My wife is quite distressed at this invasive species, which has shown up in one of her gardens. As you can see from the UMass extension info, there is not much you can do about them just yet.
A lot of problems that people rather reflexively ascribe to climate change or loss of habitat are actually problems from invasive species that have no natural predators. And we have sort of learned that bringing predators in can oft gang agley. We keep hoping, and trying, and sometimes it even works.
The Emerald Ash Borer is taking out nearly 100% of the ash trees here. Residual, or "lingering" survivors are studied, but do not be that encouraged. Yes, they will rebalance the forests with ashes, but that will take 5-12 centuries. Dutch Elm Disease did not wipe out all North American elms, but it's close. Eurasian Watermilfoil is wreaking havoc on New England lakes despite intensive efforts to prevent transmission from one lake to the next.
International trade is mostly a very good thing for everyone involved. But not always. Sometimes plants and animals arrive in the packing crates.
That's what happened with the Chestnut trees that made up the majority of the eastern forests from the Smokey Mountains up through the mid Atlantic and up through southern New England. And it didn't take but one generation to destroy them.
ReplyDeleteWhen I lived in the UK, new rules about labelling horticultural products came into play and sellers could not even mention "off label" uses for a product unless it had been specifically tested and verified to be both effective for that purpose and not harmful to the ecosystem generally when used for that purpose.
ReplyDeleteIt led to bizarre garden center conversations when someone asked about how to deal with algae in their pond, and the garden-center employee would say "Well there are chemicals that have lots of disadvantages, but have you seen our selection of really attractive decorative bundles of Barley Straw? We sell a lot of it to pond owners -- it must look very lovely near ponds, or even in them!" (. . . nudge nudge wink wink say no more . . .).
The centuries of common success using Barley Straw to control algae can't be mentioned, as no-one has done controlled double-blinded testing to verify efficacy and freedom-from unfortunate side-effects.
Anyway, were you to use Tea Seed Meal as a fertilizer in your garden and lawn, you should be aware that it often has a really bad effect on the population of all types of worms. It would then be a really good idea to also get worms in the cocoon stage -- the beneficial worms -- to plant in order to repopulate the beneficial worms at the time the tea seed meal has composted down.
Yes, tea seed meal has been mentioned, and Tracy has looked into getting some. But it doesn't look that efficacious, or not yet.
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