Curt Olson on Nostr: #thintrunktuesday Three years ago we had to relocate due to my job scenario, but we ...

#thintrunktuesday Three years ago we had to relocate due to my job scenario, but we found a really wonderful semi-rural 5 acres in northern minnesota. However, I quickly discovered about 1/3 of it was covered in buckthorn which is really hard to get rid of. All these thin stalks are me going through the woods in a grid patter pulling the trees that are small enough to pull out, ignoring the ones that are too small and numerous (but spending some time on my actual hands and knees going through these areas.) And then the larger stuff chopping off waste/chest high and stripping all the green.
The problem is these things are amazingly good and sending new shoots out the sides and staying alive, so last fall I went through and stripped off all the new shoots ... and in the process found new plants and new areas where it has spread.
It seems overwhelming and impossible, but I think I gave this infestation a major setback last fall, and I'm hopeful that this spring many of these chopped off stalks won't send out new shoots again and will give up.
We have a lot of ground cover wild flowers in this area so I'm hoping the extra light to the forest floor will encourage a carpet of wild flowers in a few weeks. And then I plan to scatter some oak and maple seeds in and around here and maybe plant some more evergreens, and encourage and aspen/birch that want to take off and grow. I'd love to see some fall colors mixed in here in a couple years.
I'm playing the long game here, but I'm much better at brute forcing outdoor projects than doing any kind of indoor projects.