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2011 Planting to Harvesting #34: The Bindweed Battle Part 999

MsDebbieP — Wed, 30 May 2012 13:59:30 GMT

May 31/12

And the battle continues.

The other day I had thrown in the towel.

Today… I’m picking it up again. So what has happened?

Well, the other day on my walkabout I saw that my buckwheat plan wasn’t going as I had hoped. The buckwheat didn’t come up as expected and there is no way the roots can strangle out those of the bindweed. Plus, further research has planted fear into my heart about the evil buckwheat and trying to get rid of it… so I think I’ll wait a bit longer and then rototil the area and get rid of the buckwheat.

I also found that the bindweed is having a wonderful spring. The drought conditions haven’t hindered it at all. The leaves are the biggest I have ever seen and the vines are already climbing through/around/over all of my bushes. The blueberry patch, which had about 6” of leaves piled onto it last fall is looking like a beautiful green lawn, except that the green is bindweed and not grass. Sigh. They will soon be choking out my blueberry bushes.

I give up.. or I should say, “I gave up”. I decided to just be diligent about keeping the vines from covering my flowers/plants/bushes. It was the best that I could do.

Call it stubbornness, call it determination, or call it a need to learn, but back onto the internet I went for another search on bindweed. All plants and creatures have something in nature that provides the balance. Other than those insects that specifically attack the bindweed there has to be some other way that it is kept in check naturally or this whole planet would have been covered with the vine eons ago.

Well, I didn’t find anything to that effect. You either bring in the parasites or you have to resort to unnatural methods. There are so many stories out there about introduced insects and plants that at first are a solution but result in just another disaster that I really don’t want to go that route (plus I don’t know where these are available in my region.)

So onto the unnatural but organic methods.
1. You can pull them.. and pull them.. and pull them until they finally give up because they aren’t getting any sunlight/nutrients to keep them alive. (I have way too big of an area to achieve this.)
2. You can .. hmm that’s about it for the organic methods.

And then there is the unnatural chemical methods.
3. Round-up. Sigh. Who wants to introduce round-up into their soil? Well most environmentally-conscious people will shout “no way”. Not only is it bad but it is made by the Monsanto company which is a whole other conversation.

Reading one website the strong organic voices were up in arms at the mention of round-up. Use mulch they say. Cover it with straw. (Yah, my 8” deep piles of yellow straw are looking a little green these days as the bindweed crawls through it.) When I had the above ground pool, when we put the pool away in the fall, after being up for five months, the sand underneath was just a mat of bindweed roots. Pull it they say. .. Perhaps if I had a small backyard .. maybe this is a good option.
I don’t think these people have ever had an infestation of bindweed. I don’t think they have ever had moment of just wanting to cry, as the plant spreads everywhere. It’s easy to say “no” until you are in the situation.

And so I read on….
I had never seen this strategy before but everywhere I looked there was story after story of its effectiveness, not an overnight effectiveness but definitely winning a battle or two, chipping away at the war.

The Strategy
Put round-up in a container and stick the vines of the plant into the container. Do not dig the plant – it just makes new shoots (in multiples). Stick the vines down into the roundup and let the plants suck up the deadly concoction, taking it down into the root system.

The one story told – this wasn’t a first-hand story, so it wasn’t verified—but the one story told of a homeowner doing this and soon the bindweed on his property started turning brown. And .. drumroll … the bindweed on the neighbour’s property across the street also started turning brown. That is how far the roots spread.

Strategy pointers:

make sure the container is stable so that it doesn’t tip over and contaminate the soil around it
cover it with plastic or something to keep moisture from diluting the mixture and from other plants accidentally coming in contact with it.
you don’t have to attack every plant because most of them are connected through the root system. This fact gave me hope. Overwhelmed by the number of plants I didn’t think I had a chance, but knowing that I could attack one plant in each area and have a big impact, well … remember the “how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. —do-able!
give it refresher drink every few days until you see the plant brown – entirely brown and dead, not just starting to die.

So here we go:

I grabbed some plastic containers (at first I was going to use glass mason jars but chose plastic instead.) I decided that I would start with two containers because I had a limited amount of round-up available. I decided to tackle the blueberry area and the spot where I had dug up all of my flower bushes and planted the buckwheat

Due to my supply of round-up, I could only put a small amount in the container. I would like to fill it so the plants are getting a good long drink.

Next I dug a small hole to set the container in so that it wouldn’t get tipped over.

I had to dig two holes in the blueberry patch because the plant I chose had rather short vines and the hole was too far away. I should have just chosen a different plant. Next time.

Next, I stuffed the vines down into the liquid.

And finally, I covered the container with plastic and secured it with an elastic. I had to chuckle because the plastic I chose was old packing material and it is “green”. Perhaps the two (green plastic and non-green chemicals) balance each other out??

And now I cross my fingers

I will have to keep an eye on the liquid. I’ll probably have to buy some more round-up so that I can fill the containers a number of times and start a couple other containers in some other bad areas.

And there we are … the war is back on!!!

My 2012 May Garden

Iris43 — Wed, 30 May 2012 04:55:26 GMT

After the false start our gardens had this springwith warm temps in March, and then the return of freezing temps had plants and people alike, confused. The large saucer magnolia had totally lost all it’s blooms and for the magnolia there was no second chance for flowers this year. Flowering spring blooms did their best to bloom in April but fluctuating temps kept the blooms from preforming at their best. Fortunately the dwarf iris blooms even in very cool temps, and if fact, the blooms tend to last longer with cool temps.

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With the beginning of May, Mother Nature did her best to give us hope that she would get the temps back on schedule. And even the bleeding hearts which had their tender shoots frozen repeatedly kept starting over and produce quite a decent show of blooms.

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The tree peonies managed to bloom right on time. And I might add, very lovely.

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It’s getting late tonight so I’ll close for now and continue my flower show tomorrow. :D

Photography #14: May 29/12

MsDebbieP — Tue, 29 May 2012 21:03:19 GMT

Here are three photos that I took this afternoon.

Poppy in Black & White

Hosta Leaf

Brown Iris

2011 Planting to Harvesting #33: Curly Dock

MsDebbieP — Tue, 29 May 2012 17:03:54 GMT

May 29/12

In-between rain showers today, I did a walk-about and took my trusty hoe with me in case I found some undesirables.

Everything was looking lovely (oh my goodness, my Marsh Hibiscus has grown a foot taller since yesterday) ... “but” in a couple of places I found stands of curly dock. Rising high above the rest of the plants with its green stalk and spreading wide with its huge leaves, I decided that it didn’t fit and so I whacked at its stem.

Now, I’ve done this before and I know that it has a very strong root. It looks similar to rhubarb, to me, and, with my growing knowledge about permaculture, etc, I figure that the root goes deep in the ground and brings up nutrients to feed the soil and other plants.

I have thought this before and today I decided to do a tad of research to see if this is correct. The first piece of information that I found was that the root, indeed, goes deep down into the earth, which sounds like a good sign that it is a benefit to the soil.

Next I found this website and learned that, as a member of the buckwheat family, it is edible and very good for you. (At one point he says that it was used to prevent scurvy.) The gentleman tells how he uses it to make pesto as well as lasagne.

Perhaps I’ll find a nice spot for curly dock to grow and let it grow.

The following image is from this website which also has some good information

Sorry. Jroot.......rain

MsDebbieP — Tue, 29 May 2012 12:29:01 GMT

May 29/12
Just keeping a record … rain again. A good rain. Not sure how long it will last. Maybe most of the day? Or maybe just another half hour.
We are just on the north end of the storm and if it pulls south we are out of the rain – if it stays heading upwards (maybe to Jroot – crossing my fingers) then we will be in the rain for a while!

Our 2 Acres In The Country #3: Family Work Day

OttoH — Tue, 29 May 2012 01:09:41 GMT

We made it a family day out on the land today, my two sons, my oldest son’s girlfriend, and myself worked out there for a few hours. We had a great time, grilled some burgers and got a lot of sore muscles.

The area where we are going to put in the shed was really uneven so I bought a new heavy-duty tiller and we went about flattening the spot out. We went from rock hard ground to a seven inch till depth in one pass, then we went over it in a cross hatch fashion a couple more times. Once we had it all tilled in my two work mules Phillip and Tim dragged an old bedspring weighted down with a tire around the area to smooth it out.

Here is the before and a couple of after photos.

While we were busy tilling the area Meghann, my son’s girlfriend was busy dragging the rest of the land with the bedspring and a couple of tires tied to the top. As you can tell she had a lot of fund doing this.

We wound up with some more treasures and a lot more trash coming up out of the ground after she finished. I expect we will have to drag the land a couple more times before I feel comfortable enough to replace the blades on my mower that have been nicked and chipped by all of the items in the lawn.

We Had Rain

MsDebbieP — Sun, 27 May 2012 23:43:13 GMT

May 27/12

Yahoo.. Rain.
That’s all I need to say.

Photography #13: May 26/12

MsDebbieP — Sat, 26 May 2012 21:45:25 GMT

(Clover)

(Foam Flower)

(Rhododendren)

Our 2 Acres In The Country #2: Pest Control

OttoH — Sat, 26 May 2012 16:48:44 GMT

My son and I have spent some time pulling more things out of the grass and trees, while doing so we have discovered numerous fire ant mounds throughout the land. We cleaned up around them as best we could and then this morning I went out there with my tow behind Agri-Fab spreader and put down 50 pounds of fire ant killer. I hope that it starts working soon, because on Memorial Day we are heading out there to level a 13 by 16 foot area in the trees to put up a shed the following weekend.

We are getting quite a collection of old rusted tools and some usable ones out of the grass. I found a fairly new Gilmour model 618 machete and saw, I will be sharpening it up on my WorkSharp later today and take it with me on Monday when we work on the shed area.

There was an old truck hood leaning against the fence line, we grabbed it with the garden rake to flip it over and were met by a rather perturbed Brow Recluse Spider. So we used the rake to drag the hood out to a sunny part of the lot and left it there to bake for a while.

Can’t wait to see what other treasures or surprises we run across in the next few weeks.

Mushrooms #6: Final bloom from the Mushroom Kit

Radicalfarmergal — Sat, 26 May 2012 13:45:40 GMT

We enjoyed our final bloom from our inside oyster mushroom kit. The blooms become progressively smaller as the mycelium uses up the energy and nutrients in the substrate. Here is a photo of our harvest:

After we harvested the mushrooms, my son discovered another surprise. I had covered the mushrooms with an old dish cloth to keep light off the back and sides of the substrate in order to encourage the mushrooms to come out of the front. My son lifted the cloth and found another bloom coming out of a part of the bag we had thought to be taped shut. Our bonus harvest:

Now the substrate and mycelium have been moved to an outside patch of wood chips under the weeping willow tree in the “wild” section of our land. With a little luck, we will enjoy many more harvests in the future.