Good afternoon, my reader. The cow parsnip (a representative of the genus of plants in the umbrella family) looks beautiful, solid and even majestic. Huge stems taller than human growth and mysterious umbrellas of flowers involuntarily inspire respect for him. But on the other hand, for humans it is the most dangerous plant. Contact with it causes severe painful burns on unprotected areas of the skin and increases its sensitivity to ultraviolet light. Often contact with hogweed ends up in hospitalization.
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Some efforts are being made to destroy this plant. If its thickets appear in the area of responsibility of legal entities, they are obliged to eliminate them. For inaction, the law even established a fine for them.
But here is an ordinary summer resident, on whose site these umbrella-shaped ones suddenly piled up, often just wave his hand, allowing the hogweed to grow. The plant does it quite actively, and it will be problematic to get rid of it later. But both the owner of the site and members of his family can suffer from it. In addition, the appearance of a hogweed in the garden can lead to the death of almost all garden crops. For these reasons, it is necessary to take measures to eliminate the hogweed as soon as its first shoots are found.
Often a person is prevented from doing this only by the fact that he simply does not know from which side to approach this dangerous plant in order to get rid of it forever and not suffer himself. Therefore, for a start, it will not be superfluous to get at least a general idea of the properties of hogweed, its strengths and weaknesses.
Weaknesses of the plant
He has few of them, but still they are. Among them are the fact that the hogweed:
- does not like wet soils and practically does not grow on them;
- needs good sunlight, shaded places will not work for him;
- dies after the stage of flowering and seed ripening is completed;
- despite the impressive size of the stem, it has a weak root system (root length does not exceed 30 cm).
Benefits of hogweed
He has a lot of them, for example:
- pollination is carried out without the help of insects;
- at low temperatures, the seeds do not die, but, on the contrary, are hardened;
- he displaces all plants growing next to him;
- seeds remain viable for a long time (up to 10 years);
- if it completely loses the trunk, it will soon be reborn from root buds.
Removing hogweed
When starting to eliminate thickets of hogweed, one should not forget about protective clothing. It should be tight and cover all parts of the body.
The operation itself is carried out in several stages. In some cases, it can take more than one season. Otherwise, it does not represent anything complicated:
- With the help of an ax and a shovel, the plants themselves are cut down, and their roots are also dug out. Then the felled trunks and dug roots should be crushed and burned, since they cannot be left on the site or sent to compost. The hogweed is tenacious and can recover in a new place.
- The soil in place of the removed plants is densely mulched so that their remaining seeds do not have the opportunity to germinate. At the same time, soft mulch such as sawdust, spruce branches or tops are not used, since hogweed sprouts will be able to break through it. It is best to use dense black polyethylene. It must be spread out and pressed with oppression (bricks, boards) so that there is no free space between it and the ground. Next year, lawn grass is sown on this site.
The difficulty of dealing with hogweed lies only in the fact that it has a high degree of vitality, and you need to ensure that new shoots do not appear on the site where it grew. Otherwise, if everything is done correctly, the battle with this uninvited umbrella guest can be considered won.
Do you know how to remove a hogweed on a site?
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