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We are here on the river Nadder just outside Salisbury with a rather impressive infestation
of Himalayan balsam.
As you can see, himalayan balsam can achieve quite a height (3 m) allowing it to disperse
its seed by exploding seed pods.
By growing to such a height and exploding it can disperse its seeds maybe 3-5 m from
the original plant, which can cast into the river and carried on by the flow. Wherever
the water settles in slower areas or floods, new infestations will start.
It is quite late in the summer (August), so unfortunately the seed heads are very well
developed and ripe.
Potentially pulling up the plant will disturb the seed pods, causing them to be released
into the river.
To combat that, this late in the season we remove the seed pods, collect them in bags
and dispose of them at a later date.
It is just a simple process of being very careful with the plant and trying to pull
it over and taking the seed heads off.
Once we have removed all of the seed heads from the whole plant we can just pull it up
from the base and crush it up.
So as you can see for such a large plant, it has a very small root ball. This means
it is really easy to pull up and great for a task for volunteers (involved in Himalayan
picking parties).
Once you have pulled it up, snap it in half, where you get a really satisfying crunch.
Crush it up a couple of times. Then we pile it up on the bank in discrete piles so they
mulch.
It is important to crush them up and stick them in a pile where they have less chance
of regrowing and mulch down into nothing as they are very almost celery-like at the bottom,
and very high water content plants and mulch down very very quickly.