Posts Tagged weeds
Bush-hogging the Field
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Homesteading on October 29th, 2009
Below is a shot of what the field next to the barn has looked like since we got here. We reckon it’s been at least two years since it was mowed.
Here’s another shot. The field is on the far side of the fence.
But just one hour with a tractor and a bush-hog, and here’s what it looks like now:
The little red-leafed tree you see in the shot above was growing in the weedy field. Issa used an online tree identification guide to determine that it might be a black walnut. Then again, there are a gajillion of them growing by the road, and I wasn’t under the impression walnut was that common. If it’s black walnut, that’s a pretty lucky break for us, although we’ll have to keep the pigs from uprooting it if we want to find out what it grows into.
The tractor work was $40 an hour, and money well spent if you ask me. We had planned to till the entire half-acre field and then plant a pasture mix tailored towards hogs. We only plan to have two pigs next year, and they won’t need the run of the entire field, but we figured better to plant much of anything to give the weeds some competition! It turned out that there was some really nice fescue under there, so we left it on the ground in most of the pasture and only tilled about 1/3 of the field for the hog-tailored pasture mix.
Here’s a picture of Issa spreading the pasture mix seed on the tilled ground.
Poke (Weed?)
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Homesteading on October 21st, 2009
When I took occupancy of the Knoxville House, which we have nick-named The Wallow, it had not been mowed in at least a year. The weeds were, if not quite epic, certainly epic-lite.
The property’s riding mower was purchased with the property. It’s a little 14-HP, 40″ blade Murray. Suffice it to say, it was not designed for this level of bush-hogging. That’s not to say that it didn’t step up. Oh, it was slow going, but eventually, I mowed the whole damn yard. The mower’s blade looks like shit, but the job got done.
One of the most prolific plants in the yard was poke. Poke is recognizable by its red stems. It grows clusters of red berries, which, like many wild red berries, are poisonous to humans. In fact, most parts of the poke plant are poisonous, with the root being the most poisonous (even deadly) and the berries being the least. However, you can eat the young leaves when the plant is very small if you boil them in multiple changes of water. Not sure why you’d want to, but I guess it’s easier to grow than spinach or lettuce.
And boy, does it grow!
This poke plant has actually fallen over it has grown so tall. After I mowed, poke plants had put out new leaves in just a few days. That led me to an interesting survival strategy if you’re ever stranded in the wilderness. See, very young poke leaves are edible, but the plant can be hard to identify before the stems get their red color, by which time, it’s poisonous and you shouldn’t eat it. So instead of going to the effort of finding young poke plants, you should just find an adult, cut it off at the root, and come back in a few days. The root will have put out many little leaves for you to eat, if you didn’ die in the meantime.
That’s me with a machete, about to do battle with the poke.
BATTLE!
It was no match for me. Unfortunately, it has many relatives, scattered all over the land. I sure wish there was something it was good for to me.
How to solve your weed problem in just one second!
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Uncategorized on May 21st, 2009
I was out walking Thistle, Troy’s dog, the other day. We passed a man who was bending down to spray weed killer on some plants that were growing up through the seam in his driveway. We greeted each other, and then he said, “I can’t get flowers to grow in my yard to save my life, but weeds grow in my driveway like crazy.”
“Maybe you should change your priorities,” I said. “I love weeds, and my yard is full of them—no effort at all!”
“I just wish I didn’t have to spray them all the time,” he said.
I answered, “You could always change your mind.”
You don’t have to spray your driveway for weeds. If you don’t like doing it, stop doing it. Have weeds. Every time you look out your window at your weeds, thrill to the thought of how much time you’re saving by letting them grow. Or don’t. It’s up to you.
Issa has explored this issue in this post on her blog:
How often do you say that you “have to” do something? You have to go to work. You have to pay the bills. You have to call your mother. You have to clean the house. We use this little phrase constantly. It’s such a tiny phrase, but it has great, big implications!
The message behind “have to” is that you don’t have a choice. The choice has already been made for you, and your actions are inevitable. What a sad dismissal of our ability to choose the direction of our own lives!
For each of our actions, we make choices about what we want and what we think will benefit us. You don’t have to clean the house. You may want to clean the house, so that the house will look the way you like. You choose to clean the house, in order to get what you want. Shifting our thoughts from have to into want to and choose to, can turn a previously cumbersome action into one of satisfaction. On one hand might be the drudgery of having to pay the bills. But a tiny shift in the language brings about the delight of choosing to have electricity. It’s a little thing, but the way we talk to ourselves matters in the way we think about ourselves and our situations.
Edible plants (probably) growing in your yard
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Food on May 6th, 2009
If your yard, like mine, contains a thriving ecosystem of “weeds,” then there are likely to be an abundance of edible plants in it. Here are some common edible plants that are likely to be growing in your yard. Note: I live in Georgia. If you live other areas, these plants are not guaranteed to be growing in your yard.
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