permaculture

[Bob <rmhoward@omninet.net.au>]

Vinca rosea(Catharanthus rosea) is the Madagascan periwinkle from which
Vinblastine is extracted for the treatment of leukemia. I'm not sure
whether Vinca minor has medicinal properties - it's certainly
distasteful to my chooks.

Actually, its interesting becuase the chooks basically are synergistic
with the vinca - having removed all the other ground covers the vinca is
now growing rampantly and I have what might be termed a "weed" problem.
Being lazy - the following has occurred to me. Although the vinca grows
vigourously in winter - it dies back to the edge of the trees in summer
- it can't handle the dry mediterranean summers we have here. It's roots
act to bind together the sand on the relatively steep slope that i live
on - this is good. Also I've noticed that where I've got "Wandering Jew"
(the plant - sorry I don't know its latin name) growing in the
understorey the vinca doesn't overgrow it - this is good - Wnadering Jew
is easy to pull out and grows fast. I've found that the best way to deal
with deep rooted smotherable weeds like vinca and kikuyu is to encourage
other ground covers (nasturtiums grow over kikuyu as well as Vinca).
That way you grow the weed that is easiest to pull out. Then it's simply
a matter of paying attention to boundaries i.e. reducing the boundary
where the problem weed is growing into your valuable vegies etc. by
weeding strategically. I treat weeds like Vinca and kikuyu as 2 - 3 year
problems.

Hope this is useful

Regards Bob