Goats love weeds...

They love them so much they eat them to death, and this is being used in Los Angeles (California, USA) by Environmental Land Management who rent out weed-cleaning goats.  You can read the story here in New York Times.

Product: Weed trimmer toy

The toy that creates people with OCD gardening syndrome - a Home Depot toy weed trimmer.  It is only $9.98, and a great buy of plastic made in China, I bet.  Give the kid a real metal shovel instead to dig up some thistle roots. Let kids do real things, and learn about the real outdoors.  But maybe that is too much to hope for, when there are so many gadget-happy parents in the US.

Weed whackers and the nature of weeds

'Coal and Ice' (Seamus) on Flickr took this great photo of weed removal tools, and also wrote a long and insightful piece as part of the photo description.  Head over to Flickr and read it here. 


Do you know all the tools?  There is a scythe, string trimmer, Ryobi, grass whip, clippers, Fux, weed cutter, corn knife...  Coal and Ice has it all explained in his post on Flickr.

[Photo (c) Coal and Ice, Flickr]

Spraying against weeds with Round-Up

Spraying against weeds with Round-Up, a photo by Vilseskogen on Flickr.

On a Rutgers parking lot, I caught this scene a few weeks ago. I wonder, why do we really have to kill these poor little carpetweeds and other weeds? It is not like the car tires will slip on them, right? It is all because we think green on the black will look bad? Look untended and dirty?

A weed killer is banned

 "The Environmental Protection Agency banned the sale on Thursday of Imprelis, a weed killer introduced this year that landscapers link to thousands of tree deaths around the country."  (source: New York Times, August 11, 2011)

Another pesticide is banned from lawns and turf areas after killing of the trees nearby.

"While it has been highly effective at killing clover and broad-leafed weeds like dandelions, landscapers say, nearby evergreens in many cases began dying within weeks of the first applications. Some agricultural experts have suggested that the tree toll could reach into the hundreds of thousands."

Imagine how much it would cost to replace (which you really can't) a big old spruce or douglas fir.  In the article they say up to $25,000.  Wouldn't you rather have some dandelions and clovers AND your tree alive?  I just don't get the need people have to have a weed-free lawn, a rather sterile environment just of spiky grass leaves.  Certainly, our pursuit of neatness and control in our gardens brings us more and more toxins and deaths.

Now I wonder how many of the dead conifers you see around here in New Jersey after last summer's drought might have been from landscapers spraying Imprelis on the ground around them. 

Richard Mabey's book reviewed in NY Times

The book WEEDS: in Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants by Richard Mabey is reviewed in New York Times today.  It is great review, but once again there is a common mistake in how evolution works by the writer of the review (and maybe also by Mabey, I am not sure since I haven't read the book yet):

"One can’t help being impressed by weeds’ ingenuity. They’ve grown hooks, burrs, spines, rib hairs and a sort of glue to move their seeds around."

Weeds haven't grown these things.  Plants that had these characters, evolved from genetic variation and mutations over a long time, became weeds because of them.  To become a weed is a secondary thing, not something that forces a plant in a certain evolutionary direction.  

It is interesting though how our weed project hits exactly the same notes as Mabey's book.  History, culture, biology, medicine, and the misunderstood weeds connecting it all.

No more foraging in NYC parks

An article in today's New York Times describes how the park department is planning to crack down on foraging for edible plants (and animals) in the city's parks.

"....New Yorkers are increasingly fanning out across the city’s parks to hunt and gather edible wild plants, like mushrooms, American ginger and elderberries. Now parks officials want them to stop. New York’s public lands are not a communal pantry, they say." (source)

Not all are weeds of course, but many are, and some are also invasive. Personally I think a total ban is wrong, because I want kids to pick a raspberry, and if the Chinese want to gather the smelly ginkgo fruits, let them!  And if the "edible weeds crowd" want to reduce the invasive Japanese knotweed by cutting the young edible spring shoots, that is certainly better than spraying with pesticides later. But hauling turtles out of the park is a different thing.  So as usual, the issue is not as straightforward or black and white as we would like it to be.  It always amazes me that it is illegal to pick mushrooms in America's National Parks for example. Is it better that the mushrooms rot away?  I think it is better that people get closer to nature understand its value, limitations and dangers than that we coop up nature behind laws and bars and signs that tells us to stay away from all green things.

Vinegar and hot water

Two really good ways to kill any plant, weed or not, is to either pour boiling water over it or spray it with vinegar.  It works.  Here is a link to a vinegar killing evaluation, and the boiling water I have used myself.  Just boil some water in a tea kettle and then pour it over the weeds in the driveway.  Much better than store-bought chemicals.