Last night I was walking from my house to the neighbors & spotted garlic mustard in the road ditch.
It's the 1st time I've ever seen it in my county. Tonight I used the Seek app to verify my sighting, then I pulled all of it that I saw on my ditch. Inevitably I missed some (& some I pulled I didn't get the root). I carefully put it in a garbage bag that I carried with me and put it out for the trash tonight. The key will be to keep it out of my woods, & not inadvertantly transport it to my hunting property. I doubt it went to seed yet. I thought I did ok but then I walked down the road & noticed it's bad on my neighbors across the road. Now I need a plan. Hopefully it's not too late. I might try Roundup. The neighbor has more than I can pull.

Garlic mustard produces chemicals that kill other plants and fungi, including morel mushrooms. Once it's thoroughly established in the area around you, it will be impossible to keep it off you're property. We have it bad here.

Keith

Yeah, I think there are a lot of bad things about garlic mustard.
Once the township comes through, the mower will probably spread it.
I don't know when it goes to seed but I think just about anything can spread those tiny seeds.

The big problem is that animals and people get the tiny seeds on them when the pods break open, when they are going through the garlic mustard and carry the seeds farther than the plant can pop seeds out on its own. One plant can produce 8500 seeds. It eventually covers the entire forest floor.

Keith

And it sounds like it thrives in most conditions, open or forested.

If the seeds are not viable you can mow or weed eat. round up will work unless the seeds are viable, then you will just kill the plant. It's a by anual, so spaying it the first year game over.

When the world gives you mustard, make garlic mustard.

While pulling it tonight I noticed it is a fragrance I don't like.

Pulling a patch of it seems like it's hard, but carpet bombing the area with Roundup isn't so great either

Why not just round up it?

Sounds delicious.

Just looked it up. It is already firmly established in you state and beyond. Good luck getting rid of it. As stated above many invasive plants are spread rapidly by municipalities cutting grass in ditches

We have it here very thick. pulling it just slows it down, round up works but if the whole county is infested you have an uphill battle. Supposedly you can eat it....

AJE
You can fight that crap but it's here to stay and spreading. I can't say what year it was when I pulled the first of the garlic mustard in my yard. Been a on going thing ever since with no end in site. It's thick in the woods here too.

Mac

Yeah I am devastated. This could be a huge problem for my treasured woodland. Maybe I'll have to just sell out. I already spend more time on my property removing invasives than I do enjoying it..now add this devil to the mix

This seems terrible from a forestry, wildlife, & aesthetic perspective etc.

AJE
Invasive Species Coordinator
Robinson Creek Preservation Association

I'll try but it might already be too late

Spread the word that eating or smoking it will get you high, then just stand back and watch it disappear.

literally had it growing on a 4 foot pile of gravel

the pile of gravel was in the shade


yellow Rocket is the other one I see also mustard family , but bright yellow flowers

I'm trying to study up on this devilish weed; trying to figure out when it goes to seed, etc

I'm attending a large invasive consortium on 6/15 @ Ft McCoy, but I can't wait that long to deal w/ this

where I live the dnr has volunteers pull it out of the public land. I don't know much about the plant its self but it seems to be keeping it slightly contained in the areas they pull.

I've been pulling it but some of it is hard to get the roots. It's very dry here the past 2 weeks. I think they say you're supposed to get the roots but yet I was also reading that if you do it at the right time you can weed whack it so I'm not following something because you wouldn't get the roots if a person weed whacks it

I wonder if the seed pods are viable yet..
It might be too late in the year for me to Roundup the garlic mustard (GM).

I signed up for an invasive seminar on June 15th but I can't wait that long I don't think to deal with this GM

I'm at my hunting property today and discovered what appears to be garlic mustard on my access trail. It's weird though because it's all really short but it has the flowers and what appears to be the seed pods



Update: actually, maybe today's finding is a different member of the mustard family, like mouse ear cress

I pulled most of it but there's a couple thickets of it left in my neighbors ditch that was too much for me to pull. The flowers fell off this weekend. Maybe I enter the 2 thickets this week & cut the top of the plants off & throw 'em in a garbage bag

I have been dealing with garlic mustard since I bought this place in 2015. I have 20 acres of woods.
I have never found GM in the approx 5-6 acres of open fields or prairie type habitat, too much competition I suspect.

Good and bad news.

Good news is some of the patches I have eliminated it., its gone and has not come back in several years.
Bad news in other patches I have not been successful. In fact this year one patch was at its worst yet. This after 4 years of work.

It seems as tho some of the patches must of been around for a while and have a good seed bank while others the patch must of just been starting when I caught it.
The younger patches will disappear after one or two years of pulling.

as for the older patches I have sprayed with glyphosate and it killed all the plants but next year they were back and years later back worse than ever.
I think spraying with glyphosate is a bad practice, yes you kill the GM but you also kill the competitors that make it easier for GM to thrive. As long as there are seeds in the seed bank they will be back.

Thru the years I have settled on pulling GM by hand starting as soon as the ground is soft. The young plants are easy to ID. The only thing that looks similar is some vilolets. And a sure way to tell is break off a tiny piece of leave and taste it. GM has a distinct taste.
I will pull them any time I find them. I am always on the look out and I occasionally will find one large lone plant with seed this time of year that I will pull. Not getting all the roots at this point seems to work.

I have seen patches that have very small plants with very minimal flowers, these are usually in areas with lots of competition form other plants. These areas can be tough to eliminate as finding all the really small flowering seeding plants can be hard.

Finding patches with large obvious plants is easier to eliminate.

Another thing that I do according to any source that has studied it is burning hurts garlic mustard. I burn as much of my woods as I can every year. I have been doing it in spring but am switching to fall burning for various reasons. I'd like to get to the point that all the woods gets burned every fall.

I spend alot of time in my woods, cutting firewood, thinning trees, burning, prepping and seeding more areas every year, 6 days a week walking thru on the way to get the mail, watering to help establish new plants, maintaining and working on trails and on and on.
I know my woods very intimately. I know every spot that has had a patch of GM and I check them at least once a month and I'll pull any I find. But still I find the occasional single plant or group of 1/2 to a dozen plants. Its a never ending job that as a responsible land owner I've come to accept.

Excellent post Dirty D, thanks for your insight. I'm trying to learn fast regarding this garlic mustard.

Get the boy scouts to pull it for an environmental merit badge.

I removed a bunch tonight. How do I know if the seeds are viable yet? I assume the seeds are in those green pods. I carefully broke 1 open tonight over my bag & I didn't see any seed in it. I thought I heard black seeds are visible in it once the seeds are viable. Some of the plants were less than a foot tall, others probably 3'. If they aren't viable yet maybe I should just take a disc trimmer to it

Good question, I wish I knew.
my take is pull them and toss them in the trash to be disposed of else where. I know your looking for an easier route, cutting with the trimmer, but as for me I wouldn't take the chance of spreading hundreds of thousands of seeds all over the place with a trimmer.

the old axiom is appropriate, "better safe than sorry".

It's been kind of hard to pull it all out and get the roots too, perhaps because it's so darn dry here. Tonight I resorted to taking a scissors, cutting it off near the ground & carefully bagging up the part that supposedly has all the seeds. I wonder if that will work

https://www.eekwi.org/plants/garlic-mustard#:~:text=Seeds%20germinate%20(begin%20to%20grow,a%20rapidly%20spreading%20woodland%20weed

Here is a screenshot of an interesting option:



'Might work on other invasives too, I am not sure

That would look good in my = Ex -girlfriend’s garden ! LoL!

good luck with that , finding enough scouts to get much of anything done any more

my son still hates the annual pulling of garlic mustard at scout camp it was a camp out every spring go camp and pull garlic mustard and he hasn't been in scouts in about 7 years

since the camp was/is technically city owned land outside the city it kept it out of the hands of BSA councils miss management any one can go there but only the scouts have the key to the gate to drive in and have their buildings there

the camp I attended as a kid was sold , it was irreplaceable my dad had attended the same camp. the land that they had private lake , square mile or more of land , river access , islands to hold OA events on it was very cool and all gone to pay some executive or lawsuit .

I don't know if we still have a scout troop in town. I don't hear anything about it anymore. Kids don't seem to hang out outside as much as they used to

I can't imagine eating it

I would blame Trump and have him indicted for spreading it. I better quit saying this. BC will jump on that Band Wagon!!!

I do not know who's fault it is. I filled another bag tonight. DNR says it is 1-4' tall. The 1 footers are tough to find b/c ya have to sift thru the thick grass to remove it, once an outbreak is discovered.

I learned a ton at today's forestry/invasives seminar at Ft McCoy. Some experts travelled several hours to share their insight. That said, this isn't an exact science & no one has all the answers.

With that said, I think you should take up fishing! Probably more fun than pulling weeds

I got this in an email today from WDNR. It could be a big discovery:

https://forestrynews.blogs.govdelivery.com/2024/04/04/dropping-the-aphid-grenade-on-garlic-mustard/

It's hard to believe anything anymore when it comes to trading one thing for another. I think about the goofy lady bugs they brought I think to feed on aphids??
It's kind of like my father used to say about working on cars. Fix one end the other end falls off. Kinda the same with plants and bugs. Kill one to save the other kill something else in process. Oups!
I dug a bunch of garlic mustard out of my yard already last week. Arms length away over fence neighbors yard is full of it. Can't win.

Mac

"Never Forget Which Way Is Up!"

My friend had the Boy Scouts do a garlic mustard removal project. Merit badge, lunch and a good donation.

AJE,
It's good that you have a strong interest in keeping your woods free of non-native invasives, but you're gonna worry yourself to having ulcers. You even said you're considering selling the land because of the invasives.....wth?

Just do what you can and enjoy your property.

Looks like deer or something has browsed that mustard plant in the pic anyway...

BTW,
Probably never gonna be able to maintain the native vegetation without using controlled fire. Here in the South in our pine-dominated ecosystem.....it is the only way.