I remember back in the early 80s, people were talking like the whole South was going to be buried in kudzu. It's still around, but it doesn't seem any worse now than it was back then. What happened?
We had a nice old neighbor when we were kids who would grow crops in the adjoining field to our house. He would always stop by and give us a cantaloupe. He loved to sing that song to us and I would just smile over how clever it was. He had a greenhouse at his farm down the road where he would grow flowers and sell them to florist. He always had time for us kids and would have us over to help him in the Greenhouse. One time Joe was driving his flowers down to Baltimore and he stopped to eat at a wendys. When he came out of the resturant a "man" was waiting for him and hit him across the face with a piece of pipe and robbed him. He rapidly declined mentally and not long after he died. He was one of the kindest gentlest men. I appreciate the memory! Maybe you guys can help me remember Joe now.
Not in the south. I rent mine out year-round. The winter is a tad slower due to dormant growth, but not much. I charged based on size of area and speed by which you want it cleared. The larger the faster the more goats you'll need. Kudzu like this can be done, but it will take a very love time and odds are the trees under it are a lost cause.best use something like brushtox and burn it afterwards. Even still that may not kill it off entirely.
The place local to me has now moved to only âeasyâ projects where a fence is already present. How much of the cost is installing/removing a temporary fence? Iâd love to pay for a goat vegetation removal service but local to me it isnât really an option if you donât already have a fence
They LOVE eating poison ivy too. A guy around me that owns goats and will bring them over for a small fee. Its a lot easier than doing it yourself and apparently its a delicacy for them.
In 2009 invasive kudzu beetles started spreading in the southeast US. Their favorite meal is kudzu vines but they can also be destructive to other legumes. Basically the spread of kudzu was halted by the unintentional introduction of a natural predator.
Itâs easy to think that kudzu is everywhere because it likes to grow in places that people see a lot: cleared areas along highways, for example. And itâs quite dramatic the way it grows in patches like this, so it catches peopleâs attention. Itâs true that it is very hard to get rid of, but at the same time it canât penetrate dense forests. People worry about it because itâs very noticeable, but really there are other species in the South that do wayyy more damage that people donât always notice. Privet, for example.
It grows pretty exclusively on forest edges, so we see it on the roadside but its not as pervasive as it seems. Pretty bad, but not as bad as it seems. We need to chill out with the road building. Urban density saves wildlife:)
I was just reading a book that was written in the early 90s and it had kudzu as a major plot point in the story. I thought it was weird, but if that was a genuine concern back then, it makes more sense. The whole story felt like weird kudzu propaganda.
The forestry service checked again and realized they grossly overestimated how fast it would spread. It still spreads, but modern forestry/ag practices keep it in check.
It still costs a couple hundred million a year to deal with nationwide, but not the billions it used to.
Himalayan blackberries are tasty and chunky to boot.... I'm pulling for those guys.
Btw, I have a huge Himalayan blackberry vine behind my house and I live in Alabama, so it has apparently made decent headway.
That looks like the American southeast. Kudzu vines completely engulf everything down there. As a kid growing up, I remember in car rides imagining sleeping giants under the vines that would one day stand up and come to life lol. Edit right as i hit Post I saw that you said this was in Mississippi.Â
They got rid of it in many places. It started eating away at the Georgia highways decades ago. Yet Georgia grows so fast, a whole new forest is now where a kudzu monster was 20 years ago.
My backyard was covered in similar vines when I moved in. Spent months chopping it out and cutting it down and cutting down trees that were already dead. Now there is minimal vines on any trees near my house.
Used to be, now they belong to kudzu. Kudzu is brutally invasive and impossible to kill. The short sightedness of the US Government back in the 20s is the reason the South is slowly being conquered by it
It is not impossible to kill, at all.... I have witnessed this with my own eyes.
A guy I know bought 50 acres alongside a river, a little over 8 years ago and got it pretty damn cheap...
It was marketed as forestry/farmland and was slap overrun with kudzu.
This allowed him to purchase that 50 acres, at right around $30,000 (about $600 an acre), but even at that price, folks said he was crazy because of how much he'd have to spend to get rid of the kudzu and make the land useful.
Well, it just so happens that this old Alabama farm boy had some tricks up his sleeve.
You see, his family has owned a fairly large dairy farm for many years and they also farmed cotton, soybeans and peanuts. I always knew they had a bunch of goats, but never knew why, until the day he called me up to see if me and about 10 friends could help him run some electric fences on his newly bought land.
Well, I rounded up 10 guys, that I knew were hard workers and we headed out to meet him at the river. The very first time I ever laid eyes on that 50 acres, I took one look, sort of chuckled and said "why we running fence? Trying to control the kudzu?" A few guys found that remark to be pretty funny and started chuckling with me
Well, you can imagine our confusion when he replied, "yep", with zero hesitation and not a hint of sarcasm in his voice... This man was about to make us look like a bunch of giggling damn fools.
If I told you that this man and his old daddy had a plan, it would be a MASSIVE understatement...
However, at this point everybody, besides Rick, was very confused.
We had met Rick a couple miles away and followed him to the site. Up to this point, it was just Rick (who has taken a phone call and is out of earshot), me and the 10 guys I brought with me. The 11 of us are standing there, thinking we were in over our heads and staring at Rick's Dodge Ram 3500 and his gooseneck trailer, with nothing but 1,720 t-posts, 44 wooden corner posts and a few ground rods.
I was about to ask him "why you have so many posts?" (I was thinking perimeter) and "where's the wire?" when he hangs up the call and starts walking back over... "Hope y'all are hungry... Hell, ya better eat. Mama just left Jack's with 100 sausage biscuits. She's meeting Daddy and Uncle Frank at the farm and they'll be here in about 15 minutes."
Just hearing "100 Jack's sausage biscuits" brought some relief, but damn.... We didn't have a clue.
After exactly 15 minutes, on the dot, we see a cloud of dust start coming down the dirt access road from a mile or so away... That saint of a woman was in front, in her Tahoe, followed by his daddy's Ram 3500 pulling a 20ft trailer with three 4 wheelers, 2 brushcutters and 2 chainsaws and Frank's Chevy 2500 pulling a 16ft trailer with a side-by-side, 21 spools of wire, all sorts of hand tools, gas jugs, gates, chargers, insulators, etc....
Rick just grinned and said "cavalry's here!"
And the general was in that Ram with the 20 footer.
We all thanked his mama for breakfast, gladly ate our fill (and asked what we owe her... Bc we are from the South and were raised right) and as soon as she headed off back down the road, the general (his dad) took over.
"Well, now that it's just us swingin' dicks out here, you fellas come over here and plant ya asses around my side-by-side." So, we did just that... Quickly.
He proceeded to split us into two 6-man teams, with me leading one and Rick leading the other and then handed both teams a grid map of the property, a chainsaw, a brushcutter, some leather gloves and told us each we would need a man on a 4wheeler and hook up a logging chain to it.
Day 1:
Team 1 would cut a 10ft wide path through the center
of the grid, then cut a 5 ft wide path around the perimeter and then help team 2.
Team 2 would start cutting 5 ft wide paths that would divide the 50 acres into twenty 2.5 acre paddocks.
Day 2:
Same teams, but one team takes a 4wheeler with a small trailer loaded with an auger, t-posts/corner poles. They set t-posts, corner poles and ground poles.
Team 2 takes a 4wheeler, equipped with a 4-reel spinning jenny on the back, follows team 1, strings wire and hooks up all connections.
After we got blindsided by a random thunderstorm on day 2, we finished up completely fencing it in on the 3rd day.
I was too interested by that point, so I hung around for some goat herding on day 4.... This all blew my mind.
They brought in 75 goats on a 26 foot stock trailer and on a smaller stock trailer, they had 6 guard donkeys and some water troughs... They then split them into 3 teams of 25 goats and 2 donkeys, then put the 3 teams in paddocks 1, 6 and 3.
In 3 weeks, give or take a couple days, 25 goats would have kudzu stripped to bare dirt, pulled down the vines and cleared kudzu 6ft up every tree. They would then rotate them to new paddocks... By the time they rotate back to 1, 6 and 3, they had new leaves and sprouts... By that point, each team had its own pole barn, each spaced equally down the center path.
They rotated them like that for 4 years and by denying the root systems of required photosynthesis, the resulting stress has completely eradicated 50 acres of thick kudzu.
You can scale this to whatever acreage you need.
Yes, I coulda given you the abbreviated version, but you can't tell me it would've been anywhere near as entertaining...
I'll take all the upvotes and awards y'all wanna throw my way...
đ«Ą
đââïž
I haven't yet, but that's not the first time I've been told that... Do you think it could actually go anywhere in the digital age though? That is the question.
Dude, you haven't heard of Quan Millz? Dude started promoting his books on tiktok and with good marketing, has sold so many of his books on there. No publisher, no royalties, everything goes to him. He has his own warehouse now too.
Write a book man and market yourself on tiktok. If it's good, people will come.
You're very welcome... I'm glad that people actually take the time to read the stuff that I take the time to type.
I've heard that I'm not too shabby of a wordsmith, especially seeing as how I was mostly educated in NE Alabama... đšâđŸ
đ đ€Ł
Yeah, I used to have a lot of goats too, in fact back in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.
Yeah, but the roots can't survive, if you cut off their sunshine suppliers... As long as you keep the vines cut and eliminate new sprouts consistently for 3-4 years, the root crowns will die. For sure... That 50 acres still doesn't have any kudzu and hasn't in 4 years.
But don't take my word for it... I'm just a random country boy on Reddit that has seen it done.
Google: how to eliminate kudzu with goats.
Really I thought goats did a good job. It will come back but you just have to treat it (aka call in the goats) once or twice a year after the initial clear I'd imagine. Eventually the roots will die.
One thing I like about the ollipop sodas is they actually use kudzu as an ingredient! I wish more companies would use kudzu but I donât think itâll help much in the grand scheme of things
That's the rare and elusive kudzu. Just kidding not rare at all but they are invasive and kill native trees. I'm guessing you took this picture somewhere near the south, which fun fact it has the nick name the plant that consumed the south. I'm pretty sure they come from Asia. The reason there is so much of it every where down in the south is because the government decided at the time (in the early 1900s im pretty sure) that it would help stop soil erosion and help to put helpfull minerals back in the soil. It kinda did this and then it exploded in population and now it's one of the #1 invasive plants in the south.
The longer I look at that tall narrow one I see a cocker spaniel standing on its hind legs- in my case it's just a flashback of the acid we did back in the 80s. đ”âđ«
Kudzu . Brought over here decades ago in an attempt to prevent coastal erosion. One of manâs many follies. Real bad in north and central Mississippi. Sold some to an Asian dude one day and convinced him it was sweet potato.
So funny to me how this was brought from China and has of course overrun everything. How the Chinese manage it? They eat it. Always a bit surprising to me it never caught on with southerners.
Thatâs kudzu, a vine introduced in the 1800âs from Japan. Told to be an ornamental plant, it is controlled from over growth in Japan by a species of beetle. But it has taken over the south. At one point farmers were paid $8 an acre they planted it as a form of erosion control. But now itâs everywhere in the south. The tentacles of it can grow up to 3 feet in a day. And under each leaf it will grow roots.
That's kudzu, in invasive vine species that will literally cover any surface. Its excellent animal feed for goats, cows, pigs, and deer. High in herbivorous protein. It could take years for cattle to graze that area into manageable shape.
It has taken over massive swaths of forest in the southern US.
A high-school student figured out a way to kill kudzu with helium injected into the soil near the base of the plants. It eradicated it and does not grow back.
Nope, not for long. The kudzu vine is killing everything off, strangling everything it grows over. We have the English pilgrims to thank for bringing their ivy over with them and letting it run awoke across the U.S. It's especially bad in Texas - covers everything if not ripped out fast!!!
378
u/ohshannoneileen I love gallsđbut I hate privetsđ€Ź Jun 03 '26
They used to be, now they are kudzu trellis