Well, Elise, I wanna applaud the work that you're doing.

You're really making a difference along the Appomattox >>Thank you so much.

>>Yes, and I also know this is a volunteer-based organization, so your workforce are volunteers.

>>Yes, yes.

I am out there with volunteers.

Every month we have a stewardship Saturday, and we go out and we do invasives removal events along the river, and trash pickup too.

>>Interesting.

So, this container here is related to that, so it intrigues me, what's going on?

>>Yes, here I have our pesticide application kit, and that pesticide is called glyphosate.

It's an herbicide, which is a chemical that kills plants, which some of your viewers might on principle not like.

And they're not wrong, it's not something that we take lightly in application.

Here's our PPE.

I'm wearing long sleeves, I'm wearing gloves.

And if I were be dealing with open containers, I would put on eye protection as well.

>>Never know when it's gonna splash on us.

>>Exactly.

We wanna make sure we're not splashing around with this stuff.

>>Right.

>>Here I have work gloves.

We would put on work gloves as well on top of these.

It gets a little sweaty, but it's, you know, part of the job.

And inside of the container I have absorbent material.

I've seen larger containers being carried with kitty litter on the bottom to absorb any splashes.

>>In case any spills.

>>Yes, yes, yes.

And here inside we have, actually, this is just water and the blue dye that we use to indicate that a pesticide has been used so people stay away from it.

If they see blue, they don't go near that plant, right?

>>Right.

So what exactly are you doing?

I'm a volunteer, I've come to help.

I've showed up on a Saturday.

So tell me what I would, not the too nitty gritties, but I'm out there along the river.

>>Yes.

>>What's the steps?

>>Well, I would tell you what we're doing, I'd tell you about invasive plants, I would tell you a target plant of the day.

And then I would hand you a pair of loppers, and we would go after that target plant of the day.

And I would follow along the volunteers, I'm a certified pesticide applicator, and I would apply the pesticide to that individual plant.

It's a very targeted approach.

We aren't putting pesticide all over the place.

We're just using this dauber, which has the tiniest little spot to go ahead and daub onto that individual plant.

>>A little dab will do ya.

>>Exactly.

So I can give you an example of that.

>>That'd be great, let's move this to the side.

>>Yes.

Here is my plant.

This is paper mulberry.

>>Yes.

>>It's easy to tell apart from our native mulberry trees.

It is fuzzy leaved.

>>Yeah, it's very soft, fuzzy-leaved, it's an easy one.

>>Yes.

>>Plus it has indented leaves, and it's kinda fun.

>>These lobes that you see on top, and some of them have lobes, some of them don't, just like our native, but that fuzzy leaf is a sure tell.

>>Exactly.

>>You can see on this plant, someone actually has tried to cut it in the past and that it really didn't damage the plant itself to just be cut, which is why we're using the chemicals in the first place, so that we are maximizing the effect that we're having on these native, places that we wanna have native plants.

And our volunteer hours are very precious, and we wanna make the most of those hours.

>>Yes.

Plus they wanna leave feeling a sense of accomplishment and that they've made a difference.

>>Absolutely, >>Yes.

>>So, as you can see, we need to sometimes use the pesticide to remove the plants permanently, otherwise they just pop right back up.

>>So, what's our next step then?

>>All right, I've got my loppers.

I will go ahead and cut within six inches of the ground.

>>Right, I'm just gonna grab it when you cut it.

>>Okay, thanks.

So, we wanna have a nice flat cut.

We want the top of the plant to be flat so that the pesticide doesn't run right off of it.

If we were to cut it at an angle, it would potentially just fall right off.

>>Right.

>>So we want it nice and flat.

And then we apply.

As you can see, it's brightly colored, and we have a done deal.

>>You've done deal, and what happens is this product is actually systemic, so it gets sucked down through the cambium and through the systems of plant into the roots, and it kills it, it's very effective.

And what size do you typically are able to kill What size stump, you know, when you cut the vine or you cut the tree?

>>Yes, we can go pretty big.

However, there are certain trees, like Ailanthus trees, that you don't want to use a full cut stump method.

There are certain plants, once they get to a certain size, if you cut them down, they immediately send out those hormones that say, re-root, re-root, and they send up all these little babies called suckers along the ground.

So you wanna avoid this method for certain usages, but in many cases it's a great targeted way to approach.

>>What method do you use for the Ailanthus, or tree of heaven?

>>Yes, for larger tree of heaven, I've seen cutting a dotted line with a hatchet around the side.

And so it's not fully killing the tree right away.

It's sort of a slow process where the tree sort of, you know, instead of sending those emergency hormones out to the root system, it kind of slowly goes down.

>>I use that same method, but I do apply the glyphosate into those cuts.

>>Yes, exactly.

>>To make sure it's sucked down into those roots and kills 'em.

>>That's right.

>>Well, Elise, this has been wonderful.

Very informative, showing people that a little dab will do you and to wear the proper equipment, which you will find on the label, which we all know- >>Yes.

>>Is the law.

>>Label is the law.

>>Yes, so thank you.

>>Thank you.