To Hell with Honeysuckle

I just got driven in by a thunderstorm from pulling up some of the smaller honeysuckle bushes from the wet soil.  Much of the honeysuckle in the more shaded areas (notably the areas that had the most buckthorn) can be pulled out by hand, especially when the soil is wet.  Although it could be found most everywhere in our woods, honeysuckle was established best on the edges where it could get sunlight.  The interior plants contained a lot of dead wood and many could be pulled up by hand, even in dry weather.

A lesson that I finally learned working around honeysuckle is to wear long pants.  Although it doesn't have thorns like the buckthorn does, the stems, especially the dead ones, are very brittle and can make pin-cushions (or punji-stick-cushions) of your legs, especially when you climb up on the brush pile to stomp it down.  Long pants also provide less area for poison ivy exposure.

Last week I got one of these toys: a Red Dragon BP 223 SVC 100,000 BTU Weed Dragon Back Pack Propane Vapor Torch Kit With Squeeze Valve.  I knew from experience that both the honeysuckle and buckthorn sprout right back up from the stumps within days, with nice healthy bright green leaves.  I was considering treating the stumps with chemicals late in the fall as prescribed as the most effective way of dealing with the unpullable stumps, but I decided that this flame thrower would be more fun and ecologically friendly, as long a I don't burn down the neighborhood.  I had tried a small plumber's soldering torch on a few stumps, but that only seemed slow the regrowth down a little.  (No, the small plumber was not named Mario.)

After giving this bigger torch a try, I realized that I would need to create a good burning strategy.  Wandering around the woods on a damp drizzly morning, hitting each spot where I spotted invasive plants sticking up was not going to be healthy for me or the woods, especially near areas with visible poison ivy.  I need to get all of the pullable stuff up first -- it's not always clear by looking at a plant whether it can be pulled by hand, and many of the bad guys are near seedlings of more desirable trees that I would like to protect if possible.  This thing puts out a lot of heat, and I don't know what damage it may do to nearby vegetation, even if it doesn't go up in smoke.

 

Buckthorn resprouting from stump soon after cutting.

They sell a 500,000 BTU version of this torch.  It's hard to imagine the benefit of that much more heat.