Garlic Mustard

Enemy Number One to a Natural Habitat !

Garlic mustard is the scourge of the earth! OK, well maybe not quite that bad, but this stuff is nasty.

This species is one of the top ten invasive plant species in Ohio. It spreads like wild fire and can take over a wooded lot in no time at all. Once the plant begins to spread it chokes out native plants and can ruin a natural habitat very quickly.

A single plant can produce thousand of seeds. It can grow in any soil condition and any environment.

Garlic Mustard Plant

Seeds can lay dormant for up to nine years before they germinate.

Thousands of dollars continue to be spent every year to help control this noxious weed. Some consider it to be a biological disaster since it can choke out other native plants so quickly.

How did it get here?

Garlic mustard was introduced from Europe probably as a garden plant. It is edible and was likely a source of food for early settlers.

Personally I don’t know how they could eat it. It is very bitter with a definite garlic taste. It is appropriately named.

What does Garlic Mustard look like?

The plant grows as a mass of tiny leaves when it first comes up. It produces a rosette of leaves the first year that will last through the winter. It also stays green through the winter.

The second year it will grow a tall stalk with tiny white flowers on top of it. The stalk produces seed pods that dry and spread. The species is a biennial so after the second year it dies.

How to control it

Garlic mustard can be controlled by homeowners but it takes a lot of diligence and persistence.

A Young Plant

Fist, learn to identify it. Once you learn what it looks like you can spot it quickly.

Herbicides like Roundup work well. Spray the young leaves early in its growing stage before it flowers. Make sure nothing else of importance is growing around it or else that also will be killed by the spray.

You can also spray the larger plants if they haven’t gone to seed. They will die fairly easily.

Don’t let the mature plants go to seed! Start pulling them out as soon as you see them.

A very large section of our woods was full of garlic mustard. I waged war on it one spring and pulled every plant that I could find. It took a week or so of diligent pulling.

The following spring the same section of woods only had a few sprouts. However, seeds can last up to nine years before germination. There were a lot of plants back again the following year.

If you don’t have a lot of plants one year it doesn’t mean they won’t be back the following year.

It can take a long time to get things under control, especially if there have been large patches growing uncontrolled.

A note on pulling – if possible put the pulled weeds in a garbage can or bag. If they are left on the ground they can still go to seed.

I had so many of them that I tried to keep them isolated in piles. I figured if they did go to seed they would at least be limited to a small section.

Return from Garlic Mustard to White Wildflowers

NW Ohio Nature Oak Leaf

Garlic Mustard

Enemy Number One to a Natural Habitat !

How did it get here?

What does Garlic Mustard look like?

How to control it

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