Hello friends welcome to Gardening with Creekside today I am going to be taking care of a very
problematic weed it is an invasive weed brand new to me brand new i think relatively to this area
what I'm talking about is dodder dodder is a parasitic weed that attaches
to a host plant and has to have that host plant in order to survive and have life because
it really just like any kind of parasite it will attach itself
to that suck the nutrients out of it and therefore that is how it grows and thrives and lives
I did not know of dodder I had never heard a dodder before until a couple of weeks ago we
were up in this area doing a video and one of you sweet viewers were like jenny you have dodder
are you not like freaking out and I was like dodder what in the world are you talking about
as soon as I Googled it I was like yes that is exactly what I have and it is very um
scary in a way as far as in your garden you do not want in your garden because it is parasitic it is
extremely hard to get rid of it produces tons of seeds and the seeds can last for up to 20 years
so we are going to do step one of tackling the dodder it is in this flower bed right here
I have my trash can I have my pre-emergent I have my rubber gloves I have everything that I need
to take care of this now before we go any further I will have graphics at the end explaining
exactly what dodder is some host plants just tips for you so that way you can take screenshots
of those graphics at the end just take a screenshot and put it in a file on your
phone or your iPad in your photos that way if you ever are encountered with dodder
or you know somebody that has dodder then hopefully you can use these as a resource again
North Carolina never heard of it never had it it probably came in not probably it did it came in
on some seeds that i had bought i know i had it last year now looking back i had it with beets
maybe i had it the year before i don't know the good thing is it's only contained to this bed um
so we are going to have just no holds bar we're going to go after it i'm going to go up there
let me show you what we're talking about and explain how we are going to handle this very
problematic invasive weed here at creekside in this garden box i have carrots planted and down on
this end now there are some weeds in there um but the carrots are doing great when you
come over here and you see these yellow vines that is daughter and if you will look there are
no leaves on the daughter because as you can see what it is doing is it is attaching itself to
the carrot and it will take all the nutrients out of that and therefore grow so you can see
that it is spreading in the other direction so we are step one today is we are going to harvest
all of these carrots and we're going to get them out of here and eliminate and get rid of all of
this foliage so what the plan of attack is for the daughter today and long term one i have got
a big trash can lined with a trash bag and i have just kitchen gloves right you wash dishes in
i will throw those away when i am done with this the only tool that i am using today is
my hori hori and i will wash it disinfect it make sure that there is no cross-contamination from me
working in this bed and then going to another bed so we are going to harvest get rid of all
the foliage we are going to bag it and we are going to tie it up and we are going to put it
in the dumpster um i know when i talked about this a couple like last week some of you had some ideas
uh i am going to say this as lovingly and as kindly and as gently as i possibly can
we have been talking with folks who have dealt with daughter who have battled daughter
professional horticulturists who know this weed and we are following their recommendations
so that being said unless you have dealt with daughter you have professional experience with
daughter i respectfully ask that you just kind of keep your opinions to yourself on this one because
we're going to follow what the professionals say they have done this
by bagging it and putting in the landscape it is not going to escape it is not going to go out into
nature some folks have said about burning it which is a good idea but i would be more concerned about
possibly seeds escaping that not getting burned and then getting blown into the air and then they
end up more widespread when we bag it put it in the landfill that landfill is covered every day
with more trash and more soil so it is not going to escape that is a safe way to do it
pretty soon i don't know this is going to depend on jerry's timeline but today
well back up so today what we're going to do is after we get that out we are going to use
a high quality pre-emergent and we we're going to treat this bed that's just kind
of an extra step i don't think since there's not going to be a host plant that the daughter
would germinate and thrive because there's nothing for it to live on but not only are we
going to treat this bed we're going to treat all of the gravel around it and then as you can see
right here it is close to this bed so we are going to put down some pre-emergent there as well just
as a precautionary tail because that will help it now i know that some of you have strong opinions
on pre-emergence that's fine great appreciate it you use your do your garden i'm doing my garden
i cannot have this weed going out throughout the garden so we're going to prevent that and
use the pre-emergent on the gravel in the bed and right here just to make sure that it does not
spread long-term we are going to completely take this whole bed apart we're going to bag the soil
put it in the dumpster get rid of it we will take apart the wood we will again dispose of the wood
and the irrigation line we will dispose of that so we are going to completely eliminate this box
and rebuild it we just have to make sure that the daughter seed is not in here so that is our
long-term plan now exactly when we get that done that's up for debate it kind of stinks because i
can't i lose some garden space but it is what it is and we're just going to go with it so right now
we are expecting some storms in like an hour so i am going to just get on this as fast as i can
i'm going to put my carrots i have um my little tubs back here snap the carrots off i'm going
to keep the big ones put them in there and then all the foliage every single piece of foliage
is going to go in this trash can so that's what we're going to do hopefully before the rain start
alrighty my friends so i've got all the foliage is out it's bagged all of the carrots are out i
did not i wasn't able to save every single carrot obviously because of time and the nature of what
we're doing here today but i did get a nice little harvest of course it really stinks that i have to
deal with this but you know what that's gardening and i you know i easily could have just not done
this video and not talked about daughter and pretended that it never happened and not show you
but that does a real disturbance to the gardening community because if we're knowledge is power
right and we want to know what's out there because if we see it we can take care of it immediately
if you suspect that you have daughter i would highly encourage you to reach out to your
local extension office they are a wonderful free resource that you can deal with they will help you
they will tell you everything you need to know and that's just a great resource in general with
gardening but especially when you have something problematic like this reach out to your extension
agent every state has one i think every county has one in the country
so just reach out to them and then of course even like your ag schools every state has at least
one university that is dedicated to agriculture so you can reach out to them do your research um
but yeah so i'm gonna go put the carrots in the house because i will wash them and clean them
and get them properly stored so that we can eat them i'm going to take the bag
the whole the whole thing of foliage throw it in the kubota seal it up really good we have a
dumpster here for the nursery i will put that in there everything that is has been used i threw
my gloves away the hori hori will be washed the tubs will be washed the trash can will be washed
everything is going to be washed and sanitized and then i'm going to go grab a little bucket and
we're going to put out the pre-emergent we'll talk about that in a minute it's starting to sprinkle
it's been sprinkling off and on but we're expected to get like some big rain today this afternoon
in just a little bit which is actually a perfect time to put out pre-emergent because it needs to
be watered in so i'm gonna go clean and put this where it's supposed to be and then i'll be back
and we'll talk about the the pre-emergent that i'm using okay so what i have is a pre-emergent and
what a pre-emergent is is it simply keeps seeds from germinating it does not kill existing weeds
it depending on which kind you get you can use it in existing with existing plants
so as long as they are established so you can just check out if you choose to use the pre-emergent to
control weeds then you would just need to read the manufacturers listed information and use it
as it says so this is one that we got through our nursery supplier like he that's who we get things
that we sell at the nursery but preen is a good option that's a widely available pre-emergent that
you can use is this my preferred method no this is i really wish i wasn't doing this but here we are
and again this right here is just really probably um not necessary because there's not a host plant
but again i'm not taking any chances so we're just going to go ahead and treat the bed yes all
this is going to get removed but in the meantime this is what we're doing and then i will treat
with this pre-emergent all the surrounding gravel like i said before the rocks up there in case some
of it went that direction and then the bed the front side of the bed right here i don't
think it has gone to seed anywhere else because nowhere else is it visible like i would see it
in my cleome and my petunias and all that other stuff so that's the positive thing um
yeah so we're just gonna get this spread out and then we'll be done for this project for today
do
okay friends so this not so pleasant task is done for today we will let the rains come in
and get all this pre-emergent soap down in there
again i don't know when exactly we will get this bed taken out
it will honestly just depend on jerry and because i'm definitely going to need his help for this
because this is quite the undertaking so this will be a team effort so whenever
we're able to get to it we will be able to do that but you know what here we are this is
life throws punches at us all the time you deal with it you do the best you can come here
you just do the best you can and you just move on with life
so we'll keep you updated on this begin stay tuned for all those graphics so that way you can
know what daughter is and how to deal with it as always thanks so much for
joining the creekside y'all have a great day we'll see you next video bye friends
you