I took a little time to evaluate the success of my earlier
efforts to eradicate Yucca from my fields.
Dead stumps where I had cut the stem and applied glyphosate to the
exposed tissue. This photo was taken in
October, about six months after herbicide applications were made. In most cases, there seemed to be a total
kill of Yucca plants.
In a very few cases, there was some regrowth, but regrowth
was not the normal situation. It won’t
take a lot of effort to go through to cut and spray the young shoots. For the next few years an annual check will
have to be made to find new plants growing from seed. New plants will be a possibility for quite
some time, but it should be fairly easy to keep the area practically Yucca
free.
I only had time to cover about two-thirds of the Yucca
infected area before I had to move on to higher priority management
activities. I finished my work in the
open field and then began working my way down a cedar filled waterway. This is where I stopped and this is where I
will begin next March. Weather
permitting, I will have eliminated Yucca from the area by next April 1.
One thing I hadn’t expected was the ability of the cut plants to continue growing. This is what my plant pile looked like after six months.
The Whitetail Deer treat it as a salad bar. I never saw this much deer browse on the
Yucca in the field. Young Yucca shoots
must be more palatable to the deer.
Pulling a shoot out of the pile reveals white roots growing
from the cut stem. This illustrates a
good reason for removing the cut plants from the field as they are
treated. The Yucca may flourish in the
pile for a couple of years, but I am always adding to these piles, so the
plants will eventually be covered and smothered by other plant material.
