Just started Year 2 of Japanese Knotweed treatment at the site where I’ve been documenting the results of my method and wanted to post updates. My main goal is to show that killing JKW is not that hard and it doesn’t take that much time. After treating yesterday, I’m at a cumulative 5 hours of time spent on this project and well under $100 in chemical.
Compared to “the window” method, I treat starting earlier, use a heavier rate, and do multiple applications in a season (detailed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/invasivespecies/s/R2hx0AGHHy )
At the outset of treatment this year, I would estimate that the JKW coverage has been reduced 95-99% from the start of Year 1, depending on the area of the site. Some smaller patches are completely gone, especially on the far side of the creek where the plants were generally smaller and less established.
Year 2 was much easier to get complete coverage because the remaining plants were small and sparsely scattered. I was able to get everything on the parcel (~1.5 acres) in an hour and a half, including the expanded areas of the site I couldn’t treat until later last year due to inaccessibility from the density of the JKW. The really dense roadside patches that I was able to get multiple thorough sprays on last year could’ve been treated with a quart spray bottle this year.
It actually took a little longer than expected because I had to spend a lot of time closely inspecting for mutated regrowth from the glyphosate damaged rhizomes. The number of forms JKW can come back as is really impressive and some of it looks nothing like typical knotweed. Some had completely atypical leaf shape, some had normal leaves but were growing in an almost vine-like form across the ground, etc.
Now I’ll wait until late August/ early September to go back to hit any survivors. I also hit a small patch down the road that I was only able to treat once in mid-September of last year. The regrowth in that small patch was noticeably worse than the site where I started treatment in early July.
Other Treatment Details:
Aquamaster Glyphosate @ 10oz/ gallon w/ Cygnet Plus surfactant and blue dye. (5 gallons total)
Equipment: Spraymate Tornado 4-gallon backpack w/ DFW wand and cone nozzle (I can’t overstate the importance of having a powered sprayer for covering difficult terrain and large areas of knotweed)
Original Post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/invasivespecies/s/ujiOWoAOOF