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[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

SJC wrote:

> ROFL.....
>
> "It's not invasive in clay soil"......
>
> I'd be forever suspicious of whoever told you that.  It is invasive here 
> in clay soil,
I found it growing on sand.  At least two references online confirm 
that, one just anecdotal, the other fairly official looking.  In any 
case, the area where it's going is surrounded by dense shady forest, and 
is filled currently with invasive 10 foot tall salmonberry with thorns, 
fairly useless as a biomass crop.

> Deer won't eat it, even when nothing else is green:  bad sign.
>  
My buddy's goats ate the little patch that was down by the tracks.  The 
young shoots are edible as a cooked vegetable in early spring.

> When I moved here, I had none.  Apparently a truck moving fill soil lost 
> some up by the mailbox (very salty roadside where winter/spring runoff 
> flows, mixed gravel on upper side, clay below).  Within one year there 
> was a patch 20 feet across, this in shade under tall ash trees.  It has 
> taken 14 years to beat it into submission and that means never going to 
> the mailbox without a tool in hand unless there is snow on the 
> ground....and the diggings we put in the fire barrel, having seen what 
> happened when a neighbor put a pile of knotweed clippings on his compost 
> pile......
>  
We have zero summer rain here, so it's limited to areas right by 
streambanks.  I hope my seasonally wet bottomland will accommodate it 
through the bone-dry months.  I think when combined with an overstory of 
alders to keep things shaded, it may just make it.

Maybe chopping, darkness, or just a good wilting would help keep it from 
sprouting when used as mulch or in compost. 

> "softest stem" is also not a term I'd use with this stuff.......
>
> Whoever told you that hates you, Bill!
>  
Admittedly it was a young shoot I picked, but even at that stage it was 
big enough to be worth harvesting.  The stem was like a very soft hollow 
rubber tube.  Later in the year it's no doubt tougher, but the point is 
that with one swipe of the machete, I harvest pounds of biomass, since 
the stalks are so large.

> Susan Jane, in Maine
>  
Thanks Susan, these are all reasons to exercise caution.

I've gone NOMAIL between now and the Election.  It's somewhat akin to 
avoiding the telephone or the TV.  You just get sick of all the screeching.

> Bill Jones wrote:
>  
>
> > Yesterday I discovered Japanese knotweed.  It has the softest stem for 
> > cutting, and one stalk grows to be huge!  Today I researched it some 
> > online.  It's not invasive in clay soil, nor does it sprout from seed in 
> > the north, or without pollination from a separate male plant.  
> >    
>
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