The Sun is shining, the birds are twittering, someone’s weaving, someone’s whittling… and guess who shows up? Why, it’s our old friend Fallopia japonica, commonly known as Japanese knotweed.
Left: No place to hide / Centre: This one means business / Right: You’re Flagged
The little orange flags are to help us stay aware of where it is, so it doesn’t get inadvertently cut during they year – if it’s cut, it just gets angry, sending horizontal roots out for metres.
This will be the third consecutive year of (reluctant) targeted use of the systemic herbicide ‘glyphosate’, but as the following image shows, all of that crawling around in the brambles clutching a syringe looking (and sounding) like Darth Vader may have all been worth it…
So if you see any little orange flags around the site, please avoid them, and please keep children and pets away from them. That way, some day soon, there will perhaps be no more little orange flags, and we can hang up the goggles and respirator.