permaculture

[Mark Ludwig <mpludwig@students.wisc.edu>]

At 01:18 PM 3/17/97 -0800, you wrote:
>At 03:02 PM 3/17/97 -0500, Rebbry@aol.com wrote:
>>The growing season is coming on-line, and I find myself once again
>>confronting two of our eternal "challenges" in the Ozarks:  ticks and 
>>bermuda
>>grass.  Now, I know some people say you can control ticks with guineas or
>>chickens or ducks or geese, but I've never known anyone in real life who had
>>any success with these techniques.  As for bermuda, I've tried everything
>>from Round-up to buried flashing to digging out beds and laying landscape
>>fabric down first.  Eventually, bermuda snakes its way in.  
Snip
>
>1)  I, like you, buried 8" wide aluminum flashing all around the garden.
>Back-breaking work, especially in a southern California summer when the
>ground was hard as the proverbial rocks.  But this kept 90%+ of it outside
>the garden.  (And I had to use the aluminum flashing; my first trial was
>with 4" bender board, which the Bermuda grass merely laughed at and
>shouldered aside.)
>

>
>There's probably a secret Permaculture technique for turning Bermuda grass
>into a cash crop, but I don't know what it is.
>
>I have very little experience with ticks, so can't help there.
>
>Good luck...if I could singlehandedly outlaw the selling of Bermuda grass by
>nurseries, I would.
>
>Loren
>--
>Loren Davidson      

Folks,
Here in the midwest our constant garden foe is quack grass.  It has a
similar root system, though it's a cool season grass and starts early in the
season where I suppose the bermuda grass is more a summer menace.  Any how,
some friends have had good luck allowing pigs to root it out and following
up with a cover crop of rye or buckwheat.  By shifting your graden space
around you should be able to stay ahead of much of it while getting next
year's plot ready.  I find a lot of the trouble stems from our efforts to
clear our garden beds of roots while ignoring the paths.  If the pigs were
allowed to clean up the path areas (or if you did it) you might have longer
term sucess.
We also have a lot of ticks and have tried burning the grass and then
following with poultry.  The problem is that there are so many other things
to eat for them that the ticks just aren't attractive enough to really take
a hit.  Burning near the house is a little nerve racking too, and seems to
be of limited effectiveness.  My sugestion?  Daily naked inspections with
someone you love (or at least a tall mirror)  ;<)
Mark Ludwig
Student - UW School for Beginning Dairy Farmers
King of the weed pullers -  Otter Creek Organic Farm
Grains, beef, compost and ?