Himalayan balsam may be waist-high or it may be over three metres tall
with stems as thick at your wrist - that's enormous for an annual. It
can blanket whole floodplains. Animals won't eat it.

It usually arrives as a seed: it floats down rivers, lurks in the mud on
walkers' boots, is carefully brought home by children to surprise you by
popping the pods.
If you find it on your patch, don't let it seed. Pull it up and compost
it. If you've bought a place with a lot of it, check your government's
advice on the best way to get rid of it.
[ Section: 1/1 File: z_Balsam02a.jpg UUencoded by: Turnpike Integrated Version 5.02 S ]



sum -r/size 41566/356094 section (from "begin" to "end")
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--
Sue ]

I once bought the seeds from Thompson & Morgan! Took a while to get rid of
the plants when I realised how invasive they were.
But they weren't a problem.
Our soil is very sandy, so it's easy to pull the plants up before they set
seed.
I kept the white ones for a while.
Haven't seen one in our garden for years, so must have done a good job :-)

Grenou

----

"Mad Cow" wrote in message ...

Himalayan balsam may be waist-high or it may be over three metres tall
with stems as thick at your wrist - that's enormous for an annual. It
can blanket whole floodplains. Animals won't eat it.

It usually arrives as a seed: it floats down rivers, lurks in the mud on
walkers' boots, is carefully brought home by children to surprise you by
popping the pods.
If you find it on your patch, don't let it seed. Pull it up and compost
it. If you've bought a place with a lot of it, check your government's
advice on the best way to get rid of it.
[ Section: 1/1 File: z_Balsam02a.jpg UUencoded by: Turnpike Integrated
Version 5.02 S ]








sum -r/size 41566/356094 section (from "begin" to "end")
sum -r/size 23816/258430 entire input file
--
Sue ]

"Mad Cow" wrote

Himalayan balsam may be waist-high or it may be over three metres tall
with stems as thick at your wrist - that's enormous for an annual. It
can blanket whole floodplains. Animals won't eat it.

It usually arrives as a seed: it floats down rivers, lurks in the mud on
walkers' boots, is carefully brought home by children to surprise you by
popping the pods.
If you find it on your patch, don't let it seed. Pull it up and compost
it. If you've bought a place with a lot of it, check your government's
advice on the best way to get rid of it.
[

An obnoxious (but pretty) weed of waterways in our part of the UK together
with a couple of smaller species (yellow) I've seen which are not so
invasive. It grows so quickly it shades out and outcompetes all other wild
plants causing serious loss of habitat for local wildlife.
--
Regards. Bob Hobden.
Posted to this Newsgroup from the W of London, UK

In article , Grenou
iamhere@mostofthetime.? writes
I once bought the seeds from Thompson & Morgan! Took a while to get rid of
the plants when I realised how invasive they were.
But they weren't a problem.
Our soil is very sandy, so it's easy to pull the plants up before they set
seed.
I kept the white ones for a while.
Haven't seen one in our garden for years, so must have done a good job :-)

You're the first person I've known who's bought it, but when I was a
child our parents collected some seeds from the grounds of a stately
home and sowed them in our garden. Like you we realised our mistake
after a couple of years and had to pull them all out.
Tomorrow I'll be with a gang of birdwatchers trying to remove it from
the banks of the River Loddon. It's rather late in the season, I think
some of it will have ripened seeds already.
--
Sue ]

"Mad Cow" wrote in message ...

In article , Grenou
iamhere@mostofthetime.? writes
I once bought the seeds from Thompson & Morgan! Took a while to get rid of
the plants when I realised how invasive they were.
But they weren't a problem.
Our soil is very sandy, so it's easy to pull the plants up before they set
seed.
I kept the white ones for a while.
Haven't seen one in our garden for years, so must have done a good job :-)

You're the first person I've known who's bought it, but when I was a
child our parents collected some seeds from the grounds of a stately
home and sowed them in our garden. Like you we realised our mistake
after a couple of years and had to pull them all out.
Tomorrow I'll be with a gang of birdwatchers trying to remove it from
the banks of the River Loddon. It's rather late in the season, I think
some of it will have ripened seeds already.
--
Sue ]

--------

I think they're different altogether when growing near water, that must be a
bit of a nightmare.
Good luck with that :-)
I hope you'll never have to do that with Japanese knotweed!

Grenou

"Mad Cow" wrote

Grenou
iamhere@mostofthetime.? writes
I once bought the seeds from Thompson & Morgan! Took a while to get rid of
the plants when I realised how invasive they were.
But they weren't a problem.
Our soil is very sandy, so it's easy to pull the plants up before they set
seed.
I kept the white ones for a while.
Haven't seen one in our garden for years, so must have done a good job :-)

You're the first person I've known who's bought it, but when I was a
child our parents collected some seeds from the grounds of a stately
home and sowed them in our garden. Like you we realised our mistake
after a couple of years and had to pull them all out.
Tomorrow I'll be with a gang of birdwatchers trying to remove it from
the banks of the River Loddon. It's rather late in the season, I think
some of it will have ripened seeds already.

What we used to do along the River Mole is to simply walk on them earlier in
the season, crush them under foot. Unfortunately by now they will be so tall
and strong and thickly growing that won't work. As you say I would expect
some to have seeded already especially this year.
--
Regards. Bob Hobden.
Posted to this Newsgroup from the W of London, UK

In article , Bob Hobden
writes

You're the first person I've known who's bought it, but when I was a
child our parents collected some seeds from the grounds of a stately
home and sowed them in our garden. Like you we realised our mistake
after a couple of years and had to pull them all out.
Tomorrow I'll be with a gang of birdwatchers trying to remove it from
the banks of the River Loddon. It's rather late in the season, I think
some of it will have ripened seeds already.

What we used to do along the River Mole is to simply walk on them earlier in
the season, crush them under foot. Unfortunately by now they will be so tall
and strong and thickly growing that won't work. As you say I would expect
some to have seeded already especially this year.

All ours seems to be in places where you can't walk easily - it's wet or
steep or overgrown. I expect people have already eliminated it wherever
they could! We were in time to avoid causing fusillades of ripe seeds.
--
Sue ]