Our team enjoyed the BBQ at the end of the last working B. It’s always pleasant to relax together over a meal under the beautiful trees at the reserve. Apart from the general chit chat inevitably we discuss plans for the future work of weed eradication.

The Removal of Brier Bushes and Blackberries

We have to regain control of the top quarter (nearest hospital & roadside) where the sweet briar and blackberry are now well established and have started forming thickets. In the rest of the reserve there are outbreaks which need to be knocked on the head before they too get like the top corner

As land managers we have a duty to control these plants.

Adams Lead was gifted Grazon from MWRC specifically for the sweet briar and blackberry last October when they visited Adams Lead (for a field day).

Grazon needs active growing leaves & temp < 25 so early-spring is the best time to target the sweet briar and blackberry as they’ll have lots of fresh growth. Summer is too hot, there might be some leaf growth in autumn but there wasn’t any this year. No leaves at all in winter. It’s a pretty narrow window of opportunity.

Both plants are notorious for their difficulty to remove using mechanical methods alone. (Also in this area the ground is very uneven due to the diggings and mullock heaps left over from when it was a gold mining Lead belonging to R. Adams)

More about the plants at:

http://weeds.dpi.nsw.gov.au/Weeds/Details/18
http://weeds.dpi.nsw.gov.au/Weeds/Details/137

So considering the resources we have, the area we have to manage and the nature of the plants; we have very few options to control these plants effectively as we are required to do.

During Spring 2017 we plan to use two methods to attack these unwanted plants. One is to carefully spot spray & cut and paint using traditional chemicals and in another area apply organic natural spray to individual plants where there a small outbreaks. We will keep a photographic record to measure the effectiveness of both methods.