I Have What? Where? Now What?

I got a few questions offline about my last post, generally asking how and why I know about invasive plant species in New Hampshire.  Simple answer.  Last year, I wanted to know more about plants and growing conditions around TOPH -- a whole new climate zone for me.  So, I applied to the NH Master Gardener program and attended a bunch of classes through the UNH Cooperative Extension.  And now, brimming with this new knowledge, I am doing my bit (and tallying required volunteer hours) to spread the good word to you people.

Slight Tangent

Every state in the USA has a "land grant" university (UNH, U-Mass, etc.)  And each one of these universities, as a part of their original "resources and economies" mission, has an extension service.  Extensions services exist to share with the public what the brainiacs at the universities are figuring out about our natural resources and our economy as it relates to what we produce (agriculture, marine fisheries, forestry, etc.)   Generally, county extension staffers are hired/assigned to work with commercial growers and fisherman and companies (as examples) to ensure that resources are preserved, overhead is minimized and profits/jobs are maximized (roughly, in a nutshell.)

And then there's John Q. Public.  Some dude from NJ-Exit 5, who brings his own firewood to his cabin in New Hampshire, could easily introduce (any one of several) invasive insect species with no native predator into the north woods that would be it.  Really.  A large percentage of New England's forest (and all associated natural resources and industries, including logging, paper and maple syrup) would be wiped out within a year or five.  Really.


So, in an effort to educate the general public about best practices and threats to our lives and livelihoods, the extensions services also have "outreach" programs that educate advocates and educators in communities throughout their respective states.  New Hampshire, for example, has Master Gardeners, Natural Resource Stewards and Marine Docents.

And, in addition to the advocates and educators you may find in your community, most extension services include an office where questions from the public may be answered in-person, on the phone (NH: 1-877-EXT-GROW) or by e-mail (answers@unh.edu).  Finally, cooperative extension web sites (http://extension.unh.edu) are treasure troves of useful information.


Why Should I Care About Invasive Plants?
Non-native invasive plant species have been introduced into your local landscape by any number of means (human "it's pretty" transplants, bird poop, nubby tire cast-offs, etc.) and they are now a cause for concern because they have don't have sufficient and present natural enemies here, presumably because the things that eat, kill or otherwise control them stayed wherever they were native.  Thus, they can grow unchecked, stealing space, water, nutrients and light from native species that are integral to your local ecosystem.

Imagine how much damage three-year-old triplets could do in a Crate & Barrel if their stroller happened to deliver them without parental supervision.  And now imagine they can clone themselves and move on to other Mall stores and all adults present were somehow powerless to discipline them, no matter how they tried.  It's the stuff funny-at-first, scary-cliff-hanger-ending movies are made of.

Just as an example,  here at TOPH we have four acres of mostly woods and weeds, but very few birds.  The Norway Maples that took over the former pastures here grew very quickly, creating a thick canopy, shading and killing a bunch of native cedars that weren't as tall and couldn't grow to adapt fast enough.  In addition, the Norway Maples are allelopathic, meaning their roots produce a kind of toxin that makes it hard or impossible for anything else to take root nearby, except for invasive species, of course.  So, we have very little understory in our little forest, so no dapple-shade-loving, dense, evergreen and berry-producing bushes for the birds to nest in and eat.  Just like that, habitat lost.

Weed Wrench pic from invasives.org

So, how do you recognize vexing vegetation? Try this Guide if you are in NH: extension.unh.edu/forestry/Docs/invasive.pdf.  (If you live elsewhere, look for a guide put out by your local extension service.) There's also information in there about recommended control methods if you find some of these on your property.  

There may also be some great money-saving resources available. We have a bunch of Buckthorn (along with a gazillion of the aforementioned Norway Maple saplings.)  The Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve happens to be at the bottom of our road.  And they maintain a kind of lending library of tools, like Weed Wrenches, which would be very expensive to buy, but are almost invaluable in the process of prying these buggers out of our land of good! 

Trust me.  I learned to recognize two of these too late last year and they went to seed.  We now have a much larger and more expensive mess to clean up.  And we now have less time and less money to spend on our dream landscape.

Invasion of the Invasive Species!

I guess anyone one who moves into a house with a lot of history feels like an intruder and an interloper at some point.  We've certainly had those moments here at TOPH.  There was that a-ha moment last year when we decided to clear a trail through the woods in a direction we thought was logical, only to find we were clearing exactly where a well-travelled path/road had clearly been years before (The Road More Traveled, October 2011).

And then there was this Spring, when I truly started making plans for landscaping and gardening for next year and then all of these random plants started popping up around the property -- day lilies deep in the woods in the shade behind an old barn foundation, a sea of violets naturalized into the front lawn and a perfect six-by-six square of chives in the corner of an old, overgrown pasture.  I will not be the first endeavor to make this property more beautiful, edible and sustainable.  I guess it's easy to forget that.

There are also times when you feel like you are "bonding" with an old house.  Particularly when protecting it from invaders.  Last August, when I looked around the basement and considered vacuuming away all the cob webs, I stopped and realized that those spiders were serving a purpose (Clean Dirt & Spider Detente, August 2011). They were lying in wait for wood-iverous boring insects as they attempted to lay eggs in our structural beams and/or emerge after hatching to go propagate.  I refrained and the important work of our eight-legged housemates continued.

In this small section of what used to be the lower field: Norway Maple, Common Buckthorn, Japanese Knotweed, Garlic Mustard.  Elsewhere on the property: Oriental Bittersweet, Blunt-leafed Privet, Showy Bush Honeysuckle and Multiflora Rose.

But there's nothing like a common enemy to build a kinship between house and her steward.  TOPH is facing a threat by several invaders at the moment.  And we are stepping up to defend her (and the future of any successful, responsible landscaping plans!)

TOPH is besieged by invasive plant species. Last year, I would look into the scrub-woods and just sort of know it was going to take a while to get everything healthy and tamed and back in shape.  But, I really had no idea..

Last Fall, I happened to walk through the Stratham Town Hall on the way to the Library (same building) with the kids.  There was a poster on the wall -- a collage of identifying photos, really -- depicting all the invasive plant species to be on the lookout for in Rockingham County.  Let's just say that it caught my eye because I recognized more than half. (The creator of the poster, Doug Cygan, also created this handy PDF with identifying pics and a description of habits, threats and eradication techniques.)

Our list is long and our methods many (see PDF for recommended approaches), but the ONE invader on this list that is truly scary (to me) is the Japanese Knotweed.  If only I knew what I had earlier!  Last year, we had two patches, about 10'x20' each. One was at the head of the driveway along the fence of the dog run by the garage and the old well.  I saw it everyday -- just assumed it was some kind of elderberry or bunch berry weed that I'd get to when I had time...the other patch is down in the woods where (I think) the leach field is. Both are places where the previous owners would have had fill sand brought in over the last couple of years, so I am guessing that was the source.

The spread since last year is INSANE.  It spreads by seed (millions of them), rhizome (long tendrils between plants just under the surface of the sand/soil) and every little bit that breaks off or gets mowed or cut can root!  We unknowingly let it spread last year by all of the above methods.  It's particularly hard to kill.  I drenched it in hot saline one week this Spring.  No result.  I doused it in hot vinegar solution the next week.  No result.  On a roadside where you have a workable area, you can cut it at the base in May-June and cover it with heavy black plastic (for a YEAR), but the stubs can be sharp (like bamboo) and the rhizomes are sneaky -- any daylight peeping through it's all for naught.

In the UK, this "weed" has gone viral.  There are now zoning policies in place there that make developers responsible for removing it (at huge expense) before land can be developed.  And, if you have it at your house, you have to put money in escrow to treat it over time before you can sell. These policies are rooted in the potential for structural damage to foundations where the root balls impede.  Yes, it's that evil.

So, against all my better judgement, and with a sincere felling of defeat, we resorted to a chemical treatment solution today. And it's going to take several applications as various phases emerege.  I will NOT name the treatment here, as the brand name and manufacturer are my greatest corporate nemesis.  Grrr.

I am not feeling victorious.  But I do hope we have won some small degree of appreciation from TOPH.  And, for the record, my compost is WAY on the other side of the property from "the areas" in question.  And no food will be grown in those areas for as long as I know better...  I'm doing the best that I can with this decision, folks...  Sigh.

Taking a Page from The Heirloom Gardener: Starting Our Herbarium



The Heirloom Gardener - John Forti (on facebook)
Co-Founder of Slow Food Seacoast
Curator of Historic Landscape at Strawbery Banke Museum
(formerly) Horticulturist at Plimoth Plantation Museum

I've met some some wonderful people since moving to the Seacoast of New Hampshire.  Although, I would like nothing more than to embarrass my friends and neighbors online, I will refrain.  However, there is one person who is something of a public figure, so I feel no qualms whatsoever about featuring him here, and spreading a bit of his gospel. No, I have not been evangelized or converted... Well, maybe I have.

John Forti is a person whose life we could all take a page from.  His personal web page reads, "He aspires to plant the seeds of history and encourages a more sustainable future to bloom."  I think we can safely say he is doing more than aspiring.  He's doing it.  He's one of those people you just want to follow around with a tape recorder to capture all the little bits of history and wisdom that sort of flutter off of him has he chats his way casually through the gardens and orchards at Strawbery Banke and the historic downtown of Portsmouth and the farms and foodie hot spots of the Seacoast.

By writing this, I do, of course, risk that John will now see me as some sort of a crazy groupie, but since I volunteered to coordinate all the volunteers for the Victorian Children's Garden this season and design and develop to the Discovery Guide for the same, hopefully, he will just role his eyes and smile in his enigmatic, diplomatic way and give me a pass.  (Thanks, John!)

Anyway, since moving into TOPH, I have been plotting and planning what to do with the landscape and gardens here.  At first glance, there are no "beds" per se.  Anything that was a garden is now overtaken with scrub trees, weeds or half-assed hardscape demolition.



Here's a shot of the front yard as the purple "surprises" started to bloom.  And there are the turkeys retreating down the driveway after feasting in my compost pile.

This is our first Spring here, so we are seeing a lot of things bloom for the first time.  No question at all that the previous owner liked purple (as if we had any doubts here at TOPH.)  The front "lawn" is awash in violets and forget-me-nots and some kind of dwarf broad leaf plant with a bearded (like an Iris), two-tone purple flower.


All the "dead" space around the pool is now blanketed in violets.  There are purple phlox under the pool fence.  There's about an acre of vinca spreading from the wall along the driveway off into the southern woods.  There are scraggly lilac bushes peeping out of the brush on the north side of the front yard by the stone wall.  And, of course, there are the purple rhododendrons along the back of the house. (See Roadies & Rhodies.)  Yep, she liked purple!

Imagine my surprise when the bush I thought was an ugly old privet turned out to be a flowering quince!

The one and only non-purple remainder is an oddly-pruned, flowering (red) quince, which I mistook for a privet last summer.  The only reason why I didn't pull it out (because they are my NEMESIS!) is because privet is so blinking impossible to eradicate.  But, with a little pruning, I will happily live with this quince and hope there is something nearby that the bees will feel the need to cross-pollinate it with so that we get some edible fruit.  Hmmm.  Possibilities abound!


So, now that these little specimens are cropping up, how am I going to keep track of them all?  And how to memorialize (and teach my children about) all of these horticultural finds?  We are going to "take a page from" John Forti and start an Herbarium (or three.)

This is the first page in Emily Dickinson's Herbarium.  You can dedicate a page to each specimen and add lots of notes, or collect a bunch and arrange them in a more artistic fashion. Whatever strikes your fancy. There's no wrong way to do it.

An Herbarium is a kind of journal for saving pressed plant materials and any information you might have or find about them.  They were very popular in the Victorian era when kids knew more about botany than they do now about corporate logos.  It doesn't have to be an engraved, leather-bound affair.  It can be a 3-ring binder or a school notebook.  There is a replica of a Victorian era Herbarium on the Strawbery Banke web site that they use for teaching in the Children's Garden there.

You can help your kids to identify their finds in books (or on Google -- look for .edu sources, please!)  Recording when and where things are found can help kids to start to see the difference between plants in Spring and Fall, when things bloom and when seeds emerge, etc.  If you travel and don't want to take the whole book with you, a pencil and an old paperback is a good way of saving things until you get home and have some craft and research time.  A small kit of tweezers and a magnifying glass will make it all very important and official -- perhaps a reward for filling their first 12 pages?  Modern technology also affords the use of things like pictures, but I find that what I take electronically, stays electronic -- I have yet to sit down and scrapbook all of the lovely pictures of my children I've captured on my various phones and cameras over the years, let alone roadside botanical finds... Sigh.

Keep it simple and enjoy some time with your kids, building a vocabulary of botany and natural wonders, perhaps even displacing some of the spoon-fed-by-osmosis corporate branding we are all surrounded by.