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What will kill Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum Umbellatum)?
GravelEater
Posts: 124
We let areas of the garden go to complete neglect. It was proper wild with big poppies and umpteen species of weed. The birds loved it, at least.
Took some shears to it all, and what came up after Winter was these little crocus-like green shoots, and then pretty little white petalled flowers that open when it's sunny - how cute!
Did some remodelling of the garden, moved soil around to level things out and then put down weed prevention liner and gravel in places.
It comes to this Spring and we see these little green shots coming up through the gravel, everywhere! Oh no!
Only now understanding how much trouble people have in getting rid of them, do we realise that we just created a nightmare in moving soil around and actively spreading these things!!!
We've moved gravel, pulled up the liner and manually dug out the soil around where we have seen shoots, but who's to say there aren't other bulbs just a little under the surface that we can't see, only to come up next Spring! Manual removal is regarded as the most effective solution though.
The internet returns quite a few suggestions from the USA, which permit the use of herbicides that have been banned for some time here in the UK/EU - and typically for good reason. However that doesn't help me in getting rid of the infestation.
I would have given Sodium Chlorate a go, but that was banned years ago. It was very effective for driveways and paths and, not to be confused with Sodium Chloride (food salt), really did 'salt the earth'. This approach would work OK in some places, where plants won't be going, but would be impractical where roots (conifers) may go under walls and absorb such toxins.
All we have available in the UK is Glyphosate (basically every commercial weedkiller available, Round-Up, Weedol, and so on) or Pelargonic Acid (Neudorff).
Typically, weedkillers do no penetrate into the bulb on this plant, and so they only burn out the shoots, preventing flowering, but the bulb may continue to multiply.
I have read a couple of suggestions saying to use a more concentrated dilution of Glyphosate with a little washing up liquid (surfactants) and, with a brush, paint it on any shoots that appear. A few doses weekly, in Spring and in Summer. The washing up liquid helps to break down the waxy leaf helping the Glyphosate to actually penetrate. Whilst it is agreed that Glyphosate is barely effective at all in a normal large area spray, direct application periodically is supposed to deal with the odd ones that come up.
The other reason to not spray is because Glyphosate will knock out any nearby plants it gets on.
So, anyone have any better ideas?
Took some shears to it all, and what came up after Winter was these little crocus-like green shoots, and then pretty little white petalled flowers that open when it's sunny - how cute!
Did some remodelling of the garden, moved soil around to level things out and then put down weed prevention liner and gravel in places.
It comes to this Spring and we see these little green shots coming up through the gravel, everywhere! Oh no!
Only now understanding how much trouble people have in getting rid of them, do we realise that we just created a nightmare in moving soil around and actively spreading these things!!!
We've moved gravel, pulled up the liner and manually dug out the soil around where we have seen shoots, but who's to say there aren't other bulbs just a little under the surface that we can't see, only to come up next Spring! Manual removal is regarded as the most effective solution though.
The internet returns quite a few suggestions from the USA, which permit the use of herbicides that have been banned for some time here in the UK/EU - and typically for good reason. However that doesn't help me in getting rid of the infestation.
I would have given Sodium Chlorate a go, but that was banned years ago. It was very effective for driveways and paths and, not to be confused with Sodium Chloride (food salt), really did 'salt the earth'. This approach would work OK in some places, where plants won't be going, but would be impractical where roots (conifers) may go under walls and absorb such toxins.
All we have available in the UK is Glyphosate (basically every commercial weedkiller available, Round-Up, Weedol, and so on) or Pelargonic Acid (Neudorff).
Typically, weedkillers do no penetrate into the bulb on this plant, and so they only burn out the shoots, preventing flowering, but the bulb may continue to multiply.
I have read a couple of suggestions saying to use a more concentrated dilution of Glyphosate with a little washing up liquid (surfactants) and, with a brush, paint it on any shoots that appear. A few doses weekly, in Spring and in Summer. The washing up liquid helps to break down the waxy leaf helping the Glyphosate to actually penetrate. Whilst it is agreed that Glyphosate is barely effective at all in a normal large area spray, direct application periodically is supposed to deal with the odd ones that come up.
The other reason to not spray is because Glyphosate will knock out any nearby plants it gets on.
So, anyone have any better ideas?
0
Posts
My sympathy.
'You must have some bread with it me duck!'
I bought a big pot of these in flower at a knock-down price, not knowing what they are and was planning on planting them in my garden.
I got them into the green waste-bin asap!
Thanks
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
Good job on saving yourself a big future headache.
It has been banned from sale in a couple of US states, and in my opinion because we have no effective herbicide any longer, it should be banned in Europe too.
Toxic to horses and cattle, and people. Although I read differing reports on the latter, perhaps cooking can break them down - I certainly won't be trying them though!
I have read that if you do want them, put them in pots and collect the seeds, as to stop it spreading where you don't want it. If you want to plant in the ground, you'll have to put some shuttering around the planting area, maybe 4 bricks or more deep, and crowd the area with other bulb plants. That seems to control the spread of them, preventing aggressive expansion. I'd rather not bother, there really are much prettier plants that are far far less hassle.
The other thing with these is that the bulbs are typically the size of a grain of uncooked rice! So any garden sieve lets them straight though. Kitchen sieves are too small and would just turn all soil to dust should they be used.
Mushing or crushing the bulbs doesn't necessarily kill them either as broken ones still live on.
We've found a few which were really much larger bulbs, with a big sack containing smaller bulbs attached to it. Because of the weed barrier liner they can't escape and are right near or on the surface. Looked like something from a bad sci-fi movie!
I decided it would be better for other gardeners if I put in the general household waste - so that's where it's gone.
I do have a similar problem with Arum italicum. Every year many hundreds of seedlings appear and glyphosphate just rolls off the waxy leaves. They have clever 'self-burying' seeds, so the subsequent bulblet may be a foot or more below the surface
It's been around 10 years now and I'm still hoeing the tops off from Nov to May.
Hope you manage to get yours resolved sooner!
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
OK, so this year we had a lot less, but still enough of these damned things to be a nuisance.
British weather being what it is, means that there aren't really any decent non-rainy windows to apply glyphosate, until at least May.
So, I made a double concentrated solution of glyphosate, a 'pinch' of Fairy washing up liquid and half of a batch sponge I cut off. Got a good foamy action when I squeezed the sponge in glyphosate. Applied this directly daubing and wiping it onto the thin leaf/shoot of these weeds. At the same time I applied this same solution to a couple of dandelion broad-leafed weeds I saw - as an idea of whether this stuff works at all.
Followed careful attempts to not just wash the stuff down the drain, but to dilute, dilute, dilute tipping onto empty areas of gravel.
Not a lot happened after one week, to be honest. Not a lot happened to the thistle and dandelion types either - maybe the weedkiller is a bit knackered, maybe a double concentrate is ineffective.
Re-applied pretty much weekly without the washing up liquid, but still double strength.
So a total of 4 or 5 applications.
The thistle and dandelion types, as well as some moss all dried out and died after 2 weeks from first application. Many of these Ornithogalum have turned brown and dried up.
I cleared a well of gravel around the Ornithogalum for the last application and made sure to leave a foamy pool on top of the weed prevention liner, as well as applying directly.
A couple of weeks on, and I've decided to go manual again and just cut the liner and dig some out. It seems that the bulbs are very close to the surface and rather engorged compared to the tiny rice grain sized things before. What was already a thin shoot, had shrivelled to almost nothing, just a delicate, dry and crispy thing. Where there was still a little stub of shoot left poking through the liner, I could see which way it may me growing from, and where it's bulb may be. They are only a few millimetres below the surface. Contrast this to a few shoots that never managed to poke through the gravel, and so never got the glyphosate treatment, and their bulb is more like centimetres below the surface.
I'll have to update next year with what happened to the ones that I didn't dig out.
Judging by this, I can only hope that a forceful direct application is having some effect.
I applied a double concentrated solution of Gallop glyphosate, no washing up liquid. I used a sponge to wipe it onto the plant after clearing the gravel away.
Did this twice, a week apart.
This week I decided to just clear more gravel, cut the liner, and dig those few out.
The bulbs were within the top inch of soil, and were large enough to spot, easy enough to get out. A few more shoots were around one of the larger shoots, but those couldn't get through the liner.
I realised I'd dumped them in another part of the yard too, no liner, just some weeds growing there. I did the same glyphosate treatment, and have just dug all of those up. Bulbs are all close to the surface there too.
Hopefully that's it for these things. If they do come up, that seems to be the best course of action. A couple of treatments of double strength glyphosate applied with a sponge, spaced over a week. A week later dig them up.
Hopefully this helps someone else if they have the misfortune of getting infested.
But once in, they seem like a tough one to get rid of.
With suitable containment and soil condition they are probably OK, but it's probably the minority that can get away with these things.