Falling wedges. What's good, what's not, and why?

Arborist Forum

Help Support Arborist Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
nathan, nope , not down here. but seen your pic's.:msp_smile:
 
Last edited:
I see some places in WA are STILL digging out from the snows! Jesus Tap Dancin' Christ! It's so dry around here, you gotta carry a piss can with ya just to fart :laugh:
 
Last edited:
Its a little dry where hes at.

Or hes ate a lot of Mexican food lately.

Jalapeno peppers and kidney beans in a burrito equals real explosive and flammable farts. Yes, flames... ...flames... ...fire. No, a fireball... yes... that's it.

They should have a Warning: Extremely flammable label on every burrito wrapper...
 
nathan, nope , not down here. but seen your pic's.:msp_smile:

I ask because we made the news this week:

284948_10150251225521476_6276351475_7650346_2708872_n.jpg


and I'm curious how far the column was visible. That was Wednesday; Thursday was a bigger column but lower mixing height.
 
Zing! Right you are. We've burned I think close to a thousand acres of the stuff already this year in the two weeks we've had the weather for it. Another 200 down today alone! Stuff is nasty; the seeds stay viable for up to 60 years, so you have to burn, spray, mow, rip, or whatever other means of destruction over and over again until the seed-bed is completely exhausted... and the next time anything walks or drives through the cycle begins anew. Nothing eats it, it out-competes nearly everything, and it burns hot and fast. Explosive dehiscence throws seeds everywhere. This time of year you can hear the pods snapping everywhere; sounds like popcorn. Thickets get over ten feet tall and are impossible to walk through. The woody stalks at the base can be four inches or more in diameter. I shudder to think how much this state spends each year trying to control Scots' Broom, or giant knotweed, for that matter.

Interesting. We have a nasty invasive plant too, Sosnowskyi's Hogweed, aka Stalin's Revenge. It's a Caucasian plant introduced in Carelia in 1947, it was supposed to be food for the cows. Well, cows didn't like the taste of it, and eating the weed made the milk poisonous. The sap causes sunburns on the skin and if it gets in the eyes, blindness.

The usual procedure here is to cut down the weed and spray the shoots as they emerge. But it doesn't kill the seeds. Well, the problem here is not that bad, but in Russian Carelia the weed is everywhere. That's just sad, and the local people are not crazy about it either. They are not doing anything about it because they don't have money. Roundup is not expensive, but it costs. The human labor is however available and cheap too. That's why I'd like to hear more about your burning methods. I've got some experience in burning the slash on the clear cut fields, but destroying weeds is new to me. Do you cut the weed down first and let it dry? How does it catch fire? Blowtorches? Fuel?

Thanks.
 
sooooo....

How 'bout them wedges!!!????

I've never used imigrant workers or kudzu for a wedge, but I might give it a try now :msp_wink:

:popcorn:
 
sooooo....

How 'bout them wedges!!!????

I've never used imigrant workers or kudzu for a wedge, but I might give it a try now :msp_wink:

:popcorn:

I once heard a guy used a midget for a wedge. It wasn't too pretty, but it got the job done.

:popcorn:
 
We have a nasty invasive plant too, Sosnowskyi's Hogweed, aka Stalin's Revenge.

Ah, yes -- Heracleum mantegazzianum -- we have it here too. Nasty stuff. I wouildn't recommend burning it, as the toxins will dissipate with the smoke, which is an internal hazard as well as an external one. Same goes for poison ivy/oak/sumac -- a large number of firefighter injuries requiring hospitalization are the result of this inhalation. What you will probably be looking at is a long-term program of cutting, poisoning, and overplanting to suppress the sprouts and prevent reproduction. In the absence of natural predation, the only known way to eradicate a non-native is to become a surrogate predator.
 
Ah, yes -- Heracleum mantegazzianum -- we have it here too. Nasty stuff. I wouildn't recommend burning it, as the toxins will dissipate with the smoke, which is an internal hazard as well as an external one. Same goes for poison ivy/oak/sumac -- a large number of firefighter injuries requiring hospitalization are the result of this inhalation. What you will probably be looking at is a long-term program of cutting, poisoning, and overplanting to suppress the sprouts and prevent reproduction. In the absence of natural predation, the only known way to eradicate a non-native is to become a surrogate predator.

It didn't come to my mind the smoke would be toxic as well. It's a good thing you told me that before I ended up poisoning a village with my good intentions and a blowtorch... The Giant hogweeds are originally Caucasian mountain plants. I wonder what's eating them in their natural environment? Should we take a drive to ##### Armenia and give the bugger a lift? And possibly get something more horrible around us.
 
It didn't come to my mind the smoke would be toxic as well. It's a good thing you told me that before I ended up poisoning a village with my good intentions and a blowtorch... The Giant hogweeds are originally Caucasian mountain plants. I wonder what's eating them in their natural environment? Should we take a drive to ##### Armenia and give the bugger a lift? And possibly get something more horrible around us.

NO NO NO. Please never import a predator of any kind from anywhere. In fact never import ANY plant or you will regret it later. Here on the central California coast we have broom, mustard, English ivy, acacia, magnolia, and a host of other "invasive" species. Millions of tax dollars are spent fighting plants brought in just by the government. This doesn't even cover the other plant pests and diseases brought in by accident.

We have to pay for entire lakes to be poisoned because introduced pike have eaten all the native fish. Boats can not travel from one body of water to another because they may be transport a shellfish or a water plant.

It just never ends. Do whatever it takes to kill off your particular invasive species but never introduce another plant or animal or insect.
 
With all the interest co-generational biomass fuel has been getting, I suppose it was only a matter of time before somebody put two and two together and made five. I keep hearing of plans to harvest Scots' Broom as a biomass product... which would mean cultivating a class "C" noxious weed. NO, NO, NO! I realize it's almost impossible to keep an invasive species in check once it's been established, but it CAN be done -- the first example that comes to mind is the Tansy Ragweed infestation in the mid-to-late-80's in the PNW. Sure, it's still around, but outbreaks are few and far between, and quickly attended to. It's all a matter of having a well thought-out and well-executed long-term, landscape-level plan and following it. I have the noxious weeds guys in Thurston and Pierce Counties on my speed dial because I find stuff that needs removal often.
 
Another that ranks right up on the top of invasive #### list is Multiflora Rose.
Imported from Asia... back in mid 1800's and promoted by the SCS in the '30's for "natural barriers" for livestock (and D6's :laugh) and bird cover-food it is now a nightmare in all but the Rocky Mtn states.

What is up with Oregon State Extension promoting this aggressive thorn ?

Controls being considered. You can't imagine. Try Japanese Beetles or the rose virus that causes multiflora to re-sprount in "broom-like" thickets with a higher density of thorns.
Wow. That's all that comes to me.

Does anyone that's proposing this stuff, actually get up, leave the office, go to a work site and physically exert themselves removing this "plant" ?
 
Another that ranks right up on the top of invasive #### list is Multiflora Rose.
Imported from Asia... back in mid 1800's and promoted by the SCS in the '30's for "natural barriers" for livestock (and D6's :laugh) and bird cover-food it is now a nightmare in all but the Rocky Mtn states.

What is up with Oregon State Extension promoting this aggressive thorn ?

Controls being considered. You can't imagine. Try Japanese Beetles or the rose virus that causes multiflora to re-sprount in "broom-like" thickets with a higher density of thorns.
Wow. That's all that comes to me.

Does anyone that's proposing this stuff, actually get up, leave the office, go to a work site and physically exert themselves removing this "plant" ?

Weren't both broom and acacia brought in by the SCS?
 
Going back to what Madhatte just mentioned about using Scots' Broom as a biomass product, have read similar lines of "thinking" as a source for oil like rapeseed and its kin.
Problem is these have to be farmed on a huge scale for profit. And past history shows that controls for containing these plant in controlled harvest area just fail.
 
Hear about the Asian Carp yet? Best thing is you can pull as many as you want out of the water. I hear the put up one hell of a fight...

Ever see this video?

[video=youtube_share;0bZ_9B_RlGY]http://youtu.be/0bZ_9B_RlGY[/video]

That's a lot of fish...
 

Latest posts

Back
Top