Salad, anyone?

Ah, satisfaction!

I have been battling garlic mustard on my property since I moved here in 2008.  In my first year, the task looked overwhelming.

So I decided to take it one small step at a time.  With the use of sticks indicating the boundaries of cleared areas, I worked on 6 inch patches, removing every garlic mustard I could find.  Sometimes, clearing one patch would take most of the day; sometimes the pace was much quicker.

By June, I had filled numerous garbage bags with plants that were going to degrade into a soupy mess in the heat of the summer.  Also by then, the rest of the plant species growing in the area had come up, making it much more difficult to catch the smaller garlic mustard plants.

The rest of my summer was taken up with daily patrols of the infested areas, pulling off the flower heads so that at least the plants could not set more seed and spread further.

Early the next year, I got out as soon as the snow had gone.  The good thing about garlic mustard is that it is the first plant to green up in the spring so it is very easy to see - until everything else catches up.  Once again, the sticks came in handy and bags of the plants were removed and degraded to soup.  Once again, the hot summer months were spent pulling flowering plants.

And so on, and so on.

Thanks to the early spring this year, I have already been able to pull enough to fill a garbage bag.  I was actually out in March and was able to clear three of the four infested areas as well as a good part of the fourth area.

Since then, regular patrols have had me pulling freshly germinated plants, again and again and again.  I'd been hoping that the supply of seeds left in the soil would have been depleted by now but obviously, over the past three years, I've missed a flowering plant or two and they have successfully replenished the seed stock.

And so the battle continues.

But the first real satisfaction comes today.  Thanks to the glorious weather today I was actually able to clear all new plants in the previously cleared areas as well as finish pulling the plants in the one small patch that hadn't yet been cleared.

As of today, my property has no garlic mustard plants.

Okay, okay, I'm not so foolish as to think the battle is over or that my property really is garlic mustard-free.  I'm sure more will come up and I fear that there may be something growing in an area I have yet to discover.

And yet, when I look out my kitchen window and see that that one last patch is garlic mustard free, I smile and sigh and say to myself, "Job well done."

So now, I ask, should I start growing a controlled patch of garlic mustard for use in salads?  The leaves are said to make an excellent addition with their peppery mustard and garlic flavour.  NO!

I will continue to patrol the known areas and to keep eyes peeled for any unknown infested areas and.......sigh, I will now move my focus to the #%$# goutweed and the persistent Japanese knotweed and the Norway maple and.....and.....and.  So many invasives and so much work.