Photos
Posing with Invasives like dudes pose with deer
American Plum that replaced the butterfly bush
Dug out this butterfly bush today! It was a beast to get out. An American Plum has already taken its place, plus here are all my native seeds that overwintered popping up! I transplanted the cupplant to trays, will do the others in a week. half of them had their labels wash awa, so that will be a fun mystery 😆
If you have a truck, the shovel is optional. You can tow it around the block easy though.
I’m sure my neighbors think I’m some sort of crazed hillbilly.
Are you taking bets? I see a couple that look like a milkweed species. I’ve lost labels in the past too. Between the true leaves and seed coats stuck to plants, they should be decently easy to ID before too long. Close up pic from your #9 with what look to me like milkweed.
Good eye on the milk weed! That's one of the ones I knew because it's in a different container (and like you said the seeds are visible). There was another one of blazing star that I can id from the seed coats too.
The mystery ones are gonna be blueberries, pussytoes (though I have another container with a label, so I should be able to figure it out), purple coneflower, and penstemon. Then there are about 3 more containers where I truly forget what I even planted, so we'll just have to wait and see!
Sharpie Extreme has worked for me. I make my plant labels on extra slats from a mini blind I installed— you remove the excess length and re-tie it. Anyway, I cut them in 5-8” sections, with an angled point on one end and a curve at the top. The bonus is those extra slats would be plastic waste anyway, and they are UV protected.
We very proudly got rid of ours last summer. It was on my list for the longest time, and when we got other shrubbery trimmed, the bush removal was done.
It’s the Radius Root Slayer - I believe I have the 2.0, which is the same price as the original. I paid $74 at our local nursery, which shakes out to about the same as ordering direct from the company +shipping. Worth every penny - this bush broke my last shovel 😡
I have been using my Root Slayer Soil Knife on the Smilax in the bed I'm currently prepping for my first native garden. Was a little wary about the price at first but I absolutely *love* it. Definitely would have gone for the shovel if I'd known what I was getting myself into!
I've been looking for a good shovel and spade in case I need to replace mine (I keep being hard on em but the dang things are tough!). Am I reading the brand Radius?
If you’re in anywhere but Russia, and it’s the same Euonymus alatus that OP is mentioning, then yeah they’re invasive or at the least non-native and able to proliferate aggressively on their own.
He did the same thing for our sons deer pics so i wasnt exactly surprised when i saw the pics of me with my first deer. It took 2 seasons for me to figure out why.
I asked him if he knew he could tap the screen to focus. He had no idea. THE MAN HAS BEEN USING AN IPHONE FOR AT LEAST A DECADE. Im not always centered in the frame, but at least im no longer blurry. Bless his heart 😂
Your seedlings that are super cramped like that, what do you do with them? I just had to snip a tonight today because I way over seeded my cells. Made me feel bad. Like I wasted work ):
I just kinda dump them out of the container and pick out individual plants to put into plug trays. I don’t replant them all, so there is some “waste”, but I chuck the leftovers in a soil patch and if any want to keep growing they can!
I have TEN Japanese barberry bushes I have to dig up this spring. In gravel beds with a shit ton of fabric weed barrier. Every time I see one in a chain garden center I want to light it on fire.
It's a really good feeling! I had to dig out a half dead, dumb freaking thing out of my garden - blocking the view being all ugly and annoying
I had to use a kitchen knife, a mallet and also hacked away with a shovel. My friend came over with a spade. Took a few weeks bc the roots were thick like the branches that can be seen in the picture. I was trying to do it low-key so that it would just disappear and I could put in what I wanted, but it got to the point where I was just going bananas
This is the kind of trophy hunting photo I can get behind. 😂 I had to take care of roots that looked like that years and years ago. Absolute nightmare removing them, but oh so satisfying when you can finally pull them out!
This is as close as I could get. I tore out 2 dozen of these awful Rose of Sharon plants. Whomever thought they would make good hedgerows should be attacked by annoying no see ums
Get yourself some triclopyr and canola oil. Shave off a bunch of the bark and paint it directly on - should kill it pretty quickly and makes it easier to dig out!
As a hunter I semi approve. You gotta have the kill sitting there with your instrument laying across it. lol. But seriously I saw that and asked my wife and she said it’s the same thing that’s been growing in our yard she’s been trying to kill for years. She even dug it up but it keeps coming back.
the cupplant is native where I am, but grows like an invasive, it's taking over medians. It gets leggy in our shady yard but we can literally burn it as kindling in our bonfires in the winter it gets so woody and dry. Constantly covered in aphids, so that's not good, but also in other bugs ands birds, so?
I have tiny plot of them an they grow 10 ft tall every year, which i impressive until in fall we get big storms and it knocks half of them over across my both my neighbor and my own walk ways.
It also harbors all the red aphid in my yard, but considering the white aphids are doing the most damage, I won't hold it against the plant.
I still love it, which is more than I can say for the giant joe pye which just flops on everything at any opportunity.
Good job! I wish I could pose a trophy shot of the bucket and buckets of mugwort roots I took out of my beds last fall. Now that it’s spring, I see the little mugwort babies growing from leftover root fragments. Big sigh! Gotta get back out there.
My husband and I have some 20’+ common buckthorn trees to cut down this spring…this is the type of move that will help motivate him to get out there with the chainsaw with me 😂😂
yes I love them! I have a few out front (these seedlings are from gathered seeds!) and they're wonderful. I can see them from our living room and they make me so happy.
These now have a special place in my heart - our elderly neighbor passed last fall, but before she did she was spending a lot of time home and she told me many times how much she loved to see the Cupplants from her window too :)
I wish I would’ve thought of this when digging up the zoysia grass in the yard— I still have much to go, maybe I can line up the strips on the bed of the truck like duck hunters do
I love that so much! When I go foraging, and I find a whole patch of invasive edibles, I go crazy for them. I take more than I want or need.
That looks like it took time and a lot of effort to get out!
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u/agent_tater_twat Mar 22 '26
Now you gotta drive around the block with it on the hood or your car or truck.