REHABILITATING THE Côte-NORD OF THE ST. LAURENT RIVER
We have been working on ridding the Côte-Nord of the St. Laurent River of burdock, canary grass, Japanese knotweed, chervil and phragmites.
We have almost succeeded in cutting down the shoots of all these weeds, except the chervil and the Japanese knotweed. We were planning to:
- The level ground near the bike path: Put down newspapers this fall and weedless soil and tamp in wildflower seeds.
- The slope down from the above plot to the river: Cut the vegetation down to the ground with metallic weed whackers and electric lawn mower. Since the roots will remain untouched, there should be no erosion. Heavily seed the ground with wildflower seeds.
- In the spring, buy a gasoline-powered water pump and water the new seedlings and chop down the sprouts of the invasive weeds.
We have noted that this is unorthodox. The majority of the land is covered with phragmites and and some canary grass and two large patches of Japanese knotweed. The usual methods of eradication are to use solarisation, herbicides, flooding, using huge mechanical uprooting, and plowing, or the spading method recommended by Humber College with angled pulling out of roots and rhizome bits, but :
- There are solid patches of goldenrod, and stinging nettle that have already grown within the phragmites and successfully fought off the phragmites. And also, there has been a plethora of extremely tall impatiens plants within the phragmites and no doubt there is an abundant supply of impatiens seeds ready to burst out in the spring.
- Just leaving the barely cleared soil near the bike path on its own for just one month, we have documented solid patches of stinging nettles about 4 inches tall already. Similarly, there are first year growth of small burdock and large burdock about 3 inches tall. And there is a patch of black mustard about 5 inches tall. There are isolated stems of phragmites which are easy to pull out.
- With our experience with the gardens behind the greenhouse, we foresee that the wildflower seeds will sprout prodigiously and will overwhelm the area of phragmites and we will hand pull the phragmite shoots. The phragmite rhizoids are thumb thickness but without food from sprouts will quickly die away, especially as they will be attacked by the roots of the wildflowers growing on top of them.
Among the wildflower seeds will be:
Goldenrod, black-eyed Susans, brown-eyed Susans, cup plant, Jerusalem artichokes, woodland sunflowers, evening primrose, false sunflower, cut leaf coneflower, yarrow, New England aster, blue broad-leafed asters, white panicle asters, fleabanes, etc etc. It will be nature against nature, and with our help, forest gardening, we believe the native wildflowers will prevail. We are collecting several pounds of cup plant, black-eyed susans, brown-eyed susans, purple cone flowers seeds, yarrow, false sunflower, woodland sunflower, evening primrose, etc etc. We hope this will be enough to smother the phragmites rhizomes.
We plan to document this all and publish our findings in a scientific journal or popular science publication. We believe this will be a super simple, cheap, easy, chemical free, pubic participatory, visually optimal way of getting rid of phragmites.
We are including pictures of the one-month-old stinging nettle, burdock and black mustard patches. You can also see the season-long stands of pure golden rod and stinging nettle that have withstood the phragmites onslaught.
Joan and Oz Obukuro
