Weeds « The Yellow Farmhouse Garden

November 11, 2016

Rye makes a fine cover crop

Filed under: Cover crops,Soil,Weeds — bob @ 1:58 pm

I finally decided to close down the garden a few days ago. It is the third week of October after all. I’m hoping that the weather will stay mild so my cover crop of rye will germinate and make some good growth before winter sets in.

Rye is one of the best winter cover crops for our area. You can let your garden grow for a full season and still have time to plant your cover crop after the garden has stopped producing. Fall-planted rye will make good growth and do very nicely over winter, especially if we have a covering of snow to protect the plants from harsh winter winds.

On sloping sites, cover crops such as rye, stabilize the soil keeping it from washing downhill. On flat sites, cover crops keep wind from blowing away your hard-earned topsoil.

It’s true, you can just leave those small fall growing weeds in your garden and they will do much to control erosion but rye has another huge advantage. A cover crop of rye will reduce the bio-mass of weeds by 80-90% vs an area with no cover crop. Because it grows so fast in the fall, rye will smother weeds that are trying to grow. Not only that, its roots produce a compound that keeps weed seeds from sprouting. Compare that to a garden that is covered with small over-wintering weeds waiting to grow again in the spring and you’ll see what an advantage that is.

: Rye is not the same as rye grass.

You can’t actually see it with your eyes but soil nutrients can get washed down into the soil profile by autumn rains and melting snow far enough where it is no longer available to your garden plants. As it grows, rye will capture soil nutrients retaining them in the form of roots, leaves and stems.

: The most difficult part about planting rye is finding small quantities of seed. Here I have a one bushel bag of seeds weighing 56 pounds.

Another fascinating thing about rye is that it has the ability, unlike many other plants, to extract usable minerals directly from raw soil particles. It then uses the minerals for its growth and development — essentially making its own fertilizer. In the spring, the rye plants are tilled into the soil. As they decompose, these new minerals are released into the soil for garden plants to use.

I prepare my garden for its cover crop by first removing much of the existing plant material, mostly the stuff that tends to get caught up in the tiller tines. Then I’ll run the tiller over the garden to mix in the plant debris. At that point the area is ready for seeding. I evenly broadcast about three pounds of rye seed per thousand square feet evenly over the area. Then I make a very shallow pass with the tiller to mix the seed into the top couple of inches and I’m done.

: Use a small broadcaster to spread half the seed in one direction then the remaining half cross-ways to get an even stand.

Keep in mind you are not planting a lawn here. Too much seed will give you a dense rye plant population making it very difficult to till under your rye crop in the spring.

Bob

Comments (0)

September 29, 2016

Giant ragweed

Filed under: Weeds — bob @ 7:40 am

Earlier this week I spotted a stand of giant ragweed growing next to a parking lot. That brought back memories from long ago when I had a small farm and was growing corn and soybeans. Back then there were a lot of those types of small farms around.

I was a young guy and was excited about my first crop of field corn. It was only 40 acres worth of corn, quite small even back then. I took the first truck load to the local grain elevator. The owner took one look at it and said he would not buy my corn. He told me it was contaminated with a small amount of giant ragweed seeds. He said he had only seen them once before in his entire career — lucky me.

The problem with giant ragweed seed is that although it is shaped differently, it is about the same size and weight as a kernel of corn. The seed cleaning equipment at that time could not remove ragweed seed from corn.

Nowadays, giant ragweed is all over the place. You can spot it in fields and in ditches along the roadways and competing with farm crops like corn and soybeans. It’s become a major problem on many farms.

Not only is it a major weed on farms but in certain areas, it is also a major contributor to the amount of ragweed pollen in the air. A single plant can produce ten million pollen grains a day or about one billion during its lifetime. Compare that to a another plant which produces large amounts of pollen, the corn plant which sheds two to twenty-five million pollen grains its entire life.

Here are some giant ragweed buds. They will eventually grow into seeds.

Giant ragweed is not as common as its cousin the common ragweed. Because the population of common ragweed is much higher than giant ragweed, most of the pollen in the air is of the common ragweed variety.

Giant ragweed is native to north america. It usually doesn’t show up in an area unless the soil has been disturbed for some reason, like tilling a field, or in this case, building a parking lot.

Fortunately, the grain dealer eventually took pity on me and bought my grain. Regulations allow a shipment of corn to contain a tiny percentage of weed seeds, not enough make a difference in the final product. So much corn was coming in during that harvest season that when my minuscule crop was mixed in to the rest, it virtually disappeared into the tons and tons of corn from other farms.

Bob

Comments (0)

September 8, 2016

A different approach to controlling field bindweed

Filed under: Flowers,Weeds — bob @ 8:56 am

I came across an old publication about dealing with weeds in farm and garden situations. The author discussed why weeds grow where they do and how we can use that knowledge to reduce weeds naturally without the use of herbicides. Needless to say, that is a large and complex topic, too big to go into detail here.

One item that did jump out at me was a unique way of killing field bindweed.

Field bindweed is one of the most tenacious weeds we have in the garden. If you have ever had a bindweed infestation in your garden, you know what I’m talking about. It grows from a net work of underground roots that will grow several feet deep and have a lifetime of twenty years or more. I’ve blogged about this weed in the past.

Other than using chemical herbicides, the traditional way of controlling bindweed is to starve the root system by cutting back the tops whenever you see them. That may mean as often as every few days or so, especially early in the season. By cutting back the tops, you remove the leaves stopping all photosynthesis. That forces the plant to use stored energy as it sends up new shoots. Eventually, the plant runs out of energy and dies. That process may take a few years.

Even after being cut back all season, this field bindweed still managed to push its way through mulch.

The author of the weed publication offers a different take on bindweed. He mentions, almost in passing, that dahlia roots secrete a substance that kills field bindweed. I’ve been trying to think back to all of the hundreds or even thousands of dahlias I’ve grown in the past and can’t seem to recall ever seeing bindweed growing with dahlias. I’m not growing dahlias this year and have not grown them for several years.

You would still have to control all of the other weeds that would come up in your temporary dahlia area.

If the dahlia vs bindweed theory is true, that gives gardeners a new ally against this noxious weed. It would mean taking a piece of ground out of normal production and growing dahlias there for a season.

Growing enough dahlias to cover a large area presents a whole new set of challenges. That is a topic for another time.

Bob

Comments (0)

May 19, 2016

Homemade lawn weed killer using 20 Mule Team Borax

Filed under: Weeds — bob @ 7:46 am

Every year there seems to one species of plant that thrives more than it usually does. I remember a few years back when sweet clover could be seen popping allover in places where it hardly grew at all before.

This year it is the low-growing lawn weed with the purple flowers called creeping charlie that’s making the rounds. It’s all over our area, even in farm fields. It’s so dense in many places that it form a purple mat that’s easy to spot from quite a distance away.

There are chemical herbicides on the market that will control creeping charlie and other broad leaf lawn weeds. But what can you do if you are trying to avoid exposure to chemicals?

The easiest thing to do is just ignore it and accept that it is a part of your lawn’s ecosystem.

Another possible solution to try is a homemade borax-based broad leaf weed killer that uses 20 Mule Team Borax as its main ingredient. Researchers in Wisconsin discovered that borax used in the right concentration, killed broad leaf weeds while leaving the grass untouched.

Disolve borax in some hot water first. Then add that solution to the rest of the water.

Dissolve borax in some hot water first. Then add that solution to the rest of the water.

The science behind this concept is the element boron. Boron is an essential micro-nutrient that all plants need. In too high of a concentration, it will kill a plant. Grasses are more tolerant of high levels of boron than are broad leaf weeds like creeping charlie. That means weeds will die of a boron overdose easier than grass.

The problem with this solution is the amount of borax needed to work varies with soil type. Certain soils neutralize boron more efficiently than others.

A good formula to start out with is eight to ten ounces of 20 Mule Team Borax to two and one-half gallons of water (the volume of a standard hand-held pump sprayer). It’s a little difficult to get it to dissolve so mix it in a pail first then fill your sprayer. Spray that amount over 1000 square feet of lawn.

Sometimes the grass will start to turn brown but it eventually will out grow any damage. Like cleaning fabric, try it out in a inconspicuous spot before doing the entire area.

Bob

Comments (0)

February 23, 2016

Chickens help recover garden

Filed under: Chickens,Garden Preparation,Weather,Weeds — bob @ 10:24 am

Earlier this week I decided to move some of my chickens into the lower garden. That area is poorly drained and water sits there almost every spring.

Since the last couple of summers were so damp and rainy, that spot was waterlogged for much of the growing season. I couldn’t plant anything. I couldn’t even till the area, so I let it go fallow.

Right now the spot is dry. Since it has been so warm, the soil is not frozen and there is no snow cover so the chickens will be able to scratch to their hearts’ content.

There’s an old garden shed in that spot that I sometimes use as a temporary chicken coop. And I have the area fenced to keep out deer, woodchucks and those wascally wabbits. It also keeps chickens in.

The weeds in that low spot really took over after two years of non-use. Some weeds grew over three feet high last year. That will be a real challenge this spring. I’ll have to cut down all of that plant material and try to till it the best I can. The chickens can help quite a bit by tearing into those tough weeds ahead of time.

Scratching in the weeds is a chicken’s favorite pastime.

So why even bother with that area? Why not turn into lawn or let it revert back to a wild area? Well, the National Weather Service is predicting a warmer than average spring and summer. They are also predicting below average precipitation, at least through spring and maybe well into summer.

If it turns out to be hot and dry, my sandy-soil upper garden — which did very well last season– will probably be too dry to grow much of anything without a lot of irrigation. During past years when we’ve had droughts, my lower garden rarely needed irrigation until well into the summer.

So that’s where I’m placing my gardening bets this year. If things change, I can always move the chickens back to their normal spot.

Bob

Comments (0)

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »