As a lifelong gardener I know the importance of starting to weed early and maintaining during
the growing season. Last year my wife Diane and I discovered that this was also true relative to
the water chestnut that sprout the first week of May and make a large part of the river
unusable by July.
As most of you know, Government funding for weed removal was halted a few years ago. Since
then, C.A.N.O.E has been working a three-pronged approach to halt the spread of the invasive
water chestnut as well as the Fanwort and Milfoil infestation that plagues the lakes district. The
three components of the C.A.N.O.E strategy are 1) Mechanical Harvesting 2) Hand Pulling 3)
Advocating for Government programs.
In 2012 my wife Diane and I started weeding the water chestnut April 30th and through the
season gathered some interesting statistics:
On May 4th 2012 we pulled 1,100 water chestnut seedlings. It took the two of us 4 hours to fill 1
½ baskets. When the seedling is this small, the plant almost always comes up complete. By late
July we found that a full-grown plant could have 6 to 10 chestnut rosettes and we could stuff
about 12 rosettes into a basket and could harvest about 60 baskets in 4 hours working as a
team.
Applying some simple math we realized the 1,100 seedlings we pulled in 4 hours would equal
600 baskets of mature plants in July. That is, what we did in 4 hours in May would take 40
hours in July.
We will start hand-weeding water chestnuts as soon as they are visible -- likely in early May
when they are still below or just starting to breach the surface. Though the water is colder, the
process is much dryer and cleaner than hand-pulling in July. It is also more cost- and
environmental-effective, as a few baskets of seeds can be put out to the street as yard waste
rather than the cost of the dumpster and hauling.
If you are interested in helping to get an early start with this year’s hand-pulling effort, contact
Chuck Cossaboom at 617-244-7997 or cbcoss@yahoo.com.