On Saturday, Sept 13th, we had our second monthly coffee and invasive removal party! We met at Marigold Cafe and had a lovely time sipping coffee, talking plants, and even had a nice chat with the proprietors about adding bike parking to Cottage Street.
Then, we headed on over to the Manhan Rail Trail, where we got stuck back in taking down the Japanese knot weed that has grown up where the trees were stolen from the citizens of Easthampton by an illegal cutting operation. Here’s what we started with (well…ok we forgot for the first 10 minutes or so 🙂
We started with the area we worked on last month. Last month, we spent a LOT of time and effort cutting the knotweed canes down so we could bag. We decided then that IF the plants we were working on had not flowered yet, we should just cut them down ad leave them where they lay, which would give us a lot more removal for our volunteer time. We decided to run an informal experiement, where about half the work we did last time was bagged, and half we just left the knotweed canes lying.
When we came back this time, we had a few observations:
* The knotweed where we had removed the downed canes had grown back more than the knotweed where we’d left the canes, but there was also more native plants filling in.
* The regrowth had NOT flowered, and was therefore much better to cut down again. It was also significantly smaller than areas we had not yet reached.
Our conclusion is that cutting and leaving is fine…if there aren’t flowers or seeds. This time…there were both. (Queue the sad trombone music).
So once again, we decided to bag much of the canes, at least the parts that had flowered. That was about half of each plant though. Still, better gone than not gone.
Intrepid volunteer Alexis, who has been with us longer than most, also took some time to revisit some bittersweet much further towards Union, where she’s had massive effect, and was able to keep what little re-growth there’d been trimmed back.
And here’s the after!
Remember, every 2nd Saturday of the Month is our Coffee and Action (or talk)…come join us! You can find calendared events on Facebook and Hylo if you need a reminder. If we’ve forgotten to add an event, reach out and let us know at one of those two sites!