Battling the Knotweed

April 18, 2017

After work, Liz and I decided to take advantage of the warm weather and spent a little time clearing the backyard. Here she is spraying some of the horribly invasive Japanese knotweed that’s everywhere.

There’s a large spot of it in our neighbor’s area, which we got permission to go in and clear. Unfortunately, when we razed the entire backyard, they opted to not clear this area of their backyard. As a result, it’s a little overgrown and needs some love and care.

A lot of the knotweed is dead, but there’s a small interior bit that’s still alive and growing. Liz is indicating to me how small it was, just even a week ago.

Pulling out the dead stalks.

Liz, armed with the sawzall.

Tackling the problem at the root. One of the roots, anyways.

Oh the things one finds in the yard…

Digging out the base of the knotweed.

Surprisingly, this wasn’t all that deep. There are some big roots that definitely do go deep, but this was right next to a concrete slab (and many bricks). So it came up surprisingly easily.