I'm dilly-dallying on doing a small (but annoying) water repair, so I'm sharing what I've been doing the last few days: clearing a large area of this ding dang vine.

It covers everything, grows in 0 soil, chokes other plants, crawls *under* other plants, puts down roots at every node, breaks very easily (so you can't really tug on it and get the whole string), the root breaks easily (I've started using my garden knife to get the roots out), has a pretty strong root given how delicate the vine is, comes back from a single node, every node can put out vines in multiple directions, and if you leave it in a pile, it'll grow back.

And the worst part? I introduced it myself 😭😭😭😭. I've been battling it for years, and every time I clear an area, i have to stay on top of it because there are inevitably pieces I missed.

It's a nitrogen fixer, so you'd think it would be acceptable, but it is not. I have other aggressive vines that are extremely difficult to kill, but this one is the most sneaky and annoying.

Pic 1: kitten with a patch of vine
Pic 2: baby vine growing from bean
Pic 3: example of its robust root
Pic 4: this is me gently tugging on a vine to see where it connects to the ground. This goes into a pile of rotting coconuts that is being used for planting. This is almost certainly how I introduced the vine - from truckloads of these old coconuts I got from a former friend's place several years ago. The vines love to put their roots into the rotting parts of the coconuts. And that's why you should always be very careful about what plant material you bring to your place! I was ignorant and I brought an entirely new pest to my place.

#plants #weeds #gardening #VineGang #hawaii #InvasiveSpecies

Friends, don't let weeds grow over the tarps you laid out previously to suppress weeds 😭😭😭. These wedelia are no joke. There is a THICK mat of them over the old tarp.

#gardening #plastic #weeds #hawaii #VineGang

Check out this absolutely phenomenal friend I encountered on the path to onomea bay, on Hawai'i Island.

It's aristolochia grandiflora, and although Wikipedia says it should smell like rotting meat, I detected no smell.

Video here: https://youtube.com/shorts/YDl-bSr2p1c

#plants #flowers #Bloomscrolling #hawaii #VineGang

Friends, update on my vine containment situation (see this post: https://regenerate.social/@mk30/113914459940010625 )

the vines mostly emanate from one area and spread out in all directions. i have it contained on a couple sides, but in some areas, i don't even know how far it expands (because it goes into an overgrown area).

my current plan is to figure out the extents of its spread, hopefully develop a perimeter, and once i've cut it off on all sides, gradually shrink the circle. all while keeping an eye on any new sprouts.

i made some good progress yesterday, with a lot of crawling under the brush. luckily it doesn't seem like it penetrated much into a very thickly-overgrown area on the east side of our lot. it spread the most in disturbed areas, so i'm doing a precision approach - letting the overgrown areas stay overgrown and pulling up just this vine. the presence of other powerful weeds seems to stop this one somewhat, so i don't want to clear completely.

anyway, today it was raining all day, so no vine work. but i feel bit better having determined the "edge" of it on at least one side yesterday.

#VineGang #gardening #hawaii

Friends, *I'm* the one who brought this deeply annoying, invasive, and aggressive vine to my place. I'm pretty certain I know how: it was probably in some coconuts I brought in from an ex-friend's property for use as mulch (I remember these vines growing amongst the coconuts at his place).

And now it's a huge problem. It grows so fast and covers everything and even if you get most of it in an area, it'll come back from the tiniest pieces. and it sends out vines underneath a bunch of other plants and puts up leaves where it finds an opening. The vine breaks very easily, so pieces of it easily remain in the soil. I honestly am not even sure everywhere that it's vined to at this point, and I just have to keep cleaning and cleaning till I can hopefully at least contain it.

It's fabaceae, and if it wasn't so aggressive in covering everything, it might even be tolerable. But it's very aggressive and since we don't have freezing temps, it'll just keep going...

It pains me so much to know that I, through my own ignorance and carelessness, brought this thing to my place, and now it hurts my other plants and is a huge problem for me - a problem I may not be able to contain.

Before I got here, this horrible invasive wasn't here...and now it is and I did it. So I work on it a bit at a time, and hopefully I'll eventually get rid of it and go back to zero. If I'm lucky.

#InvasiveSpecies #kuleana #hawaii #plants #gardening #environment #ecology #VineGang

My favorite kind of food: the kind that appears on the path next to the house, ready to eat 😁.

This is a purple lilikoi (passion fruit) and it fell off a vine that's growing above that area. It comes in a conveniently bug-proof hard shell, and there's no need to wash it (because one only eats the insides).

#fruit #gardening #homestead #plants #tropical #hawaii #VineGang

have you ever had an orange/jamaican lilikoi (passiflora laurifolia)?

they're quite different from yellow/purple passionfruit. the shell is soft-ish. the inside is mild & perfumed. not sour at all.

they have beautiful purple flowers & cover everything (like other passionfruit). it seems like the flowers & fruits only occur on the "outside" of the plant curtain, so maybe i should thin it out a bit to get more fruit..

#plants @plants #tropicalAg #fruit #gardening #VineGang #vines

#ForestForensics #plants @plants

can you guess this vine with heart-shaped leaves?

hints:

* it has tiny, sharp thorns along the stem.
* it is not sweet potato.
* it is growing in a tropical wet climate on hawai'i island

#vines #VineGang

this visually-confusing scene shows vine-on-vine action: lilikoi (passionfruit) vine crosses horizontally.

climbing vertically, and holding on to the lilikoi vine, are some water spinach plants (which, although they are considered water plants, do indeed climb as well!).

on the left is an unripe lilikoi hanging from a different section of that same lilikoi plant. so in this case, the lilikoi vine is acting as a trellis for the water spinach!

#gardening #plants #VineGang #tropicalAg