Over the last week or so, I have spent some time each day pulling up 30 to 40 queen anne’s lace.  For this week, I have pulling over 150 of these plants from the prairie.  I still have more to go, but the effect is noticable now.  In areas that were once covered with white flowers, there is now a short blanket of native plants able to get sunshine.

I have discovered a large problem with pulling up queen anne’s lace however.  The invasive plants have a trick up their sleeve if you merely break of the stem when trying to pull the plant.  The plants that I have simply broke them off a month ago have grown back with vengence.  These plant produced 6 to 8 new stems instead of the original one.  Each of these new stem also produces flowers.  So, the seed production on these plants has been increased by 6 to 8 times the original plant!  So, this year, I am making sure to elimate all flowers from being allowed to go to seed from this plant.  If I break off one of them when pulling it up, I am making sure to come back later and elimate these plants. 

I can’t believe it, crown vetch has shown up in my prairie.  Of all of the highly invasive plants in Illinois, I get this one!  Luckily, it was only one plant, not the masses that are commonly seen growing along every highway and most of the roadsides that have been managed by IDOT.  This plant was once used as a ground cover along the highways to give color and establish plant growth quickly.  The problem is that crown vetch is a very aggressive non-native invasive plant and will choke out most other plants growing around it.  Once this plant is found in any restoration area, get rid out it immediately!  If left alone, it will begin to dominate the restoration project and be very difficult to get rid of.

The queen anne’s lace that is in my prairie has started to show the first signs of flowers.  Some of my prairie is quite thick with it, so I decided to go out and begin to pull some of the plants with flowers on them.  With the flower being a biennial or a plant that takes 2 years to reach maturity, if I can prevent any new flowers from producing seed, these plants will all die by the end of the year anyway.  Then, all I need to do is spray the first year plants with some round-up in the beginning of spring next year.  These plants will be green when most of the native plants are still dormant.

Since the roots of Queen anne’s lace go deep, it helps alot if it has rained recenty.  This will allow you to pull all of the root from the ground, and not break off the top of the plant.  If the top is broken off, it will sprout again.  Once the plant has been pulled from the ground, smell the root.  Smells like carrots right?  That’s because carrots were cultivated from queen anne’s lace.  Now, shake off as much of the excess dirt as you can and drop the plant to the ground or add to a compost pile.  Removing the dirt from the roots allows the plant to die much faster.

So as promised, I went out tonight and pulled as much curly dock as I could find.  There sure was alot of it too.  My hands hurt right now as I am typing this.  I did the same thing as I did with the clover 2 days ago.  Simply grab the plant with both hands low to the ground and pull up as straight as possible.  If you pull off to one side, you may just break the stem of the plant.  And, as I found out the hard way, when you break the stem of the curly dock, it will send up three or four more stems as a replacement.  The roots of curly dock can be very long and thick as well, so be careful as to not hurt your back when pulling.

With all of the recent rains, I decided to go out and start pulling the white and yellow clover that is out in my Lasalle Prairie.  The rain has made the ground soft and squishy.  This made pulling the plants out of the ground very easy, well, easier.  The yellow clover was already starting to flower so getting these plants out of the ground was my priority.  The white clover plants were getting quite large so I went after them as well.  I grabbed the plants at the base of the stem and pulled with even pressure upwards.  Sometimes I had to pull upwards using my legs as some of the plants had roots that went down over a foot!  But, with the ground being soft, I eventually won out over the clovers.  I plan to go after the curly dock next.