Japanese Knotweed
Having zero gardening experience and just from looking at pictures online, I think this stuff is growing in our backyard. I wouldn’t mind it if it just stayed there, but it looks like this stuff takes over. Has anyone successfully eradicated this stuff?
Having zero gardening experience and just from looking at pictures online, I think this stuff is growing in our backyard. I wouldn’t mind it if it just stayed there, but it looks like this stuff takes over. Has anyone successfully eradicated this stuff?
the rhizomes are usually just below the surface of the soil, so if possible stick a barrier around the perimeter of your yard (i used that plastic garden edging you buy in a roll). then go after any plants inside. also planting new stuff can help control it as it will have a harder time competing for soil space.
pay some guys to come in with shovels and dig out everything in the top 3 feet. Then buy some Roundup and spray every little shoot that pops up over the next couple of summers. After that you should be safe.
Oh, god, good luck. That stuff is awful. It grew in the backyard of a brownstone I used to live in. For three summers I pulled the stuff up religiously. Then I went away for a summer, and when I came back, it had grown in from fence to fence, literally. Five feet high and covering every single square inch of the yard.
My uncle planted loads of this stuff so his bees would have something to collect pollen from in the fall. He’s gone now and the people who bought his house have cut the knotweed down and are having to kill it by laying carpeting over it. Good luck, it does take over sort of like bamboo and spreads to the same too.
Steve
I got rid of it but it took a few years of vigilant pulling and digging it out. You’ve got to pull as soon as it comes up – and it keeps coming up. The last was one that got to my flower bed from under my neighbors concrete patio. That took the longest.
The problem with weed killer is that it kills everything it touches and it’s difficult to spray just the weeds.
Thanks.
Yes, it spreads underground. You can keep pulling up the rhizomes. Phone BBG to ask if there’s a poison for it.
Isn’t that the risk with knotweed? It’s spreading underground if you cut it at the wrong time? I’m envisioning a 70’s horror film where it uproots our foundation (and all the neighbors’).
Oh, that Japanese knotweed! Just keep spraying it and pulling it. Eventually it goes away. Better knotweed than that tree thing that keeps spreading underground.