Love to be able to agree with you on the "source" of the lovely shrub Caragana but, like most invasive imports, it has a history rooted in the best of good intentions that pre-dates the rise of the red hoards.

See:

http://www.agr.gc.ca/pfra/shelterbelt/sbchis_e.htm

You might phone and ask them if they have a solution. A sharp chainsaw and some hard work with a pick and shovel, followed by a couple of years of picking out all the new shoots by the roots is all that has ever worked for me.

I'm thinking water bomber loaded with industrial strength Round-Up...

ahhhh, memories. When we lived in Calgary we had Caragana infestation that defied every attempt at control. It's also known as Siberian Peashrub (a cold war remnant?).

My neighbor suggested this stuff...it worked best, although with so many products not being sold anymore, I don't know if it is still available via retail:

Caragana can reproduce sexually from seed and asexually from root suckers. Its ability to reproduce asexually from the root makes it difficult to eradicate using mechanical treatments alone. As Caragana reproduces asexually, eradication measures must be designed to kill both the stem and the root system. Garlon® 4 is a good choice for control because it is a post-emergence herbicide that is selective for woody plants.

Cut stump Treatment: This method of application is recommended for Caragana control because it prevents re-sprouting of cut stumps. A 20 to 30 percent solution of Garlon® 4 can be used for this treatment. When temperatures are between 15 and 25°C, mineral oil can be used as a dilutent. Diesel fuel is not recommended due to its negative effects on the environment and the sprayer. Diesel fuel also decreases the efficacy of the herbicide. This solution can be applied with a low pressure backpack sprayer using a flat fan nozzle. This mixture is used to wet all the freshly cut surfaces. The remaining bark should be sprayed to the groundline (including the root collar), however, the stump should not be sprayed to the point of runoff. The product penetrates the bark layer and is moved throughout the entire plant where it upsets the normal growing process. This control method can be applied at any time, including the winter months, except when snow or water prevent spraying to the ground line. The higher concentrations are required when controlling dormant trees. When herbicides are applied to dormant stems, the herbicide moves through the bark, however there is very little movement within the tree until spring. The higher concentrations insure higher efficacy.

they came from the ukraine . they were planted mostly for a windbreak and a touch of home for immigrants. i think i like their other imports better though , like perogies and cabbage rolls

Don't know where in the yard you are trying to corral it, but I know people in the Qu'Appelle Valley who claim to have tried Round-Up; without the success that they hoped for. As a shelterbelt crop where the (thousands of) seedlings are plowed under before they can take off, it seems to work.
http://www.agr.gc.ca/pfra/shelterbelt/species_e.htm#ros

If it was used as a house hedge, and then allowed to get into the wild in coulees or popular groves, it is invasive as hell and very, very hard to get rid of; as you know only too well. I can see where it might cause you to think of Tommy, and I am afraid it is back to the pick and shovel...

My Grandmother had a hedge along the side of her house in Brandon. It occurs to me know that she hated the stuff too. But since the gate at the side of the her house was where we came and went from I have only fond memories. But then I never had to trim it or for that matter get involved with it in any other way. Other than you knew you had arrived at Grandma's because there was the Caragana.

And let's not forget the Caragana Beetle! One year they were so prevalent my newspaper published a ghost image of a huge bug on the front page.

kate.... I know you righties can't help yourselves, but you remind me of a character in Vonnegut's "Mother Night", the Reverend Doctor Lionel Jason David Jones, DDS.,DD...publisher of The Right Christian Minuteman, who was drummed out of dental school because regardless the subject of his examination papers, "Jones managed to go from it to a theory that was all his own-that the teeth of Jews and Negroes proved beyond all question that both groups were degenerate."
All roads to hell(especially those lined with caraganas) lead to St.Tommy and the evil socialists. Attempting to caricature this stuff would be an exersise in redundancy.

The pothead dilligently pokes it's head out of it's hole to defend the hapless Caragana

The caragana,like the right-wing blogger, has it's place in the great scheme of things.

Came here from Siberia? Yes.......but how did they get THERE? Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away....

"All roads to hell(especially those lined with caraganas) lead to St.Tommy and the evil socialists. Attempting to caricature this stuff would be an exersise in redundancy."

Are you actually so obtuse you didn't realize she was kidding?
It's amazing how socialism destroys the sense of humour along with the intellect. BTW, it's spelled exercise.

RoundUp won't work. Caraganas drink it like fertilizer.

We've had good luck by chopping them off,letting them leaf out again, and then spraying the new leaves with whatever the farm chemical equivalent to Total WipeOut is that's found in garden centres. Deader than doornails.

I think the Tommy Douglas analogy is apt. What may have seemed like a good idea at the time grows into an enormous monster that keeps us in (botanical) bondage for generations to come.

The curse of the caragana definitely unites the people of the prairies. We soldier on. :)

A pox on those who plant wolf willow as well. Its suckers so bad, you would think there liberal lobbists.

blues rune... I do indeed realize she was kidding, but are you so obtuse you didn't realize that, even in jest, the right-wing cannot refrain from their trite, partisan observations.
Thanks for the spelling lesson. One can only aspire to your orthographical perfection.

I have found that most shrubs cannot withstand the use of goats. They will strip the bark off trees. There is a reason they will turn brushland into desert. Beware though, they can open gates, leap small buildings in a single bound

10 yrs ago our neighbor sprayed his crops,with the wind blowing on our caraganas. Finished them off completely. Also took the apple trees and strawberries.

Once summer, back in my teens, I took out a whole row from our farm's shelterbelt. My dad put a circular-saw blade on a 2-stroke week-wacker. It's really a two-person job... one to pull the tree over, the other cuts it real low to the ground. Watch that the blade doesn't catch and spin you around! Of course,this was just to manage the growth, it all grew back.

This might be an old wives tale, but I heard that if you flood the soil, and keep it flooded for three days, caragana will die.

How true. Just when you think they might be dead and gone, they are voted as the Greatest Canadian Shrub, and the sucker Shirley shows up from the States.

Caragana, like "Russian olive' were deliberatly brought to the Prairies by government agencies to help homesteaders grow shelterbelts rapidly. They were selected because of similarities of soil and climate to Siberia and the steppes. I don't much like caragana either - someone suggested I plant it at my country place, and I said 'no way" - ditto for Russian olive, Amur maple - and blue spruce and scots pine for that matter. I *would* plant wolf willow, though.

Kate seems Bruce is on to something with Garlon 4, I've seen Fencerow used (same chemical different name) on ditch banks a few years ago, and it pretty well killed anything of the woody variety.
However I don't know the availability of it today either.
Heres a dated link, but it might be helpfull-

http://www.pmra-arla.gc.ca/english/pdf/pacr/pacr2004-37-e.pdf

Sorry, Kate, being a city slicker, I have no suggestions about your caragana. But now that I've read all of the posts about it, I'm curious about what it looks like...

For new kid on the block, this is what happens when you google it. Can anyone confirm?

http://www.boga.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/html/Caragana.arborescens.ja.JPG

Andy

So if Caragana was brought here intentionally, for a shelterbelt, that would be like intoducing rabbits to Australia? and who do we have to thank then... it is PFRA. "thanks guys" ... another government program run amok. but without Tommy Douglas to blame here, we all know the feds have their share of disasters...
when do we start to import the Caragana Eating Beavers from Argentina?

I have had my share of removing them having tried both chemical and then pulling out shoots and roots in the next year, it isn't efficient, but I think "sweat" kills them too... ( I know, "wrong answer")

The caragana is even more tenacious and indestructable than the Canadian Wheat Board. You just can't get rid of it Kate. Give up already.

At age 90 my Dad declared war on a row of the stuff. He hacked it down with his electric chain saw and for three years sprayed any green shoot of it with a quart or so ( I exagerate only slightly) of Roundup. On the fourth year of conflict both he and the row of caragana expired. To this day one of my great regrets is that he didn't realize he had won. He left us in early May. Had he lived only a few more weeks the victory might have spurred him on to tackle yet another row. Who knows?

My father - who has a horticultural degree and much experience in Saskatchewan landscaping - says that the carragana was introduced because, in large part - for its drought intolerence. The way to kill it is to over-water it. Something that is hard to do on the prairies. I would try stressing it - by cutting it back and/or applying a herbicide - and then adding water - lots and lots of it. Hope you have a well.

Oops - that should have been "drought tolerence" and not "intolerence".

I took out a row with a back hoe. Had to make sure I gathered up roots, etc and finshed any new growth the next year with ordiary "brush" herbicide(minor touch-up stuff).

Damn things attract lots of bees too!

ha geez kate , you gotta be more careful with them zoomers . damn amazing how so many of them left wing liberal ndp commie moonbats(gotta love that expression ) got no sense of ha ha or a lot of other things, apart from bending over backwards ( or forwards depending on whoever whines the loudest ) geezuz . tommy caragana seed was runnin all over manitoba , saskatchewan an eastern alberta in the middle of the night seeding millions of seeds when nobody was lookin. actually i think it was a long term conspiracy . if he planted enough of them around farmsteads and they grew thick and high enough nobody could see what the next twenty ndp governments weren't doing . funny how so many left europe to get away from communism, and then they and their offspring keep electing more communist governments . i need more beer. maybe i oughta try vodka

Screw the "facts"! I blame Tommy Douglas! Had trouble with my 1967 Cougar this afternoon, Tommy was alive in 1967, coincidence? I think not!
Caragana's grow in the ground, TOMMY IS IN THE GROUND, coincidence?
I might have gone a little too far with the second conspiracy...

ya might have but the sad thing is somebodys gonna take you serious

Arsnic works..try it you would be surprised.

Caragana hedges grow to be a wild and tunnel filled paradise for kids - because nothing will grow under the tangled mass of branches - it becomes a wonderful maze of playhouse caves with tunnels all through. It is a cool, dark place to play on a summer day. The little pea-shaped seeds make gread "food". The only way in was by stooping down (or being young enough that you could just walk in) to get into the "inside" of the hedge. This ensured that no grownups would crash the party. I have great memories of playing in the caragana hedges.

Every abandoned farmsite out here in the west has the standard caragana hedge between the site and the road - usually so overgrown and wily that it blocks out whatever is behind it.

As for getting rid of it - anything that can withstand decades of prairie winters and droughty summers guarding a farmsite long abandoned will be a bugger that's for sure!

Good luck Kate!

Kate, I think you should begin a new practice, i.e. the best - as in humourous - award in some comments thread. Although what strikes one's funny bone may not be the same for all, the wit of some of your posters deserves to be highlighted.

My vote's in for:
"How true. Just when you think they might be dead and gone, they are voted as the Greatest Canadian Shrub, and the sucker Shirley shows up from the States."

Posted by BDT at April 15, 2006 09:59 PM

Thanks for the chuckle.

Caragana and Lilac are the two-most hated hardwoods on my list.
But they don't come close to Goatweed in terms of loathing from me.

It's not nice to mess with mother nature.

Andy, you got it;)

I have mixed feelings on this shrub.

Yes, it is tough and if planted in the wrong place, years down the road, (oh boy) ...your work is cut out for you.

I recall my father taking a tractor and bucket and chains to some sections over the years...with real intent, I might add, only to finally succumb to the intent of the lowly shrub to hold fast;)

Repeated blood, sweat, and tears are required to remove new growth.

If anything, trimming them of all lower branches, leaving the overhead umbrella only, seems to over time weaken them...depends on how much time *you* have.

Running livestock in with them, will weaken them too, but only weaken. Rooting pigs get the idea faster, but hardly an option for the city...or is it...

Using some products not intended for killing plant life, could well stay in the ground and then nothing will grow...

The memories are sweet, though, of munching on the flowers, listening to the snapping seed pods as they ripen, firing the seeds to parts unknown.

As a windbreak and snowfence, they were great....well,until new ideas for the yard and garden take hold;)

Good luck.

Better be careful in blapheming those left-wing Gods. The maryjane's of the world might just start getting all 'Islamic' on your behind.

Thanks Andy (12:05 a.m., Easter morning): I looked it up using the link you furnished--and PLEASE forgive me, all of you and your families who have been trying to eradicate this more-than-peskey Caraguna shrub for years: The bean pods are ugly, but and if it wasn't for them, the foliage is quite pretty: You can kick me. Sorry.

PS--Good luck, Kate! Maybe the arsenic will work.

PPS--I won't ask Tommy Douglas' prayers...

That "pretty foliage" comes complete with thorns.

Hey Marg (speaking of horticultural degrees) - have you planted this year's crop of sacrificial tomatoes yet?

Remember, the pods make a wonderful whistle

Re: "That 'pretty foliage' comes complete with thorns":

Oh.

Sorry again, Kate!

Thought youze might like this; from a baseball sight I frequent: "Homeruns are up because the ball is flying farther due to warmer weather. The warmer weather is caused by global warming, which is caused by a worldwide drop in the number of pirates (not the Pittsburgh kind)." There's even a graph, which is a picture, which is worth a thousand words.

battersbox.ca; TDIB: Sunday, April 16th, in the comment section.

Can't find that comment, jason - is that the right thread?

I'm pretty sure all the caragana et al planting pre-dates Tommy Douglas and the PFRA.

I feel the same way about peonies as some do about caragana. Damn near impossible to get rid of it (purple loostrife is another story, too)

I don't mind lilacs, but I'd never plant them, either. Prefer high bush cranberry, buffaloberry, red osier dogwood, potentilla for my shrubbery.

No contoneaster, either.

Of course I have planted those sacrifical tomatoes - it's April! They are already out in the greenhouse but not yet in the ground. Those tomatoes made gallons of tomato juice to mix with beer and vodka.

I still have that bag in the freezer I forgot to give you in your Fall CARE package.

You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think.

Kate
I trust that if you decide to cut the hedge down you will wait till next year. The contractors were busy bulldozing trees last week for highway twinning as there is a regulation it must be done by April 15 in case a bird nests in the hedge or tree
Also roads can't be built until July 1st becase of fish spawning in the ditches. Carrot river area farmers better diversify with no raods until fall.
Better check your caraganas for caviar.
The large fat branches should be saved for wood turning. They make beautiful bowls.