TheMondayGarden.com

This article has been updated and replaced by Issue 208. I hope you enjoy the new material.

Sue

TheMondayGarden.com, Eco-gardening at its best

June 4, 2006, Issue 208 this article updates and replaces Issue 54.

NEWS FLASH: MAY 2007: BEST WAY TO CONTROL: Cut the flower steams to ground (not half way up), once the flower blooms. You have a 90% chance new flower stem will not re-grow.  Black bag  the cut stems and leave in the sun to sterilize.  Ignore the plants -- a  large percent of the first year seedlings will die on their own.  The plant is bi-annual so second year plants will also die on their own.  By not pulling up the plants, and not disturbing the ground, you have best chance of of not encouraging more seedlings of this and other invasives. END NEWS FLASH.

Invasive critters, like the Asian Longhorn beetle, can sneak in the country uninvited. However, foreign plants generally need to entice humans into importing them. In the case of garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), early European immigrants valued this biennial member of the mustard family because it tastes, well, like garlic. Adding to its assets, garlic mustard is high in vitamins A and C, and only too easy to grow in moist part-shade (e.g. most of our forest understory, shaded roadsides and hedge-rows.). As an evergreen, it is readily available in fresh form all winter, which was a particularly good thing before supermarkets. While there is no direct proof, it is believed that garlic mustard came into North America with the European settlers. There are records of it here in the 1800's. Picture: A cotton-tailed rabbit surrounded by invasive garlic mustard, mugwort, and burdock, none of which are food to him. If this is what's left of the wild, what's he supposed to eat? Meanwhile, the lack of predators gives the invasives a competitive advantage over the rabbit's proper native food. Cummings Park, Stamford, CT June 2006. But being likable isn�t enough to get the title "invader"; being likable by humans just gets a human to put you in the garden. Being "weedy" or "aggressive" in the garden isn't enough, either - that just gets you pulled up. To be invasive, the plant has to be able to escape the garden on its own, spread fairly quickly over a wide area, and beat out the local, wild competition by hogging the light, water, nutrients, and space. Garlic mustard is good at this. Garlic mustard has already infested all the USA except the southern border where it is too hot for the garlic mustard's seeds to germinate. Also, parts of the Northwest are still free of garlic mustard. The plant is also a pest in Southern Canada. It has the distinction of making the noxious weed list in 45 states at last count. Unfortunately, garlic mustard�s direct competitors include our beloved woodland wildflower flowers such as spring beauty, wild ginger, bloodroot, toothwort (wild, native mustards), Dutchman's breeches, hepatica, and trillium.