permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lflondon@mindspring.com>]

On Sun, 19 Nov 2000 12:57:44 -0500, Hugh Lovel <uai@alltel.net> wrote:

>
>Lawrence London writes:
>>
>>I get tired of hearing complaints about kudzu, Johnson grass, pigweed,
>>morning glory (bindweed?) and other wonderful plants.
>>So much of the public has been brainwashed into believing that these
>>are generally bad, useless and a nuisance, when the opposite is true.
>>Many have neither the interest or imagination to envision a world
>>where these plants are respected and used in a multitude of ways. I
>>have an old ag textbook, in fact several of them, that describe the
>>culture and management of kudzu for animal feed,
>>i.e. a standard, often used forage crop. If it were taken seriously
>>for its value as an economic plant then management of it would also be
>>taken seriously, i.e. not letting it become invasive. That is an
>>interesting challenge for farmers. Of course the state of present day
>>agriculture precludes this mostly because of the dominance of larger
>>conventional farms and the pricing structure of farm products.
>>Lawrence F. London, Jr.
>
>
>This is ever so right-on Lawrence!
>
>For example, travel where you will you NEVER see a pasture with animals in
>it that has kudzu. Why? Because it is easily grazed to death and is the
>very best of animal feed. If we managed it rightly, of course, we would
>turn the animals in and graze it down a bit and then take them off again
>for a spell so we didn't kill it. Everything from cows to rabbits loves it
>and gets fat and shiny from eating it. It is one of the most beneficial
>plants for the soil as where it grows for any length of time the soil
>becomes rich, dark and crumbly. If the many, many acres in parks, roadsides
>and waste/wild lands presently overrun in Kudzu were fences and grazed
>instead of herbicided we would take a major step toward environmental
>repair  in the world.

There is _no_ excuse for herbiciding these plants, no reason at all
when there are better, less expensive and damaging alternatives 
for control.
 
Controlling Johnson grass and wild mustard, and to a lesser extent
Bermuda, crabgrass, pigweed, lamb's quarters and a number of other
invasive, persistent annual and perenial weeds in working farm fields
where grass/grain/bean crops need to be grown, is a serious issue for
conventional farmers. Johnson grass, for example, is a huge problem if
allowed to spread by seed or by rhizome as well. The seeds get in the 
tractors and implements and get spread to other fields if not blown
off with air or water hose.  These plants compete with crops for
space, nutrients and water, but worse, if allowed to go to seed, get
harvested, especially in hay, and get spread wherever the hay is 
distributed; if out in the field for beef cattle, sheep or goats, then
it will be there when that field is put/rotated from grazing to crop.
The bottom line is to eradicate it mechanically and with cover crops
before putting in grass/grain/bean crops or even use it for grazing.
I will have to say that I _know_ that this can be done as I have done
it on a small scale. With the right kind of tillage, fertilizing and
cover cropping you _can_ replace Johnson
grass-Bermuda-pigweed-crabgrass-infested fields with fescue and
lespedeza - or kudzu! Follow this with a no-till cropping system
where the soil is not inverted or otherwise disturbed where the weed
seed bank can germinate and you will be on your way to
clean soil for food/forage cropping. This scheme can be employed on
cropland with varying grades, even hillsides.
The trick is to begin by tilling with chisel plow, Soil Saver or
Yeomans plow then follow with hilling discs, compost and seeder.
Hilling discs create much more than mere ridges and furrows; if
adjusted properly (40hp tractor with a pair of opposed
hilling disc sets) they will leave a giant hill between the tires of
the tractor. If tilled properly, at the right time, in advance  of
hilling, the dirt will resemble a brown ocean breaker rolling along
as it passes through the discs to fall into a neat, wide rounded pile
as the tractor moves across the field. Plants that grow on these hills
will flourish and grow over and cover the deep ditches between the
hills. You get aeration, shade, moisture retention and  less
competition for seeded crops from weeds that may initially germinate.
The fescue will begin to dominate but the lespedeza will prevail over
time crowding out nearly everything else. This is a one-time procedure
to interrupt the cycling of weeds and will require that the restored
field be left fallow for a number of years. A little hand pulling of
Johnson grass seedheads and plants may be necessary the first year or
two. I did this and got rid of it entirely;  the fescue and lespedeza
rapidly filled in the gaps left behind. A field repaired this way can
be grazed or put in orchard or small fruit over time.When I had my
field done I had the hilling discs cut a single hill, with accompaning
ditches on either side, across the field, perpendicular to the other
hills, which themselves ran _with_ the grade, every forty feet (the
span of a small Rainbird sprinkler). This created a dam to obstruct
rainwater runoff and increase water retention and percolation in the
soil, a kind of mini-swale. I feel that this is a technique that would
help many farmers solve a variety of problems that may have with
some of their fields. Land improved this way could easily be adapted 
to alley cropping schemes.

I will take pictures of my experiment and put them online. It would be
fun to experiment on a larger scale, like 1000 acres with plenty of
equipment, compost, water, good soil and a big bankroll.

>Johnson grass, water hyacinth, bamboo and many other despised plants should
>be looked at in the same fashion. You are so right! So right! And also so
>right on the current institutional arrangements being in the way of these
>beneficial things happening. This is why I ran as the Green Party candidate
>for Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture in 1998 and is why a vote for
>either Gore or Bush in the latest election was a wasted vote.

I would love to see a good mixture of Greens, Libertarians, Democrats
and Republicans run US politics without any one of them dominating.



>
>Warm regards,
>
>Hugh Lovel
>Union Agricultural Institute
>Blairsville, Georgia
>
>
>
>
>

Lawrence F. London, Jr. 
lflondon@mindspring.com    
london@metalab.unc.edu
http://www.ibiblio.org/london
http://www.ibiblio.org/permaculture