Another noxious weed pulling effort on Candy Mountain is planned for this coming Sunday. The weather forecast is looking more favorable with reduced temperatures and the smoke out of the area. Yellow Star Thistle is in full bloom and starting to set seed. The volunteer crews are trying to prevent any seed formation and dispersal this year. We are still finding new patches and needing to return to previously weeded patches for follow up weeding. We could use additional crew members for a short while longer! Although a few mature plants are starting to drop small amounts of seed, we feel it still valuable to continue removing as many plants as possible. It will show a huge benefit next year on the reduced populations of new plants to deal with in currently infested areas, and will have mostly stopped the spread of the noxious weeds to new areas.

The Star Thistle patches are now becoming more separated and we are seeing more isolated plants or small groups of plants. The work now for the crews will involve more walking and searching on the rest of the Candy Mountain Preserve and less giant patches to pull. However, crews will need to revisit the areas of heavy infestation that were already weeded because new plants are now showing themselves and blooming. We will also need to walk over the areas that were spot sprayed earlier this spring. We are finding plants that were missed by the spray and others that got the tops burned out but still producing seed on the lower branches.

SO, in summary —– we are feeling optimistic about the noxious weed control progress made to date (thank you volunteers). We estimate that 1 or 2 more weeding sessions will be needed to finish the project for this summer, depending on size of crews. We will plan to survey the Candy Mt. Preserve later this Fall and decide if any spraying is warranted.

When: Sunday September 2nd, 2018
Meet at: Candy Mountain Trail-head parking lot, off Dallas Rd. on PR 669 Rd. Address is 71004 E. 669 PR N.E.
Time: 7:00 – 10:00 am, but feel free to join us for any other time-frame that fits your schedule. Dave Beach will meet volunteers arriving at 7 am in the parking lot.
Duties: Hand pulling Yellow Star Thistle plants ranging in size from small single plants to larger branched plants, both already blooming and developing seed — along with the dreaded spikes. We will bag and remove all plants at this stage of development.
Tools & Clothing: Bring good strong gloves! Long sleeved shirts and long pants are recommended. The thorny spikes just beneath the blooms are making their appearance on most of the plants, so puncture and scratch protection is helpful. Generally, just pulling the plants has proven to be the most practical method of removal, but small pruning clippers can help on the few larger mature plants.
Work location: Most of the Yellow Star Thistle work is still approximately 3/4 mile up the trail on the north slope, facing West Richland. If you don’t meet up with the group in the parking lot, hike on up and look for us down-slope from the first big switchback-turn on the trail. You will be looking down on the West Richland water storage tank. If no volunteers are in site, just walk downhill until you find Yellow Star Thistle plants — pull and bag them! At this stage, volunteers will be ranging over larger areas so might not be immediately visible. Terrain is sloped and uneven — sturdy boots recommended.

Please forward this notice to anyone else you think might be interested. For those who might not be experts at knowing the difference between noxious weeds and native plants, we will give guidance.
Reply to [email protected] so we have an idea who to be looking for, or just show up with your gloves, sun protection, drinking water, snacks and find us. Since we are working some distance from the trail-head and are constantly moving along, having a small back-pack or fanny-pack is useful to carry your “stuff”. If you have some plastic grocery bags, bring them along for the blooming plants and we will have larger garbage bags to collect in. See you on the mountain in the cool morning air!