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Got Broom?

4/17/2016

2 Comments

 
PicturePhoto: Eric Coombs, Oregon Dept. of Agriculture, Bugwood.org
By Miles Merwin

Scotch broom, that is. Seeing all those pretty yellow flowers blooming on lanky green shrubs out in the meadow or on the forest edge?

If you like looking at it, you’re in luck because you will see more and more of it in the future. It loves to take over open areas, pushing out everything except Himalayan blackberry. Those lovely yellow flowers very soon produce little pea pods filled with thousands of tiny black seeds. Birds eat the pods and scatter the seed, which are like time-release pills. The seeds will lie dormant in the soil for up to 40 years and each year you’ll see some new sprouts emerge, to continue its slow march to botanical hegemony.

On the other hand, now is a great time to fight back against the alien invader scotch broom. The yellow blossoms make them easy to spot and those are the ones to go after now before they set seed. It’s no good to just cut them off and leave the roots – they will surely resprout. So you either have to pull out the entire root or kill the plant somehow.

SRN has handy tools called weed wrenches that you can borrow to make the job of pulling the larger shrubs a bit easier (see the classified ad section of the Ridge Runner for info). When the soil is still moist enough for easy digging, you can dig them out or even pull up the smaller ones by hand.

Another alternative is to kill them with a small amount of carefully applied herbicide. Rather than spray the foliage, the least amount is required if you cut the trunk close to ground and then immediately apply a small amount of herbicide to the cut surface of the root. Do a search for “scotch broom control Oregon” and you will find lots of info about this and other methods.

So, as you work to push back the broom and let the native plants grow, be happy knowing that you’ll always have a good reason to get outside and enjoy the beautiful spring weather… for the next 40 years.

2 Comments
Laurel Erhardt
4/18/2016 06:40:14 am

Miles, Thanks for posting. I have an obsession with pulling scotch broom and blackberries. Here's one of my journals:
Once again, I got into a mowing, chopping, hacking frenzy yesterday. I get into a zone and don't even realize what I'm doing to my body.... until I stop.
Milo, ran into a squirrel (or something that gave a frenetic chirp and dove for it's hole). He then dove in after it in a frenzy, (next to my chopping, hacking, frenzy), that is rather out of character for him. He usually doesn't work that hard protecting the place. He's very cognizant that almost everything out there, even the cat, is bigger then him and could whoop him.
The frenic behavior slowed, then stopped. We sat down next to each other. His tongue was hanging out in a heavy pant. I’ve never seen him exert enough effort to create a heavy dog pant.. My forearms were covered with blackberry pokes a scrapes and bleeding in multiple places. I’ve seen that several times.
We slept good last night and are limping around this morning.

Reply
Chimney Cleaning Taylorsville link
7/28/2022 08:44:58 am

Thanks for writing this.

Reply



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