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Japanease knotweed
raysimmons42
Posts: 5
hi, iv just found out i have a small japanese knotweed growing in my front garden, 30cm tall. I know the damage they can do, whats the best method to take? Your expertise would be appreciated. Ray
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Japanese Knotweed is rarely small. How sure are you? Many t plants have been mistaken for JKW
In the sticks near Peterborough
Can you upload a picture to help in identifying the plant you have.
I can't seem to be able to enlarge the picture or get better detail but could it be black bryony rather than jkw?
Thanks ray, it doesn't look like black bryony now. Unfortunately it does look like Japanese Knotweed. Hopefully someone on here who has had to tackle it will be along soon with the best advice. Purely from an amateur's point of view though, in the meantime how feasible would it be to dig out that area of soil (quite deeply) to remove the plant and it's roots? I'm really not sure if this is the best thing to do with jkw without fully researching the best methods of eradication but as it's a small plant I would have thought catch it all now before it gets any larger or its roots have spread further? But, as I say, hopefully more experienced gardeners will get on here shortly to give you the best advice
If japanese knotweed has been sprayed with glyphosate in the past, you sometimes get short re-growth which looks like this, in my experience. It has the right shaped leaves, and reddish zigzag stems, which are significant. There are other knotweeds though... including a dwarf Japanese sort.
How long have you lived in your house? If you moved in relatively recently, could you talk to the neighbours about whether there was a knotweed problem in the past? If you've been there for years, with no former sign of it, that's a bit odd.
I think I'd err on the side of caution and assume that whatever it is, you don't want it... Make up some glyphosate to the strength recommended for tough weeds, put it in a small pot and paint it on the leaves with a brush, being careful not to drip on your lawn (you could protect the grass with plastic while you're doing it). Better safe than sorry...
http://www.gardenersworld.com/forum/problem-solving/is-this-japanese-knotweed/983944
There was a good link posted by Alan Clark for ID help in this thread a few weeks ago.
Hope mine works
Nope, sorry, rubbish at links.
Maybe try and find it using the search bar unless someone clever can do it?
Last edited: 03 September 2016 15:31:36
Pansyface, some of the JK regrowth in my next door neighbour's garden looks depressingly like Ray's photos. Narrow stems because struggling against weedkiller.
Late August is a good time to apply glyphosate to a big JK plant, because it's finished growing and is flowering. It's about to die back for winter - sucking all the goodness (and glyphosate) down into its roots. I've never tried the stem-cutting technique, always found spraying to be effective (in the end).
If it's JK, Jekylandhide, the roots will go down for ever, even on a small plant.