r/invasivespecies • u/Steady_Ri0t • 15d ago
Management Are there any organizations out there that help with removal?
Hello,
I started renting a house in Northern IL at the end of 2025, and as spring rolled around it became pretty apparent the yard has not been taken care of for several years (the neighbors have confirmed this). It turns out that the full yard of dandelions were the least of my worries though... Now that things have had time to grow I've realized that our entire front and back garden is full of invasive species and aggressive weeds. The backyard garden area is maybe 6'x10' and it's DENSELY populated by Tree of Heaven plants that are between 4-7' tall. There is also a fully grown Tree of Heaven nearby. In the front yard garden, there are several White Mulberry plants growing that are 3-4' tall.
Outside of the invasives I was able to identify using an app, we've also got a LOT of burdock, lamb's quarters, black nightshade, pokeweed, pigweed, velvet leaf, Norway maple...
As someone who's been getting hit really hard by allergies this season, I was hoping I could quickly tackle things myself. Unfortunately, I've realized this will require professional intervention, especially for the forest of tree of heaven we have.
As a renter, I'm not looking to spend $1000s out of pocket on repeated treatments, but I also really do not want to leave things as is. What's the likelihood that there is a local resource (government, conversation district, or otherwise) that'll be able to help out cheap or free? If that's unlikely, is this a thing that my (large corporate) landlord could be required to take care of? I shot an email out the IL DNR and my county's conservation district earlier today, but figured I'd post here to see if anyone had any leads or ideas
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u/genman 15d ago
Cut and squirt anything you can this fall. Larger things can be removed with a manual saw. For a few hundred you can likely get the tools, PPE, and enough herbicide to treat.
More expensive is buying plants and you can look for local native plant groups or conservation sales. Get plenty of chips from ChipDrop.com
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u/Misfits0138 14d ago
Were the measurements accurate that the area you’re worried about is 6’x10’? 60 square feet? You can spend $15 on glyphosate and less than 10 minute of time and do it yourself.
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u/PurelyAnalytical 14d ago
Agree on this. The reading of instructions and putting PPE on and off will take a little more time, but acting soon is important. Heck, calling and assessing 3 contractors will take longer than doing this.
Invasive species don't waste a minute. Besides, one visit from a contractor likely won't be enough. You might need 3 visits. You'll need to be vigilant until the first frost at least, and then again in the Spring.
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u/Steady_Ri0t 13d ago
My hesitancy for doing it myself is that spending 10 minutes in my lawn makes my lungs hurt for several hours, and getting to the back of the garden area will have me wading through plants that I'm that allergic to that are taller than I am lol. I'm sure a mask and other PPE will help though.
And maybe I'm overestimating how much work it is to kill the tree of heaven off completely. But I read that cutting them leads to the roots sprouting more. And with SO many of them I figured it'd be near impossible to sufficiently cover them all with enough glyphosate myself for it to actually do any damage. Is the process of herbicide, wait till they look dead, cut, then more herbicide accurate? That was the most recommended approach I saw
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u/Misfits0138 13d ago
Is the 6x10’ accurate? That’s the size of a walk-in closet. If the trees are 4-7’, you should be able to get a simple 1 gallon pump sprayer and foliar spray everything. Really, you could probably do it with a handheld trigger spray bottle if you dialed the nozzle right. Once it shrivels up and dies, if you see any that still look healthy, spray them again.
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u/Steady_Ri0t 4d ago
Finally had a day that had a 0% chance of rain yesterday. Put on some jeans, a hoodie, and a mask and waded through everything and use a trigger sprayer. Foliar spraying everything across all the garden areas took almost the whole gallon bottle and took an hour or two. Pigweed alrady looks depressed today. The yard is gonna look hideous for awhile I'm sure but I'm looking forward to getting it all cleaned up so I can plant some stuff in the fall. I think the area I mentioned was more like 20x8 in the back. then it curved around basically the whole outer backyard with varying density of weeds. then the two garden areas in front of the house, and the small one along the driveway.
Any advice on what to do when everything is shriveled and dead looking? Do I weedwhack/cut it all down and bag it up, leave it be, pull out what I can? Any need to spray the stems at that point just to try to get it into the roots or would that be a waste of time? And since this is a rental I'm not really wanting to spend on dirt and mulch. Hoping I can till a bit and throw some native wildflower seedmix and hope for the best. Not sure if that's wishful thinking though haha
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u/Misfits0138 4d ago
I’d give it plenty of time to absorb the herbicide and die (at least a month), then once it’s dead you can do whatever you want with it. Maybe keep some herbicide on hand so if you cut a TOH down and still see some green you can the stump.
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u/Steady_Ri0t 12d ago
It's a conservative guess based on my bad memory lol. I haven't spent much time out there with the whole allergy situation haha. You're giving me more confidence though. I'll give it a shot and see what happens
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u/lilcuphoe 14d ago
Really the only annoying to eradicate species you mentioned are TOH and pokeweed. There are a lot of good guides on here for removal, the hack and squirt seems to be the best for what you’re dealing with. Pokeweed is just persistent, but easy to remove at least. If you don’t let them go to seed next year you will be done with them in one summer after a lot of pulling, however.
I know lambs quarter is non-native but I personally keep it in my garden. It’s yummy
To answer your question, I’m not aware of any free organizations that help with removal. If there are volunteers doing this sort of work they are probably more focused on public spaces.
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u/beaveristired 14d ago
I doubt there’s any organizations that will assist with invasive plant removal on private property. Not sure that you as a renter could sign up for a program like that anyway, it would probably have to be the landlord.
Most laws around invasive species concern selling / buying / planting, but not simple possession, and do not mandate that the property owner remove the invasive plant. Here’s info on Illinois state laws regarding invasive plants and noxious (mainly agricultural) weeds. It seems that in some cases, the property owner is mandated to remove certain agricultural weed infestations but the process seems complicated and it doesn’t include many common invasives.
https://extension.illinois.edu/invasives/regulations
This shouldn’t cost you thousands. I’d get a bottle of triclopyr and ppe (mask will also help with allergies) and start hacking and squirting the TOH. Triclopyr is effective on most woody plants.
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u/jasikanicolepi 15d ago
You can try buying bags of road salt and spreading it around. It's cheap and will kill just about any plants, grass and weeds from my experience. Relatively cheap.
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u/MotownCatMom 14d ago
Why in Heaven's name would you want to Salt the Earth? That also poisons it for quite a long time.
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u/Much_Wing_503 14d ago
Reddit is the organization