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You have to be careful, but I've found rawhide gloves work alright, just grab 'em by the base and pull. Jupe prefers to cut them w/ loppers and then pull, but I like the challenge of the other way
Plant versus woman.
Problem is though, we've pulled them all down now and there are about 100 babies coming up already! It seems like about 15 babes per annihilated plant. Criminy! Hoping that if we keep on it, keep pulling, their abominable root system will slowly wither away to nothing... Nice thing about the babies (if there is such a thing), their thorns aren't dominant at that stage, mostly just scary looking red hairs, so you can pull them with your bare hands. Carefully.
Melissa Fletcher
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"Make yurts, not war" Bill Coperthwaite, 1973
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That is basically what I did after the buldozer came. I walked around the property pulling up baby weeds. It is fairly easy when they are small. I did that for a couple of months after which I had suppressed the ones on my property. I am now seeing a resurgence that I attribute to seeds from outside, but there was a noticeable benefit to the original campaign of consistent pulling of baby weeds.
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We have goats. They don't touch the stuff.
Melissa Fletcher
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"Make yurts, not war" Bill Coperthwaite, 1973
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We too have had to deal with these in the past!
Ya gotta dig! Get all the roots out. You may have to repeat to get 'em all out but eventually they'll be gone. If they're not near any other desirable plants, pour some salt over area after you get as much root out as possible.
There is no substitute for good ol' elbow grease! Getting dirty is good! Its about a relationship with the aina.
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We found at 4,000' that the roots will resprout from within the little hole, as will the pulled plant if left with its rootball touching the ground. If you keep pinching/pulling there is a possibility that the roots in the ground will
eventually die off. This isn't such a hassle if you don't already have a thicket of it.
Another choice would be to get some Garlon 3. 1:10 it and water, and treat both the hole you pull the sprouting plants out of and the base of the plants immediately. For the larger bushes you would want to cut the stump as close to the base as possible--leaving no lateral branches as the herbicide has problems spreading laterally. Treat the stump in the ground and the other end of the plant right after you cut it.
...introduced in the shoes of Aussies? [
]
Amanda - the Aussie shoe thing was something I heard from some of the botanists in the park. They are trying to spray the leaves with Cimmaron now to see if that will kill them. If you go about a mile into the Ola'a Forest Reverve, you can see them 50 feet high and strangling old Ohias.
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This website may help......or discourage you.
http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/fact/ruel1.htm
