March 2025
My First Weed Wrangle
By Mara J.F. Rose
Are Invasive Species lurking in your backyard? Maybe not, but several have been positively identified in some of your local city parks, river walks and state parks. Many were originally planted a few decades ago with the best of intentions, and without fully understanding the impact on local eco-systems, especially in the long term.
Bush Honeysuckle, and Creeping Myrtle or Common Periwinkle (vinca minor) were planted to combat erosion. Some invasives were planted because they were pretty, easily grown, and hardy like the Callery Bradford Pear, Burning Bush, and Trumpet Vines.
Now invasive species are escaping backyards, taking over our wild spaces and lowering species diversity. They disrupt our native plant communities and choke out the vital food sources for our native caterpillars, essential and migratory insects like bees and butterflies, birds and other wildlife.
So, in addition to bicycling, running and walking in our parks and nature preserves,
“Weed Wrangles”, are another fun thing we like to do “in our neck of the woods”.
What is a Weed Wrangle?
The idea and model for a Weed Wrangle grew from the Garden Club of America’s Partners for Plants program. It is one way to connect volunteers with public lands to remove invasive plants, help control invasive plant communities, and to restore native plant habitat with native plants.
In this part of Indiana we have, UWIN-Upper Wabash Invasives Network. UWIN is “a volunteer environmental conservation group formed to educate the public of Huntington, Miami and Wabash counties about invasive species and the importance of native plant species as a support to native habitats”. UWIN members represent a partnership with private individuals and the following agencies: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Indiana State Department of Agriculture (ISDA), and the (SWCD) Soil and Water Conservation districts of Huntington, Miami, and Wabash counties. Also, Purdue extension Wabash County, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Indiana Department of Natural Resources (IDNR), Friends of Upper Wabash Interpretive Services (Friends of UWIS), Izaak Walton League, and SICIM (State of Indiana Cooperative Invasives Management).
Our first Weed Wrangle of 2025 was pulled off this past Saturday, March 22, 2025. The chosen site was a wooded area, around a historic log cabin, in Paradise Spring Park in the city of Wabash, Indiana.
About fifteen volunteers from around our area met in the “Story Walk” parking lot, Huntington Street entrance, around 10:00 a.m. The brisk 40-F degree temps with some wind made dressing in the required long sleeves, long pants and closed-toed shoes, easy.
We formed a circle around the tailgate of UWIN Pres. Dave Lefforge’s pick-up truck which held chemical daubers, loppers, rubber gloves, safety masks and other tools. We introduced ourselves. Then Dave showed us pieces of invasives: Bush Honeysuckle, White Mulberry, and Common Periwinkle (vinca minor), all of which had been positively identified in our chosen Weed Wrangle area.
As the pieces of invasives were being passed around our circle, Rick Porter, a local landscaper and member of Izaak Walton League began a conversation with Dave Lefforge and Geoff Schortgen (Wabash Co. Purdue Univ. extension agent) about Personal Protection Equipment (PPE), for our listening benefit.
After signing liability waivers our group enthusiastically moved down to the backside of the cabin area. We individually chose loppers and daubers-either 2ft. tall or fist-sized with rubber glove protection from the herbicide, while Dave, Geoff, and Chandler Sonofrank (UWIS IDNR Naturalist) used chainsaws, and Rick used a powerful weed wacker with a bush cutter blade. As these guys cut the bushes, the rest of us tried to keep up with pulling out the brush to lay it aside, out of the way for later pick-up removal. Likewise, those with daubers tried to keep up with blue-dyed herbicide on the freshly cut invasives. Our target area was the cambium layer of the plants, the actively growing tissue just inside the bark. The herbicide needs to be applied as soon after the cut is made as possible so that the cambium cells draw the herbicide in and down to the roots.
We talked, we laughed, we worked together.
In the end, I think we were all surprised at how much we accomplished in less than two hours’ time! Some of us were having so much fun we didn’t want to stop! The interior of our work perimeter looked so much cleaner, clearer, less tangled and truly inspirational.
As we took group photos of the day, we continued laughing and talking about UWIN’s upcoming native plants, flowers and tree sale, and the next Weed Wrangle April 26th, 2025 at the Missisinewa State Park, in Miami County, Indiana.
We’d love to have you come join our fun, and make new friends, while we clear out invasives to make room for new native plants! You can find out more about our upcoming opportunities at: https://bit.ly/UWIN-natives and...
Follow us on Facebook at: UWIN – Upper Wabash Invasives Network
For a full list of Indiana’s Invasive Species that may be lurking in your yard, please visit: https://www.entm.purdue.edu/iisc/invasiveplants.php
Written: 3/31/2025 by Mara Rose- Extension Master Gardener and UWIN Member