The War With Invasive Plants Continues

I fought a battle against springtime invasive plants. Now another war has been waged against those that raise their battle flag in summer. This time its ditch daylilies and garlic chives. They have got to go. Here you see my ditch daylilies right where they belong…in the garbage can.

Ditch daylilies with tri-color beech to the right

Sure, if I had a great big empty spot that I wanted consumed by daylilies, they would be the ticket. But I don’t. You can see towards the right that we planted a tri-color beech. That’s part of the area that had the horde of spring invasives. We also planted a larch, redbud, and Black Hills spruce. But that didn’t scare of the ditch daylilies. Nothing does. Well guess what, ditch daylilies – we will win this war! Mike went on the offensive and you don’t want to be his enemy.

Low maintenance will be the victor. More trees, big trees. I’m not kidding. You know a tree is big when they use one of these to dig the hole:

Hole digger

Black Hills Spruce

We selected the Black Hills Spruce because its a little smaller than the Colorado Spruce. 20 to 30 feet high by 10 to 15 feet wide is a good size for us. Could I have bought a smaller one and waited for it to get big? Sure. And usually I won’t spend the money for a big ‘un. But this was war and I wanted a strategy to win NOW. Unfortunately for my wallet, its true that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.

Time marches on and only weeks after the ditch daylilies were defeated, a new opponent joined the forces against us. Garlic chives quickly took over an area where we had conquered another troop of daylilies. Beware of garlic chives. They look angelic, but watch out. I can’t believe how quickly the multitude encamped over a 4 ft x 10 ft area. They put up innocent enough looking flowers, but I know their plan and I’m not gonna put up with it.

Garlic Chives

We are being ruthless, and the garlic chives are easy to remove. Its painful to dig up a flower that is in full bloom; its also necessary or the seeds will scatter everywhere.

Our flag of low maintenance continues to be planted…instead of invasive plants.

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