Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction What did you do at your pond today?

No tumbleweeds AND no cedars!

Do you only have pleasant things growing on your property?

Pretty much, I have to look long and hard to find a cedar on my place to make a mock scrape out of for the deer in the fall, and Ive never seen a tumble weed on my place, I don't think, I don't know what they look like. would a multiflora rose bush serve the same purpose?

Well, we DO have a nice invasive infestation of Asian Bittersweet.

Our tree guy bid a mere $40k to get rid of it.

Well that sucks.

However, I am pretty sure Al's goats would take care of that stuff for a mere $20k.

Only if they can climb trees (like about 50' high).

I'm prepared to battle it to a draw in my spare time.

Jesus Theo, that's crazy. Are there power lines or buildings close by that would require a bucket truck to cut it down?

Does your state dept of conservation have a forestry division? I’ve been working with my county agent. We’ve had a guy in to remove all the multifloral rose and autumn olive. Over in the timber he’s cut all the maple and ironwood. Timber Stand Improvement is paid for by the state. My share will be less than $500. It should really help with deer and turkey populations. I have to admit, it doesn’t look too good right now. I didn’t realize how many maples I had. They are laying everywhere.

FYI, Asian Bittersweet (wikipedia article) is a vine that grows fairly fast, produces a shipload of berries that birds (and maybe arboreal mammals - ???) love to eat to spread it's seeds, and does a pretty good job of strangling trees. We have one fence row of trees in between two of our leased row crop fields where the Bittersweet pretty much completely covers the trees that grew there. I'll never be able to eliminate it, as it would be constantly reseeded from the vines growing in the 7 figure subdivision to the North of our farm (built amid what I swear is the ugliest woods in Ohio). So I do my best to keep it from ruining any good trees that it hasn't already engulfed, as well as keeping it off woven wire fences.

Ohio has no equivalent program that we know of.

Oh, BTW, glyphosate just pisses it off. We do have one herbicide that is effective on it (I can't remember the name of the top of my head), which helps with the fence rows, but is rather hard to spray way up in trees.

I have some old poison ivy vines as thick as my wrist going up some of my trees. I can't spray the leaves so I have to cut the stems. However, my optimal herbicide for foliar spraying also works well on the cut stems.

I did read up on Asian Bittersweet. Triclopyr is one of the preferred herbicides, and the product labels says it can be applied directly to cut stems/trunks. (If you are having good success with a different herbicide, you might check the label and see if it also works on cut stems.)

If you have some nice trees you need to save, perhaps you could try cutting and treating some stems at ground level? If you don't get a 100% kill rate, you might try experimenting with determining the optimum time of year for treatments. For my trees that sucker from the roots (like your Bittersweet), my best kill rate is to treat in the fall when the sap is moving back down to the roots.

Good luck killing your nasty invasives!

Theo, I was gonna throw out Remedy and an oil based surfactant, which works fine for us, but the Bittersweet sounds much worse. A triclopyr/glyphosate cocktail is all I've seen recommended.

Rod, unfortunately my wife's mean little goat June, my avatar, isn't with us anymore. Short story was she was having some serious issues so we had a mobile horse Dr do an ultrasound, and it turned out she had a large tumor. I did what was right, put her down, and buried her under a huge oak tree on our property. So, Luke moved in.

Since goats are herd animals, we had to get another one PDQ because our other goat didn't need to be alone. We got with the lady we had originally bought ours from, and she had 3 Wethers at her place. 2 were 2yo, and raised there, and the 3rd was 5yo and was abandoned by owners who had lost most of their pasture goats do to coyote kills. IIRC, all the abandoned goats were taken, all but Luke. We saw him, got the story, and immediately took him home with us. His head is banana shaped, his eyes aren't level so his vision is poor, and he has a NASCAR horn. The horn turns left. He was scared, solitary, and didn't seem to have close human interaction before. It took us 3-4 weeks with tons of effort, but we fixed that. He now goes on daily walks with my wife and our other goat. Yes, now he's spoiled rotten and prefers vanilla wafers for treats.

Luke

Al, sorry to hear you lost June.

OTOH, with Luke's looks, it's a good thing he has such a great personality! He probably had a rough time when he went out on blind dates with the girl goats.

You might have misnamed that goat, shoulda called him earnhardt, hes definately a nascar goat, if he follows his nose and or his horn, he will always be going in left circles.

Who knew what a big softie Dreamboat Annie/Al was....

Took a drone pic yesterday. Was surprised at the color of the water. But I’m thinking that may be the low quality camera on a cheap drone. Haha!
Another benefit of a drone pic, is that the pond doesn’t look as low as it is.. Ha!

It looks a bit like a bloom.

My hatchery pond water is warming up, and looks the same right now.

I do have a soft spot for the challenged.

Like a young man who wanted to start a fountain business??

I must have had the flu

Went out to the pond and fished for about two hours. Caught 20 LMB on spinnerbaits. The LMB were hanging around the rip rap and some shallow ledges.

Jealous of the LMB catching. Did manage to set the fish feeder and plant (3) Kanza Pecans though. Was a beautiful day outside and I was happy to get to enjoy some of it.

After the few days or 'early' feeding, we had snow and cold temps yesterday in Western PA.

Hope to resume feeding on Tuesday.

Yep, I'm going pond fishing Tues afternoon. Maybe I'll catch something interesting.

Is this a purely scientific venture, or is the reason just for fun?

Even when swamped at work, we all need to ensure we still take a little time to do the latter!

Pulled two more welfare eaters from my pond yesterday evening. In a pond that's lousy with <3" BG these slackers had nothing but Optimal in their bellies.
These two make ten harvested of the twenty that were stocked. They are a hoot to catch, but I'm not going to restock them when these are gone.
It's not much fun catching BG and YP on a medium heavy rod that's rigged with 30lb braided line, and it's less fun trying to keep these crazy things from
running into the brush when I hook one on a lightweight rig while fishing for BG/YP.

20" 4.0lb 92.5% rW
21" 4.7lb 93.25% rW