The Island

The Island is an island on the north end of Ives Road Fen Preserve. It is surrounded partly by the River Raisin and partly by a channel.

In 2004 the seasonal staff of four, with volunteer help, worked for weeks to clear it of garlic mustard and Dame's Rocket. In 2005 and 2006 the volunteers worked on the island for all of April and May, the garlic mustard pulling season. Last year on the last workday they just cleared it (or didn't quite clear it-I missed that workday). We expected that this year it would take just as much time, although it seemed last year that in many of the places we were pulling there weren't any seedlings, which was interesting at the time, but we didn't want to get our hopes up.

When I went to scout out the area for our first workday, there was hardly any garlic mustard on the island!! I cleared the north half of the island by myself in about a day and Sam and I will probably finish the south half on Monday. Partly this is a result of thorough, methodical, persistant pulling every year. We start at the same place every year and follow the same route every year, pulling every plant. Several times during the season we walk the area that has already been pulled and get the ones that were missed or broke off at the ground and later came up. Leaving only a few plants can largely negate the value of your work because those few plants can produce thousands of seeds.

In addition to the thorough pulling, there has been some cold season herbicide spraying. For this to be effective without doing damage to the natives, you need to spray in late fall or winter when the native plants are dormant but garlic mustard rosettes are visible. The garlic mustard needs to be growing so you need a day above 50 degrees. You also need for the plants to not be covered by snow or have all the leaves frozen off. A winter day that is above 50 may be due to warm air currents from the Gulf of Mexico. Besides warm air, these currents can carry rain, making herbiciding on that day ineffective. Even with these obstacles, the herbiciding can reduce big patches to scattered individuals and eliminate a lot of individual plants. You still need hand pulling in the spring to mop up the ones missed by herbiciding but with far fewer plants you can cover more ground.

With the island now clear, we will spend this season working in Trillium Management Area south of The Island. This is a large area with garlic mustard and Dame's Rocket dispersed throughout but none of the patches are as big or as dense as what was on the island so we hope to cover a lot of ground. Garlic mustard in this area was also herbicided during the winter.