I am finding the amount of work on our less than an acre of land to handle invasive/non-natives plants overwhelming and I feel so far behind! I went into the small and narrow treeline last week to keep pulling Dame's Rocket (I did not plant those! Hell, it seems like 99% of what I've got growing here and need to remove is not something we planted!) but was promptly, and without grace, repeatedly carried out by the mosquitoes! I barely filled one bag and that was done with much swatting and cursing. I did manage to get a couple of armfuls of those plants out, plus some stinging nettle, burdock, etc.
The honeysuckle is in bloom right now and I've got one large tree/bush of it in the that treeline and a few smaller ones that aren't matured yet. It is yet another invasive that has made it to the new Terrestrial Plant Rule list here in Indiana and it is a prolific beast...as most invasives are. Why do invasives and non-native plants have to be such pretty colors and have such heady scents, damn them!?
Honeysuckle was one of the first invasives I was taught to identify (along with wild grape vine), at a watershed preserve I volunteered at a couple of Summers ago and it's one of the few plants that I can identify usually by just the bark. I used to work at a county park for a couple of years and was horrified to see how much was there, not to mention have you looked along roadsides?! The park assured me that they have someone who comes and takes care of them (by getting rid of them, of course), however, I just recently took a walk through that park a couple of years later and it is the same as ever. Those plants have not been touched at all. There has been no attempt whatsoever to do anything about those...and there was a lot of garlic mustard still there as well. Part of the reason I left!!! Anyhoot. I digress.
Honeysuckle. Research it a little and you'll find variations of it, like so many damn other plants, and some sites will say that there is supposedly a native species of the plant here in Indiana (a trumpet honeysuckle. But people will hear the word Honeysuckle and just assume they are all okay) and others will tell you that there is no such thing. It's super important to talk with people who work in this kind of field, to help take a wide array of information and zero it in a little and make sure it's correct. You also have to be sure that the information you are reading is for your particular state. I've read something, saw that a plant was considered bad, and didn't notice that is for another state. Here though? These honeysuckle are all coming out. But I wanted to utilize the blossoms one last time. DO NOT plant honeysuckle in the state of Indiana just to utilize the blossoms. Again, these were already growing wild, and we are taking them out! I've had many people ask me why I wouldn't just leave them in order to utilize the blossoms each year? Because that is not important to me. Because that would be irresponsible and when we know better, we should do better. Because this crap, as with many invasive species of plants and animals, get out of control REALLY.FAST. And I want a healthy and diverse NATIVE eco-system.
Woodchuck (the hubby) made me a drying screen. We had some packages of oak snap-together frames that he used and then some metal screen that he hastily stapled on (never mind my delicate- skinned fingers!)
I raised the screen to get air flow and just rested each corner on some tall mason jars that are filled with various rocks that I've collected over the years. Nice and sturdy! I like to pick anything in the morning, when it's not still dewy, but before the sun gets high and hot. Fresh and supple is my goal. Some times I just go off of smell of each plant (Flying By the Seat of My Pants? I'm telling ya, it's fitting in so many areas of my life!) The hubby forgot to take the lid off of stain can for me before heading to the store, and I needed something to do, so I went and did the sniff test and looked at the blooms and determined that they were ready for me! (is anything ever really ready for me? HA!)
White blooms are the freshest and newest, more yellow-ish blooms are older and beginning to dry up and wilt. Those are super easy to get off, but also too easy to knock to the ground. Maybe laying a sheet or something underneath the area will catch those? I wanted to be careful anyway since we have poison ivy growing in this area I was in. Blooms are usually in three's from what I've noticed on the plant that is here.
I sprinkle them around, trying to not have any clumps, because again, air flow is key! They'll start to darken (yellow) and shrink as they dry. I don't rush this, I don't want to jar them and then have them mold because they weren't dry enough. Sprinkle and then walk away and forgot about them. You'll notice most natural things will start to shrivel or dry up very soon after being picked.
Now, back to being to be a responsible steward of this precious land I live on and call home, because I'm dealing with removing invasives and non-native plants here for some very specific reasons. I care and I want a healthy eco-system that can be as it's supposed to be as much as my two little hands can make possible. This new (and fabulous!) Terrestrial Plant Rule that was recently passed here in the state of Indiana makes it illegal to gift, sell, transport, etc., any plant that is on that list. These blooms were harvested for my use only, with the intention of taking out the plant completely soon. We've already removed a winged burning bush (sold to me years ago at a farmers market. Make sure you do your homework before buying any plants from farmers markets, online, home improvement stores, etc. Some plants are just misidentified and marked incorrectly because of it and others know exactly what they're doing selling invasive plants and they don't care about the ecological impact it's having on native territory and plant species) and some Tree of Heaven to deal with (I have no stinking idea how it got here, and it seems like it's going to be very difficult for a layman to get rid of. Sigh.) So. Don't go transporting, planting, selling, gifting anything on the list in Indiana. Big no-no. And you'd be very naughty and on my shit list.
Also, I was taught that if the honeysuckle has Its berries, do not drop the cuttings on the ground. Just as a rule for myself, any invasive that I take out gets bagged in a heavy black bag. SOME plants can be left to dry that way (in the bag) and then burned once completely dried out, but we don't like to burn, so we bag them and them throw them out. Sadly, I was not able to find ANY written information (it may be spoken in one of the many YouTube videos I ran across but did not watch) on not letting the berried trimmings lay on the ground, but it makes sense, right? If it's spread by self-seeding and birds, you wouldn't want the berries laying at ground level or out in the open. Same with Autumn Olive and Burning Bush when they have their berries (and I was also told when we took out the winged burning bush here, not to let the roots come into contact with soil again or they'd take root again. In other words, no throwing the root ball in a field, ya'all!) I'm lucky to have become friends with the gal that I was volunteering under to remove invasive plants and I've just to send her a text with a question and maybe a picture and she gives me a lot of valuable information and helps me identify plants that I don't know yet.
Here are some sources to check out! Once you learn to identify non-native plants, and trying to remove them, you begin realizing how they are everywhere and just how big of an issue this has become.
https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/us/indiana
https://www.entm.purdue.edu/iisc/pdf/Terrestrial_Plant_Rule_Fact_Sheet_final.pdf
https://www.in.gov/dnr/6351.htm
https://www.indianawildlife.org/wildlife/native-plants/
https://www.misterhoneysuckle.com/
https://greatriversgreenway.org/honeysuckle/
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