in Blue Mound (Moderator: Walt Hougas)

My next door neighbor is a retired botanist and ecologist and used to work a lot with the DNR and county on park-related issues.  He goes out to BM a lot and told me that the bike trails are being overrun by garlic mustard.  According to him, unless removed, they will expand and kill off all of the nice wildflowers in the area in 5 years.  He asked that I pass on a request to remove GM plants on our next work day.  They need to be pulled and bagged.  DNR does not have manpower to address.   Hitting them with the weed wacker will cause them to spread.  I though this might be a good project for National Trails Day.

Just passing along the request.

I am a believer in the Peoria land managers stance....just let it go.  That stuff now covers both sides of military ridge from dodgeville to Madison.  Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think we have a chance.

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I have the perfect solution for a retired botanist who goes to Blue Mounds often and is concerned about garlic mustard...

I'm sorry but the DNR is not the only group that is lacking manpower. I do (probably too) often go out of my way to pull garlic mustard but if that's all we did, we'd get nothing else done, and it's a losing battle anyways as it's just going to come back in a few years even after total eradication. It's a large park and there are places where it's taking over that are nowhere near the bike trails.

We're facing the real possibility of seeing Holy Schist closed this summer if we don't complete about a 1/3 mile reroute.

If he wants to organize some dedicated GM pulling I would ask him to work with the DNR or Friends of Blue Mounds group. While we share many of the same goals (including invasive plant control), this is more in line with their work. I'm pretty sure they are the ones who have placed blue barrels out on Over Lode to put GM into.

It's easy to pull.  Easy to bag.  I think.  It has to be placed curbside (or in the state parks dumpster).  Downside = its labor intensive and doesn't have much sex appeal.  nobody likes to brag about how they pulled weeds all day for earth day, or national trails day or whatnot.

On a project I work on near home I keep advocating for a garlic mustard cook off.  If we could just convince people that it was planted all over as a food source and that its quite tasty people would pull with tons of enthusiasm (think of all the people you know who were out beating the bushes for morels last week). 





Tell your free-gan and local-vore friends.  Ask them to please pull the roots and take them with them.

Just a thought

I tend to agree with the 'it is way too far gone to matter anymore" argument. CamRock is a good example. I spent days pulling this stuff to "eradicate" it from CamRock 15 years ago. Now it is simply everywhere. It has just taken longer to get to places like Blue Mound.
I am convinced that the seeds are simply in every inch of the state by now. The wind carries them for miles at times. All they need is the right conditions and they are coming up like crazy. Everywhere the folks at CamRock clear the bushy invasive's to "restore the Oak Savannah's" a huge crop of garlic mustard comes in to replace the shrubs the next year. Kind of ironic.

Point taken... Just passing on the request.