The bigger picture

I'm holding a handful of jewelweed seeds and some tree seed from down on River Street (about a mile up the road from the knotweed site), with the intention of spreading them at the knotweed site in the next week or two. I'm thinking of mulching right on top of the landscape fabric and putting down things like:

Ferns
Plantain
Jewelweed
Dandelion
Dogwood
Aster

Any plants that grow strong early in the spring would be terrific; please e-mail me your suggestions or post here as a comment!

Help identify these plants!

Any ideas or leads will be most helpful. Email me: blackrivercleanup(at)yahoo.com

Interesting developments!

Spent an hour at the site last week, and got lots of photos thanks to Karen Bennett's keen eye! Beneath the black landscape fabric, the knotweed seems dormant if not dead. One very sickly little tendril had squeezed up through a tear in the fabric, but there seemed to be no new growth poking up from below.

The few stalks growing up in-between the seams of the pieces of fabric were narrow, no thicker than a pencil.

I am amazed at the response of the poison ivy ~ it is all over the site, growing vigorously under the knotweed's canopy along the edges of the landscape fabric. There are a number of other hardy plants keeping it company, but I'd venture to say the knotweed site is currently "owned" by poison ivy.

We could positively identify Queen Anne's Lace (delicate, carrot-like leaves ~ NOT triangular, like Wild Chervil! ~ and a tiny purple blossom in the middle of each flower cluster. We also noted some soapwort and goldenrod, as well as the determined sumac trees.

Other plants are on site and we could really use your help identifying them!

2009 ~ Looking Ahead

Lots of things have gotten in the way of my getting over to the site this year: Town vehicles and equipment parking at the site as the Springfield road crews work on various projects; lots of rain; volunteer availability; my own time constraints with other events happening in my life.

However, I'll be visiting the site over the next week or so to take some photos of the status of things. Then we will need to pick a work-date ~ we'll need to adjust the landscape fabric that is on-site, cut the knotweed that is poking through, and place some new fabric. I think that we can get away with doing this once, maybe twice, this year.

Next year, (brace yourselves!) I am planning to start reclaiming the management site! Yes, I'm compiling a list of plants to install on the site, in our ongoing attempts to elbow out the knotweed. Here's what I have so far:

* milkweed

* jewelweed

* sumac

* ferns

What I need now is some suggestions for EARLY plants ~ things that start early in the spring, grow large leaves quickly, and can establish themselves on the site before the knotweed gets going. Let me know what you think! I'm trying to allow comments on this site, but you can email me: blackrivercleanup@yahoo.com