I was on a mission to control wood nettles when I found a large patch of something with a white flower that had totally crowded out the nettles. I was so happy until I researched it. I had such a heavy invasion by the time I found it that I first tried pulling..then went to roundup. I also tried putting a pre emergent down in case killing the tall plants gave light to seeds that hadn't germinated. Diligence and roundup seem the only way. I got grief because roundup would kill everything under it, but what people didn't know was the GM had already done that. It seems to be moved by deer because new patches appear along their paths. Since both my neighbors have it and don't seem to care, I am constantly battling it. The only good thing about it is that makes me walk my woods weekly if the mosquitos aren't too bad, so I see more of the natives which I have new appreciation for.

Thanks guys. I was panicking. I am relieved that I found out about this GM before the seed pods expoded. I am so MAD at whoever sold me these things. Maybe the guy will have a stand again this year and I can discuss this with him. What I did is cut the GM plant off with snippers and leave about 4" of stem and then sparayed the cut tips with Round-Up. I know that one should spray the leaves but I was afraid the seeds would ripen while I was waiting for the Round-Up to travel to the roots. This method worked for some Ivy that was growing all over the house when I bought it. I did do some reading before posting but wanted to gain some insight into anyone's 'real life' experience with eradicating GM. Most of the info I read was from .edu sites giving advice like on burning whole fields of the stuff or geredener's blogs whining how they can't get rid of GM ever. I set the GW stems with the pods on the hot sidewalk for a half a day but they didn't wilt or anything. I then sprayed them with R-U and bagged them in plastic and put them in my regular garbage instead of the 'yard waste' bin that the city picks up, because they dump that in a place were it composts and residents go there and shovel what they need out of there. I don't want to see any one get any of those seeds that I read can be dormant for 5-6 years and then sprout. I was being paranoid about the hostas I bought from the same place. As you can see from my profile I am somewhat of a 'hostaholic' although I believe in the 10' rule. The hosta forum and the cottage garden forum are my 'home base' here. The HVX virus has run panic thoughout the hosta community. I know what to look for, and usually isolate any new hosta, even those bought from "reputable" sources as it has been pointed out in the hosta forum, that even Monrovia has been sending out infected hostas. Even so, one could slip through and wipe out everything. But with these I bought from this place I put them in place right away. So far they look healthy and I think they are fine. I was thinking if this guy sold garlic mustard ignorantly, that he may have not been aware of the HVX virus and sold infected hostas. I did spray Round-Up on everything else I bought when I bought these GM. I don't trust any of those plants now. I wasn't happy with the way they looked anyway. They looked cute and bushy when I bought them in their pots, but this year they ended up being VINES snaking through my garden. I was thinking about moving them to a better spot for vines but I am not taking any chances with after this GM debacle.I don't know what they are but they are GONE. Gone. Gone. On a side note, two other experiences I had as a newbie gardener back when I first bought my house; I bought some seeds and planted them in front of a trellis, they were *bindweed*. They never went up the trellis but tangled themselves up in all my rose bushes (Ouch! Getting it out.). Thank god they didn't get into my lawn. And I bought a can of "wildflower" mix (Yeah, I know. I know.....) that had *yarrow* in it. That yarrow sent out runners and I had it all over my lawn. It took YEARS to get it under control. Thanks again for the quick response. I feel so stupid for even buying garlic mustard in the first place. I am sure somehwere, someone is reading my post and snickering at my naivety.

Love our woods... thanks for that info. No, I've never left any flower heads in my woods nor would I recommend it...I'd bag them as I go or rake them up and bag them immediately after cutting them down. I just suggested whacking them as a quick solution if people think they are about to drop seeds imminently. On a good note, I am pleased to tell you guys that after pulling all our mature GM we had many seedlings last fall which we ran out of time to pull before snow hit. This spring more than half of them never returned. We spread leaf litter a foot deep over the remaining seedlings and have just pulled it away and all the seedlings are gone. So apparently you can smother them or they decay or something because we have none left except for the ones that ARE NOW GROWING IN OUR LAWN!!!!! Grrrrrrrrr! Can you believe it? We got it gone in our woods and now our lawn is full of it. I'm pulling as fast as I can but I'm afraid I'm just going to have to weed'n'feed to get the rest. I just can't keep up with it and obviously mowing is just making it want to grow even stronger and faster. Oh well...I figure this GM problem is not going away, all the lots on each of the 3 sides of me are full of it so I can't expect not to pull it. I'll be pulling it for as long as it exists here in abundance (which it does). I was just saddened to see so very much of it in my lawn now. :o/ Barb Southern Ontario, CANADA Zone 6a

Okay, I will go that route, I have been doing small scale removal at that site by hand and I think the Park service is doing some sort of woodland restoration. Right now I got a lovely back yard woodland garden of Wild Ginger, yellow Trillium, Jack in the pulpit,Wood poppy, wild clombine, bishops cap and solomans seal. I'm trying leaf litter in there now to help establish new plants.