Garlic Mustard Invasion

Collecting the Soil and Plant Samples

Materials required:
Garden trowel
Gallon Ziploc bags (3 bags)

Procedure:

1. Locate a patch of garlic mustard.
2. Collect soil from beneath different garlic mustard plants, trying to stay within the top 15cm of soil.  All of this soil can go into one bag labeled GM for garlic mustard.
3. Collect 5 whole garlic mustard plants (roots and leaves).  Dig up as much soil from around the plants and shake off to try to get as much of the roots as possible.  Stick these plants in a bag to keep from drying out.
4. Find an area at least 20m from the garlic mustard patch that has no garlic mustard growing in it.
5. Collect soil from this area, filling the second bag.  Label this bag as Away.
6. Store these bags of soil in a refrigerator (DO NOT FREEZE)

 

Now that we have our samples:

On to the experiments!

Supplies

Collecting Soil and Plant Samples

Experiment 1: Does Garlic Mustard lower soil quality for native plants?

Experiment 2: Does Garlic Mustard produce chemicals that inhibit native seed germination?

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Questions? email jmui@inhs.illinois.edu or spost@inhs.illinois.edu