For those of you that don't live in the Southern United States... kudzu is like English ivy on steroids. It's an invasive vine that grows about a foot a day killing everything in its path. In the late summer kudzu has beautiful purple flowers similar to wisteria blooms but that's all it's good for in the eyes of most Southerners. Supposedly you can eat its leaves, make baskets out of its vines and other miscellaneous purposes desperate people have spent crazy amounts of time trying to find uses for a nuisance of a weed... Most of us though, spend a crap ton of time trying to kill it. I've read up on what to do, which methods might or might not work... and the number one thing all articles say is that you've got to find the root crown and cut it off from the roots. Simple right? I'm gonna need y'all to look at exhibit one.. 'The Cut'...
The Cut isn't a small 'cut' like the picture the name brings to your mind when you hear it. It is the portion of land in my back yard that once held part of the 102 mile Southern Railroad Line. This line became defunct in 1948 when they paved the street that our house is on. Sometime in the past 70 years the rail ties were removed and all that was left was the indentation in the property through which the trains traveled... "The Cut". Some people have filled their 'cuts', others haven't. Our's isn't filled but our plan is to kill the vegetation in "The Cut" and then fill it. It's a huge undertaking considering it spans the majority of our back 418' of property and is approximately 15-20' wide. You do the math but it's something like 1/10th of an acre.
Now consider that size and the fact that the property has been empty for 2 years. The homeowner behind us has been putting herbicides on it- we could tell when we bought the farm that someone had done so as the kudzu wasn't as rampant as it could have been. That doesn't kill it completely though, it just stops the current growth. You still have to find the crown. So you still have to get under that growth (remove it) to get to the root of the problem... Not to mention there's 5 acres next to us that is undeveloped... The kudzu on that property needs to be controlled too. The scope of this undertaking is almost larger than the house. In the house I see a defined time line that should take a year. The kudzu.. it's probably going to be a 2-3 year battle... This years battle will be the most arduous though... we need to drop a nuclear bomb (herbicides) on it then bring tanks (commercial sized bush hogs) to tear up the land and clear it. Then maybe, just maybe we can find those naughty little root crowns and lop off their heads.
Now if we already lived on the property we could get goats and have them graze on the kudzu. Cherie's goats were thrilled when we brought them over for our project yesterday. They acted like I would if someone was throwing boxes of See's and Godiva in front of me... Almost a jump for joy but more of a 'here, hold my beer' and they went to work eating what we were pulling. So yeah, that could work but it needs frequent grazing over 3 to 4 years to ruin stands... I told Cherie to grab a drink and a book, pull up a chair and bring her goats over daily while she's on her medical leave... Let them do the work... and she called the neighbor that has a bush hog to see what he can do for us. He told her to get an industrial bush hog as his was too small for the task. So... I've left two containers of herbicide in Cherie's shed for Bill to dump on the Kudzu while I'm gone... and Bill has a number for a company he needs to get a hold of asap as the kudzu is already creeping onto our cleared property.Are you tired yet? I am and I've only just started grasping the full scope of this part of our farm beautification process. In the mean time, I've ordered 4 different type of native blueberries, 2 pawpaw and 2 fig trees... we'll get those mid September... we should be ready to plant those then... right?
Hope you all are having a blessed beginning of summer... With love from our farm... xoxo
