry if you do it exactly the right time you can come back a few weeks later and they all turn straw color and they're all dead and no seeds are dispersing no bagging is required and no composting we'll talk about those later but I had the devil is in the details you must pull it early to be able to leave them in the woods to dry out most fact sheets don't mention this at all because people typically don't pay that much attention and and can get it wrong very easily here's getting it wrong this is another one of our parks where a volunteer pulled out garlic mustard and the seed pod stage had formed you can see over here there's seed pods all along the plant has if it's left on the ground it has enough stored energy that it will continue to grow and curve up and seeds will ripen so if this were left here for the rest of the summer the plants would in fact die because they're out of the ground the roots are exposed just like they should be but at this point the seed top should have been cut off those seed tops with this energy in the plant will continue to ripen and some of them will split open onto the ground I've tried this on my garage floor where I've taken a plants out at this stage put them on my dark cold garage floor for the rest of the summer they dried out completely and they dispersed seed here's the monster tap root once in a while you'll have plants that are growing out in the open if you were to remove buckthorn over the winter you'd have a disease tree that came out all of a sudden news new sunlight comes in the garlic mustard that germinated last year that's a little rosette on the ground all of a sudden gets extra sunlight and it turns into a giant plant people will yeah so when pulling or digging the tap root it has to be removed if you don't feel that tap root coming out as you're pulling you can you're gonna have to get the trowel out and dig it out I'm going to repeat that when you are pulling in general when the plants roots are this size a single tap with maybe a branch on the bottom you can usually pull them out you can gently grab the bottom of the stem and pull upward slowly and you'll feel the route coming out if it's not coming out and it feels like it's gonna break you have to get out your trowel or you go down to the bottom of the tapper excuse me at the top of the tattered back again at the very top of the tapper there's a little S curve that's out typically out of the ground you'll have the top of the taproot you can grab that right at the soil level and pull it out very slowly once you've been doing it for a while you get a good you didn't get on a roll but always have a trowel with you so that when one breaks off you can dig out the roots you see here there are adventitious buds on this root if the top breaks off next year you've just turned a plant from a biennial into a perennial next year it's going to come up it might have multiple multiple stems and be even harder to pull the following year so the trowel is always a good good idea so what about disposal right now in Minnetonka we are in late May in late May and early June we are in the seed pod stage this photo is still in the early flowering stage but what I wanted to show you is the compost pile over here from last year's pulling this is at purgatory Park and when the plants are so big and they're in the seed pod stage you've got to compost them the Department of Agriculture would like everyone to compost on their property it's not legal in fact to transport the propagating parts of this noxious weed without a permit so you shouldn't be taking them to the brush drop absolutely not when they've got seed pods on them you're going to be dispersing seeds around the very best thing to do is to compound compost them on site find a place in your yard or in your woodland but doesn't have any valuable plants growing on it shouldn't be on a slope it shouldn't be next to a stream and make yourself a compost pile pile with garlic mustard stalks with the seat toward the center you can make them radiate radiate out like the spokes of a bicycle wheel when you're done piling you cover it with landscape fabric landscape fabric allows moisture to go through and the composting process can take place the pile will shrink over the year and into the next year sometimes it might be flat by the following spring when you're pulling garlic mustard of the following year you can pile it up take your fabric back pile up more cover up the pile piles should really be covered held down the fabric should be held down in place with logs or stones to keep the edges from coming up why cover it because if deer or raccoons are walking through when the seeds are being dispersed they can still be carried to other locations there will always be seedlings around the pile so you can look for those each year and the cycle continues there is a yard waste option you if you have compost pick up at your yard yard waste organic art yard waste herbaceous Jannik like leaves and grass clipping are supposed to go to a composting facility if it's a true commercial composting facility that heats up garlic mustard seeds do break down and become non viable in a heated compost situation in your yard your compost is not going to heat up to that temperature and there will be viable seeds be careful with sending your waste plants your noxious weeds to any location where it's questionable whether or not the compost is going to be heating up the city has a leaf drop in the early spring if your to dig out your garlic mustard in the early bolting stage you could bring it to the leaf drop but only when there are not a single pod on the plant the Devils in the details so I have to digress just a little bit and talk about when you're pulling what about the natives a lot of folks when you're working in your formal garden of course you can pull out anything that you don't you don't want there it's a play weeds are any plant that's out of place but in your woodland there are a lot of plants that don't maybe look so showy and aren't bad at all this is an example of a plant this is called enchanters nightshade it is a native plant it gets these little fuzzy balls on it but many people get the wrong impression that this is a nasty plant that they would typically want to take out called stick seed and it's not and so it's good idea to learn some of the native plants around because you need to have a ground cover when you get when the garlic mustard is removed so any native plant that's growing there with the exception of stick seed I would leave in my woods to occupy space that would otherwise be occupied by garlic mustard and over time fill up that space and crowd out the garlic mustard that takes years but I will show you an example soon so this is a busy slide but it's all very important so I want to talk about invasive versus aggressive we've already learned that an invasive plant is usually coming from a different continent and it's not native to the United States then we have an aggressive plant this is the term I always use with a native I'd a non-native plant I'm not I'm going to call it invasive if it's non-native and it's invading the woods if it's native and it's rapidly multiplying I'm going to call it aggressive we have native aggressive plants in Minnesota that are wonderful to occupy space in the woodland that you don't want to do a lot of maintenance on so the so an aggressive plant is native according to this this presentation and it competes with invasive species here's a beautiful example of an aggressive native plant this is our native we've got two species one is flowering orange and one flowers yellow in the spring that the seedlings are very easy to identify because the cotyledons which are the seed leaves look like a nickel sometimes there is big as a quarter they're too big round flat leaves then the first true leaves will of course look like the plant those plants some people say oh I weed those out they're all over the place but guess what they're a decoy plant for the deer we've also got way too many deer in Minnetonka and they eat all kinds of our plants native plants hostas everything else this plant I leave in my yard for decoy I let him grow all over the place except my formal garden and the deer will tend to take them first in the summertime before some of the other more valuable plants it's always a balance this is a foot book that the DNR came out with in 2002 it is all 100% online now if you go to DNR dot state MN us in basis terrestrials you can get you can see all the plants in this non-native invasive plant book you can actually google DNR invasives and get to the same place very easily there are many invasive species in this booklet some of them are much worse players than others but it's a good way to know some of the other invasive species and there we are that's the book here is an example of a woody perennial that has taken over the garlic mustard habitat in Kenzel Park we have a fantastic volunteer who has done the garlic mustard pulling for many many years and we've allowed the native Woodbine plant the foresters call it would bind the nursery people call it Virginia Creeper it's a vine that climbs trees it is not a strangler like our native grapevine could be it climb cages here's a planted tree if it climbs up a cage a plant cage or a valuable tree you simply gently pull it off and get it running back on the ground you might want to put some twigs or logs on top of this on top of the tree on top of the vine to get it to go in place where you want it to go it has a beautiful fall color it's kind of pinkish in the woods and it can be scarlet out in full Sun it's a native plant and it's wonderful ground cover it is aggressive but it's very welcome in the woods here's another control method this is for an area that is just loaded with garlic mustard and it's impossible to pull it all so we have resorted to weed whacking and minnetonka because it's impossible for us to get all the acreage in all the parks done at exactly the same time and if we have a worm spring with temperatures getting into the 70s and 80s this plant goes into the seed pod stage very quickly and so a stopgap measure is to mow it's a it's mowing in restoration is basic it's not a lawn mower it's a weed whacker with a brush blade on the bottom and two got gained us more time there is research that has shown that weed whacking cutting the garlic mustard stalks all the way to the ground during the flowering stage can kill over 90% of the plants that's not very realistic because when you're in most woodland situations there are logs and stones and debris and you can't quite get all the way to the ground but what it does is it buys you time to come back later there could be a good 70 to 80 percent of those garlic mustard plants that died in the weed wet when their weed wacked just depends on how much moisture there is in the ground but it buys you time to come back and pull later there will be a reduction if you are weed whacking in their seed pods the better an inch and a half to 2 inches long there are seeds in there that will ripen and mature and so you are not truly controlling the plant I could talk more about this it's not the best method but we do use it in Minnetonka when we run out of time here's an example of a weed whack plant near a log so it's maybe four inches off the ground three to four inches where it got weed whack this would come back I came back in July and found that it had red flowered and produced new seed pods then they put them in the office and I counted the sleek's and the seed pods and we had about 50% of the seed pods compared to the full size plant that did not get weed whacked well when you're thinking about control it doesn't take many seeds at all to have a new infestation of garlic mustard or regeneration year after year so we really hold back on the weed whacking and it's only an emergency stage that we do and follow up with it so you can't just walk away after weed whacking you have to come back three weeks later and see what has reflowed and work on it some more we do use prescribe prescribed burning in Minnetonka for Prairie areas mostly we have done woodland burns in the past we typically cannot get the fire warm enough to kill a lot of plants in the woods so we don't use it in the woods very much anymore this is just an example to show that in this lower right hand corner where there's not enough leaf litter and the fire is not hot enough it can simply go right around the green plants so when we've done this in the past it's usually a general control mass method for ecological history of fire these plants have evolved with fire there would be patches of garlic mustard that would be burned and killed and other patches that would be green and growing just fine not something you would want to use basically on your small lot because people need to have a professional with a DNR permit to do fire in the city of Minnetonka then we move on to chemical and herbicide control again the hand pulling at the right time of the years absolutely the best thing best control method to use when you've got an overwhelming situation which we do in fifteen of our parks that we control garlic mustard in or less we need to use chemical control we use it only during the dormant season we try to use it only but plant grows very fast we like to do it in early spring in April in the rosette stage it can provide a very good amount of control at that stage a good 80 percent of the plants are killed then you need to come back three to five weeks later before the fourth of July and check that same area because there are little plants growing underneath the big plants that are being sprayed the big plants die the little plants grow up and then you've got more seeds being ripened glyphosate is the active ingredient in roundup rodeo and the aquatic version which is aqua neat three to five percent produces pretty good control in the rosette stage it does not control garlic mustard when it's in the bolting stage in the bolting stage plants can grow out of a spray they'll get will tea for a while they'll be twisted for a while and then later on in the season they'll just continue growing you must follow up with hand pulling what about non target plants you really have to be careful not to spray native plants if you are doing it during the dormant stage early spring and late fall after the natives of gone dormant that is the best time to avoid the native wildflowers sedges stay green they can be lost those are good places to hand pull around anything that's native or native sedges to 4d is not recommended for control of garlic mustard the last control method is biological control there have been 18 years of research this is Laura Van Riper who works the Department of Natural Resources this is one of our seasonals this is hill away park in Minnetonka they have research plots she collected data on how garlic mustard grows completely uncontrolled so if they were to release a biological control insect they'd have all the data of how it behaves before it's being eaten by an insect there are three species of garlic mustard eating weevils that have been found in Europe they brought them to the United States they've been in quarantine for two decades more than two decades the insects have been researched and researched and researched they've the DNR has applied with federal government to release the weevils at twelve test sites statewide ours is one of them in Minnetonka application for the trial insect release in 2008 was rejected and again into 2013 it was rejected I was ready to quit my job in 2013 when that happened there's only a few plants that they are worried about some native garlic mustards that are very rare in some remote location they're worried about them eating while garlic mustard is sweeping across the whole country the Minnetonka says test site could be a release site for Biological control insects they are in the approval process right now the very first stage has been approved but it's very long and slow so no news yet but it keeps me hopeful for the future that is why when you go to hill away park you do not see any control in the West excuse me the east side of the park because we're living it run rampant because that could be a release site in the future and here is the reason why we are never going to be free of garlic mustard into perpetuity it is not possible to eradicate this plant control of garlic mustard is pulling it composting it trying as hard as you can not to let it disperse seed but they're always going to be missed plants this plant can flower at the height of 4 inches off the ground all the way up to or feet here is a Canada anemone plant with a garlic mustard green seed pods growing right out of it it's extremely camouflaged after it's done flowering and very hard to get all of them out of the woods here's a volunteer at Tower Hill Park with a little 4 inch plant with 1 seed pod at the top another reason once when the native plants grow tall and cover up the small plants there's always something going to seed not to be discouraged overwhelmed where do you start find the wildflowers and clear around them first this is a fall see the oak leaves on the ground garlic mustard and here is Virginia water leaf if you can find the native wildflowers I liked by white wire flags from AM Leonard it's hard to find the white flags in the big-box stores but I will put a white wire flag wherever I find a wild flower sometimes in high intensity restoration areas works well for your yard put the white wire flag there and that's the place to hand pull good hand pull and once your wildflowers have been cleared around you could use the spring and the other methods if that was necessary and pulling is still the best here is just a crazy situation in birch island woods and Eden Prairie just a carpet of brand-new seedlings this is in April of the year this site will be 2 feet tall wall-to-wall garlic mustard next spring but here we have clumps of wildflowers and jack in the pulpit this would be a perfect place to come in and put your white wire flags and just do clearing around these patches before the control the following year Scout the wildflowers and native plantings in early spring and mark their location highest priority plans to remove it's not a good idea to go from one end of your property to the other find where the wildflower patch are and pull around them first find the single plants that are all by themselves and get those out first those are the ones that are going to start a new patch once that's done you can work on the rest of the bulk of the plants the most effective control of garlic mustard is the prevention of its initial establishment here is a trail in lone Lake Park where we've our restoration is is in very good shape very good shape lots of wildflowers but all but you look down closely and here's a little patch of garlic mustard that's gonna bolt next year if I've got the time I will always pick out a little patch anytime I come across it because the likelihood of coming across that exact same patch in the park is not too likely on your property just review walk through your property take plant walks all throughout the spring because what you miss the first two pass you'll find some in the second pass and the third pass find new invasions and pull them first try to get all the work done by the fourth of July when the seed pods open up so here is a summary some of its extremely redundant but here we go again remove your second-year plants in April and May up to the early flowering stage before any seed pods are produced every year until the seed bank is exhausted you can digger pull remove the soil from the roots leave them in the woods without soil contact if they're in the flowering stage with no seed pods no need to bag at this time if you don't get that detail right things could get ugly late May and June when the seed pods are present you can pull the plant and bag the seed tops by cutting them off the rest can go to the compost on your site or to your compost haulers facility where if you're going to separate on your own property separate your compost pile from other compost cover it with landscape fabric and continue to use that pile over and over again that compost should not be used on your soil surface if you want to use it in a planting hole two or more inches down below the soil surface that's fine but there are seeds that do not just decompose that will germinate in the future keep that separate from your other compost first-year plants prioritize those last the only place I would take those out would be if you have a valuable wildflower patch and you just happen to be there and you're pulling them out I want to get them out around the wildflower patch you have until April and May of next year to get those out and many of them will out-compete one another so it's not necessary to go after the first year plants until the next year you could spray them in the fall if you wish when to there we go I think I've covered all of that information there we go so here's references and we are done with the workshop thank you for your attention the devil is in the details with this plan and the more you know the easier your work can be year after year thank you for watching