Rhododendrons And Me Part 2

After last week's complete annihilation of a large patch of rhododendron via various loud and dangerous tools, we return for another bash. As I mentioned last week, rhododendron is basically raw evil in plant form and, unfortunately, going through the woods and cutting every single little bit of rhodo is not enough to actually kill it. Oh, no. Cut it all to the ground and it will start to sprout again.

However, the good news is that, when it starts sprouting again, you can hit it with weed killer. Cover fully grown rhododendron with weed killer and it will pretty much laugh at you, then carry on spreading. It's leaves have a waxy coating, almost as if it evolved specifically to defend itself against a back pack sprayer. However, when it is young, it is still vulnerable and so the plan is: cut, then hit.

We'd cut it last week, which is a bit early to start regrowing, even for rhodo. Luckily, we had one that we'd prepared earlier, or at least had been cut a few years before and was now regrown up to about waist height. This made for a nice bed of spiky sticks to walk on, which wasn't ideal if you're carrying 15 litres on your back.

The pesticide in question was roundup, which works by screwing up the plant's ability to photosynthesise, which is mixed with a sticky liquid to make it stay on the leaves and a wonderful blue dye that was there so that you could tell which bits you'd hit and which you hadn't, and which, despite wearing white overalls, gloves and boots, still managed to get all over your face and body. All of this was mixed with water in a big 15l tank, that you hauled onto your back and then proceeded to crash round the woods, on the thick matt of dead rhododendron, creating what we hoped to be new patches of dead rhododendron.

This job is in no way finished, there is a lot more to do. Hopefully, coming back to the same woods in another week's time, the fruits of our efforts will be more obvious. Hopefully, the damn stuff will be actually dead by the time we're finished, and the woods will be able to flourish to their full.