Death to Garlic Mustard!

I am a member of our city's Natural Resources Advisory Group (NRAG) It is a great fit with my love of the outdoors and MN Master Naturalist volunteer certification. This science-based advisory group helps the city navigate care of our two blufflands parks as part of our charge in preserving the natural resources in our community.

Before- garlic mustard

Our group is tasked with planning and helping with invasives control in the bluffland parks. Like many wild areas, our bluffland parks have buckthorn, bittersweet, russian elm, garlic mustard, dame's rocket and a few other pernicious non-native species scattered in areas throughout them. This year NRAG is tackling two of the invasives.

Garlic mustard has been our spring focus in Vetsch, one of our city bluffland parks. We have had a total of three 1.5-2 hour work days over a 10 day period to address three large patches. The crews have varied from 3-8 people. 

Working in early spring with rainy weather and before the plants set their flowers allowed us to quickly clear large swaths of each patch of young plants (which are easily pulled out with their roots intact, a major plus). In consultation with our county and DNR experts, our city is responsibly disposing of the bags of pulled garlic on site to prevent any re-seeding.

After garlic mustard pull

We weren't able to completely clear two of the patches. This first year pull "experiment" will help us plan more strategically next year. One thing we hope to do is recruit more people over more days for an hour or two shift.  The more people, the more areas we can clear completely. 

This is work that will be ongoing as we return next year to pull to clear more, monitor these sites and add others in coming years. In the fall, we will be going after targeted areas of buckthorn to begin the work on eradicating that. These projects are not one-and done. They take commitment over a number of years to help stop the spread.

We cleared 1/2 this patch in 2 hours!

If you ever have an opportunity as a hiker or outdoor user to step up as a volunteer, your 1-2 hours will make a difference in preserving and keeping healthy a vital part of the outdoors. 

I hope you will!