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  • From: Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>
  • To: Homestead mailing list digest <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] "Non-Native Invasives" Useful in Permaculture (Part I)
  • Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 11:00:15 -0700

Us, to begin with.

Actually I was talking about plants. Here's a small list I typed up this evening.

1. Acacia dealbata (Silver wattle)

There are no natives that can be expected to persist here on high, unirrigated ground, other than fir trees. The only particular value of fir trees, except to squirrels, is to sawmill owners who live forever. There won't be any production from a planting for many decades, and even if there were, the crooks will offer me 10% to take it from me. Furthermore, fir trees toxify the soil and prevent all but adapted plants from growing under them.

That really only leaves acacia, the drought-tolerant plant that you can put on any dry hillside and expect to harvest _useful_ biomass in just a few years. I'm planning to order 4 more for the front driveway edge today. I wonder where, exactly, is it going to "invade" to from there? I'd be reluctant to give it access to water, which it has no need for anyway.

Control: Dead-heading isn't necessary here, because the seeds can't sprout until after a fire. Silver wattle can be easily eliminated with persistent grazing, and won't survive harsh winters far inland.


2. Stinging Nettle

Even I'm nervous about this one. Cattle don't touch it. The patch next to the goose house is expanding slowly. But it has to be the single greatest perennial source of greens ever conceived of by nature. It's not absolutely necessary to have any summer vegetable garden at all, short of potatoes and other roots, as long as there's a patch of nettle and an orchard around. A patch of nettle downhill from your garden or barn is like a great nutrient sponge that strains every bit of nourishment from the runoff. I'm going to try adding pureed, cooked nettle to chicken and goose mash. Of course, it's gone for the winter

Control: Deadheading is an absolute necessity. The seed is edible after careful straining. The wonderful thing about nettle is that the tall stems snap ever so easily in large bundles, making it easy to put 100 pounds of it onto the compost bin in minutes. Near a watercourse, I'd insist on an underground barrier around it.


3. Comfrey

Mollison has comfrey planted at the drip line of fruit trees to discourage grass. That it does, almost magically, with a foot-wide dead zone around the clump. The whole clump dies back for the winter. I've meant to try sowing some true winter annuals over this dead zone in winter, like chervil, corn salad, crimson clover, or mustard, which would greatly increase the total organic matter output. Comfrey is so soft that it literally purees into a nice liquid fertilizer. It seems to come from nowhere, like grass, but when you snip one large flowering stalk, you're cutting almost a half-pound of green manure.

Control: It doesn't ever die, normally, but it's grazed to death by cattle, so I can't see it persisting in the pasture. But neither does it spread sideways, like nettle. The common sterile 'Russian' strain doesn't bear fertile seeds.


4. Chop Suey Tree (Cedrela sinensis)

This plant loves to grow in watercourses, and since it's a willowy plant that doesn't shade the ground beneath it, it doesn't get in the way. The new spring leaves are used for their flavor of garlic. This medicinal herb shows great promise in the treatment of lung cancer. It spreads by runners. There is currently no reasonable supplier of live plants anywhere in the US, although if I lived in England I could have one delivered in hours I've only planted one of my babies that I raised from seed out in the ground yet.

Control: I don't doubt that cattle will graze any new stems that try to emerge from runners. In the dry West it's doomed without water.


.5. Red Clover

The plain Jane original, at first glance. Perennial red clover was never too popular with farmers, as its woody taproots like baseball bats can't be easily tilled in. It's only good for permanent pasture or hay cutting. For some reason, all the true perennial clover has been replaced by 'Kenland' in the stores and catalogs. It's an annual red clover that reseeds itself. There may be such a thing as an annual red clover, but I don't think it's quite the same. I loved those soild taproots. You can find "persistent" red clovers, like 'Starfire', but they don't reseed readily at all. Last year my experimental planting had all its seed sprout right in the seed head. To find persistent clovers with reseeding capability, you almost have to gather seeds from the wild.

To be continued...




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