Working with garlic mustard plants

May 12, 2004 8:25 PM

Invasive species plant Garlic Mustard .. This spring I harvested over 200 pounds from surrounding property and sent it to the landfill to rot. Has anyone eaten it before or have experience managing this invasive plant?
posted by stbalbach to Food & Drink (4 answers total)

It has spread everywhere here in Mass. It isn't too bad to get rid of though - it spreads by seed, not vegatatively like some of the really bad invasives like bittersweet and japanese knotweed. Hand-pulling seems to work - be sure to get it before it sets seed (as it seems you are doing). It's a biennial so the seeds sprout in the spring, grow into small plants by the fall, and then flower the following spring. If you learn to recognize the small fall plants - they look quite unlike the spring flowering plants but still have the characteristic odor - you can do another round of hand-pulling in the fall.
It's also delicious - pick it in flower and briefly sautee it or just put a few flowers in a salad.
posted by TimeFactor at 8:48 PM on May 12, 2004

BTW, the Nature Conservancy/UC Davis have an excellent Invasive Plants site. Here's their Alliaria page
posted by TimeFactor at 8:55 PM on May 12, 2004

Response by poster: Thanks! Great link tons of info there. Yeah this plant is amazingly prolific it has spread world-wide hopefully it can be turned into a food source as the tonage being grown naturally must rival commercial crops. It seemed a waste to harvest and throw away so much bio material but have to get it off the property because the seed pods last a long time.
posted by stbalbach at 8:02 AM on May 13, 2004

We must import exotic species to eat it !

Tasmanian rabbits, or something. Plus, predators to keep the rabbit population in check. And bigger predators to control those rabbit predators.

I don't have anything else to offer, but I sympathize. I'm at the knotweed invasion epicenter. My backyard looks like Georgia.
posted by troutfishing at 8:57 AM on May 24, 2004