Sunday, December 13, 2020

Yucca Removal Success

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.

 

4 comments:

  1. I can see why that stuff would be a problem. Our version on our property out here in CA is an unintended import from Scotland. We call it Scotch Broom, and legend has it that it came over as packing for Whiskey bottles during the gold rush. It is very invasive and would take over an area quickly if we didn't keep after it. Almost impossible to get rid of altogether, though.

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    1. Hi, KCD. We also have Scotch Broom here in Ohio, but it has not yet become a widespread problem. I don't know of any growing anywhere near my property.

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    2. That is good. Another shrub we have here that is a problem is manzanita. It is a low growing shrub that totally takes over an area, crowding anything else out. The big problem with it is it concentrates a very flammable oil in the leaves, and in our long hot dry summers here, it is an extreme fire danger. I have worked very hard to clear it from our 4 acres, but there is still some on the periphery, but as it is quite a ways from the house, it is now down on the get rid of list a little ways

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    3. It's always nice when the invasives have been knocked back to a more manageable number. Every time I reach that point with one species, I add a new species to the priority list and the whole process starts again.

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