Kudzu Crazy

It’s that time of year again when I go crazy. The kudzu is in full-blown reproduction mode.

Kudzu is a native plant in Japan and was introduced to the Southeastern United States in the late 1800s as a means of erosion control. It is a very well-behaved plant in Japan. It goes completely crazy here in the South. Or, maybe I should say that it grows completely crazy here in the South. Whoever was responsible for bringing it over here certainly got their money’s worth.  It grows so fast that one day it wrapped itself around my leg, yanked me off the ground, and started pulling me up the hill as it grew longer. Not really, but it probably could if it tried.

Hubby and I do what we can to keep our plot of kudzu from spreading. We are constantly on kudzu patrol. But we can only do so much, because Cousin Ambrose has three acres of kudzu around the next curve. One little puff of wind when kudzu is in bloom and we are infected. Please note how lovely the kudzu bloom is. What a cute little disguise for an enormous pest. Isn’t the bloom gorgeous? It’s evil. It goes to seed and spreads kudzu babies everywhere, including gutters.

One morning Hubby climbed out on top of the roof to clean the gutters. I was terrified and begged him to please get off that roof and get back in the house. He saw a kudzu plant growing in the gutter and I advised him to hang onto something while he plucked it out, and to please take his time to ensure that he got it all.

Kudzu has some benefits. It makes a nice sturdy wreath when it dries – like a grapevine wreath, only . . . kudzu. I’ve seen kudzu blossom jelly in the store.  I’m not going to try it. For one thing, I would never spend money on my mortal enemy. For another thing, I might like it, and I don’t like being a hypocrite. And I don’t want to like kudzu for any reason whatsoever. But I did try making a batch of Kudzu chips. Check out this month’s recipe page. I did this mostly to surprise and annoy my cousins, who hate kudzu as much as I do.

Hubby and I worked for several years pulling up vines as thick as my legs. I will admit I have very skinny legs, but really, invasive vines shouldn’t be that thick. We pulled up, chopped, and sawed through countless vines trying to get our kudzu population down to a reasonable size (a reasonable size for kudzu is about the same size as a postage stamp). We didn’t want to spray – that might affect our drinking water.

Our family gets this kudzu obsession from Granny. She would look out of the kitchen window and scream ‘KUDZU’! The kudzu she saw was all the way across the yard, up a steep bank, across our one-lane road and up the next hill. But she kept an inventory in her head and always knew when a new sprout had sprung. She would send Uncle Joe out to spray every summer. That might be why our family is a little nuts. We probably consumed a lot of kudzu killer in our drinking water.

So this time of year, I put on the hiking boots, old work gloves, ugly shirt and really ugly hat.  I arm myself with pruners, hatchet, and my special kudzu knife (it’s curved to slip under thick roots and saw upward). When I’m fully dressed to kill (literally), I turn up my kudzu radar and go on patrol.

Cousin Ambrose’s three acres of kudzu would be a lot smaller if he could act just a little crazier about kudzu like our granny did. Wait, I forgot. He spent his formative years in Pennsylvania. We still haven’t worked all that northern DNA out of him.

I wrote a very meaningful poem about kudzu.

I hope it plucks at your heartstrings:

They call me the old kudzu scout.

I hunt it down, and point it out.

Then Dad gets out his trusty knife,

And whacks away and ends its life.

P.S.: Don't forget to check out the recipe for KUDZU Chips!