a along the river right near the richmond village and the nature conservancy and manages this property that's about twenty five acres and we manage it as a nature preserve and the nature conservancy mission is to protect biological diversity so the range of species that live on earth and the we protect the habitat that they need to survive so here  birds and plants garlic mustard was introduced to this country late one thousand nine hundred because it's an edible green and it's green early in the spring so before we had year round produce from california we had to rely on what was out in the wilds and garlic mustard will be green even under the snow so it's a great source of vitamin c and other nutrients early in the spring when there's not much left in the root cellar except for potatoes and maybe a little venison so now mustard is a problem here in richmond and in lots of parts of vermont and other parts of the country as well because it is invasive so it produces lots of sea grows really fast and it takes over areas and can crowd out other native plants that are more beneficial to wildlife so one the impact of garlic mustard is actually very specific there is rare i think that i forget if it's a mosque or a butterfly that is rare in vermont and it lays its eggs on a different plant in the family called to thwart but it's fooled by garlic mustard because they're in the same family so it will lay its eggs on the garlic mustard leaves but then  they aren't able to eat the garlic mustard it's only able to eat that native to thwart plant so it is essentially that their butterfly is basically throwing away its eggs because they can't survive on garlic mustard so that's just one example of how native plants can throw things a little out of whack in the ecosystem or not be as useful to wildlife and birds and butterflies as native plants edges or the margins you can also look down the base of the plant and those leaves are a little more of a kidney shape they're more rounded and the teeth aren't quite as big so you can also look down at the base of the plant the stems which are often a purple color in the spring and if you look really closely then you can see some fine hairs on the now the other thing about garlic mustard is it has a long taproot just like a dandelion so and this one this is not a perfect example but you can see it a little bit it has kind of an s curve at the top that's typical of garlic mustard the last identifier that you might find useful is if you crush the leaves you'll get a garlic smell so after you identify you can see that s curve which is classic garlic mustard and that's all there is to it basically just pull it out and make a pile and then you want to properly dispose of it later this is a pretty small patch of garlic mustard here that we have usually out here at the richmond river shore natural area we see pretty big patches of garlic mustard even a couple of hundred feet wide at its worst and we're seeing less of it this year so far because of the recent floods we had late flooding this year and there's a lot of silt that was deposited by the flood waters so i think that we're seeing less just because the garlic mustard hasn't popped up through the new soil yet this year but you may see it either in individual either individual plants or small patches or large patches it doesn't always grow as anyone and they can grow by itself or in a big cluster so you may be wondering well how do i find garlic mustard do i have it on my property and probably the easiest way to find it if you are not familiar with it is to look for it when it's in bloom which is usually mid to late may and it has tiny white flowers are on the top of the stem these are budded and just about to burst open into bloom so probably another few days we'll be seeing those white flowers and when the garlic mustard is growing in a big patch you'll see lots of big lots of little white flowers on the top of these stems so it like sun shade it's a pretty flexible plant which is part of why it is invasive and a problem it's not picky about where it grows you may want to look for garlic mustard especially along roadsides and trails because those are two places where it's a little bit more likely to invade  because the seeds can be carried in on hiking boots or pets or moved by road maintenance equipment so or on bike tires so often along roads and trails or other disturbed areas those are really likely places to see invasive plants and beyond that it's possible that you'll see it other places too right here it's growing out in the woods well away from roads or trails although it may be may have been washed in the flood waters by the river and each plant can produce up to two thousand s and those seeds are viable in the soil for at least five years maybe more like seven so even if you pull all of the plants one year you may have seeds that are left in the soil that are coming up and sprouting in future years so one of the important ways to get a handle on garlic mustard is to pull it before it sets seeds in june so get that plant out of the ground so that it's not putting those that additional seed into what we call a seed bank in the soil which then will create more plants in future seasons so it's important that you dispose of garlic mustard properly and as i mentioned before it produces a lot of seeds and if that plant has seeds on it you want to make sure that you bag those plants you hold and let them compost or put them in the  trash because if you just leave the plants and place with seeds on them those seeds could mature and then drop into the soil and they're making your life difficult for future years off and running again for or if you have a place where you can have a dedicated garlic mustard compost pile you could let it compost in your yard but make sure that you keep it separate from your other compost so that fragments of the roots or bits of  soil that have seeds in them are kept separate from the compost that you would spread on your garden or lawn so it can can be composted or if you don't have a place to compost it you can just keep it in the bag and then send it to the mustard just like you would mustard green that you could buy at the farmers market or in the store so the leaves and the roots are edible and one of the tastiest ways to prepare garlic mustard is to make it into spread it on your sandwich or put it on or any other way that you like to  so if you do find garlic mustard on your land the first thing that you want to do before you start pulling it out how much you have how much is out there if it's a pretty small patch maybe twenty  or less you can be pretty sure that you'll be able to pull it in not too long especially if you have some friends to help and that you'll be successful but if you do decide to pull it you want to make sure that you can commit to doing it for multiple years because those seeds that are in the soil which live for five to seven years will in future springs or in the fall and winter over to the spring so even if you poll all the plants that you see in one year there probably will be just as many plants the next year that sprout up out of those seeds in the soil so pulling garlic mustard and working on other invasive plants as well is kind of like doing the dishes you do them and they're done but pretty soon your sink is full of dirty dishes again and then you have to come back and do it all over so with garlic mustard some studies show that if you do just one year of control it's actually making the problem worse because you're disturbing the soil you're stirring up those and then they sprout and there are actually more plants in that second year but if you keep going and pole it for four or five years then you're exhausting all those seeds that are in the soil and keeping any new seeds from going in actually be able to get rid of the garlic mustard so think carefully about that before you start polling how much do you have and is it realistic for you to do so if it's not you could visit our web site nature dot org slash vermont that's the nature conservancy is web site in vermont and we have lots of information about other options for invasive plant management one of which would be hiring a contractor to do the work for you you can also find volunteer opportunities on our web site and we have garlic mustard polling days every spring in richmond also in charlotte and shelburne and other places around the state in richmond there also is a great effort called the great richmond to root out and that is focused on pulling invasive plants out of the floodplain forest garlic mustard and also japanese knotweed which is coming up now in may and will be five or six feet tall in just a few more weeks and that's another non native invasive plant and the great richmond to root out needs your help on that effort cutting not we activity that all ages can do and it's pretty fun when you get out there  early summer day and cut and pole not weed with your friends so my name is kathy and i'm with the richmond route out which is part of the richmond floodplain forest restoration project for a grant so this is not we it's similar to bamboo in that it's hollow and it's segmented the key identifiers is that it does have a red fark and it has sort of this sand like yeah you don't want to pull the root because there's rhizomes and actually pulling the root can create more because you're so you wanna roll so just drop it it's fine so the other thing you should know is to get really low you want to try to get as low as you can and then you can always just do a quick cut but and then you can just leave it on the ground it doesn't need to be carried out it won't it won't regret garlic mustard you carry out with you because it has c s and that will replenish but you can just leave this on the ground a lot of people if they have it in their homes bag it up just for a static reasons but here you can just cut it and just drop it doesn't work so you don't kill other things so herbicide is applied with a drip method there's a couple of different methods but one of the methods we're going to use is with a drip method so i haven't seen it done before but it's individual plant and you go along and literally  herbicide onto the plant and it and we're going to in the we're also going to do some other spraying but there's a whole technique in the nature conservancy and i want to sara ganim but it's a safe i mean it's the nature conservancy been using it for years it's it's a i don't know the history about it so they're not concerned about it now you know they wouldn't do it  yeah and it's again it's a licens applicator and you have to be licensed in order to do the herbicide application so i'm up there and just really focus on that and take care of this yeah just go slow and you know the little ones are hard because you get the roots a lot of times so just give it a quick little slice you don't want to get the roots ok great thank you so  japanese not we this season is being covered by silt we've had so much flooding as you can see the debris here just cause hearing areas and it's pretty resilient it'll still poke up but it's  it's still on its way up where last year this was already big would not wade so we're finding a little shoot through the sand  still piles and piles of so have been dumped here this year because of all the flooding and we're seeing lots and lots of debris showing us how high the water actually did come up but it's still it's still poking out t some shoots over here coming out some babies here they're making their way but not as big as usual at this time of year i think it's easy to be out here where you can really  swing so this is a wise brochure from the nature conservancy and it describes alternatives to invasive plants alternative native plants and shrubs that you can plant and it gives you a list it's a god and you can also go to the nature conservancy website and they give you information on the garden centers that have signed up to be part of the initiative not to sell invasive plants and work with people to do natives we also have a workshop with our condo gardens and greenhouses and she'll hammer a road in jericho on june ninth from six to eight p m it's a free workshop on how to landscape with native plants and they'll give you alternatives to so if you're interested in getting out and helping us whack not weed and get rid of some more invasive in the fall we have a whole schedule of programs and you can find that at richmond land trust dot org we're also on facebook at richmond floodplain forests restoration project it's a big mouthful but it's their richmond forests floodplain restoration project and we have some educational workshops coming out landscaping with natives bird walk with jim shallow as well as some organized activities for volunteers to come and do some not weed whacking you could also email at richmond root out at hotmail dot com or give a call it for three four seven seven seven