In the Weeds

I like to name things - my bicycle is "Judy", my old car was "Bunny" in honour of its VW Rabbit lineage (it also went by "Baby", since my diesel Golf had a hard time with big hills, and was often urged on with "C'mon Baby, you can do it!"). I refer to my garden project alternately as "the Secret Garden" and "the Beer Garden"; I once called myself the "Barn Troll" and the apprentices "the Triplets", and both those monikers are still in use. I'm by no means the only one who does this, Kim calls Lorenz "the Big Guy", and to HP the kids are "die Kurzen" (German for "the short ones", though we've discovered that Adrian is taller than I am now). Ruth's horses are Fay, Odin, Nemo and now the baby (not yet named), but when Lorenz was confirming what stalls they go in a couple of months ago, he said, "on the left it's Baby, Warthog and Mama, and Hobo on the right". (Odin's warts are long gone, and Nemo's "baby" status has been usurped by the new baby). Given his penchant for the manure pile, Boris should really be renamed "Stinky". Tara and the Triplets live in the "Labour Lodge". Other names in the current farm lingo include "the Urban Cowboy" and "Droopy Drawers" - and sometimes we have a hard time remembering the real names of most of these characters!

Given all this naming activity, I thought it was time I got a grasp of the names of one of the most ubiquitous features of this farm: the weeds. Years ago, Marlene gave me a weed identification book for my birthday. Yesterday, I hauled it out and started looking things up. Common ones in the field: buckwheat, ragweed, lamb's quarters, wood sorrel, milk thistle, Canada thistle and (at the field edges) dame's rocket.

It's a bit odd to think of the buckwheat as a weed, seeing as it is usually sown as a cover crop or green manure and for weed suppression. It has a few advantages - it is, for example, attractive to honey bees (there are hives up in the fields) and lots of beneficial insects. It's also attractive to one particular pest that is a problem in the fields, the tarnished plant bug. This, though, can be a good thing, since it means the tarnished plant bug hangs out in the buckwheat and stays away from all the things we'd rather not see it on. Buckwheat germinates very rapidly, grows quickly, and puts up with dry soils and low fertility - all these are reasons it's such a good cover crop, really. That's what Lorenz used it for here in the past too, and these buckwheat plants are left over from that.

Ragweed is notorious for its allergy-triggering (hay fever) pollen. Like buckwheat, it is an annual broadleaf plant. Ragweed doesn't, however, flower until late summer (and if you're on top of the weed control, it shouldn't get to flower and subsequent re-seeding). It is, however, particularly common in over-grazed pastures, and with a couple of very intesively used horse pastures nearby... Fortunately, ragweed's shallow taproot is removed fairly easily with manual weed control - but you still have to be there to do so.

Lamb's quarters aka pigweed is an edible weed, related to spinach. I haven't yet chowed down on it, but apparently both leaves and seeds are good to eat. The leaves are apparently high in a bunch of things, including vitamin A, calcium, potassium and phosphorous. The seeds are a good source of phosphorous, potassium, protein and niacin. And, according to the wild foods books, it's been used as a medicinal as well, as a sedative and, poulticed, to treat burns. Pretty impressive for a weed... makes me (almost) want to try it. A word of caution, though - if you're going to go into weed munching, don't do it with weeds from just anywhere. Lamb's quarters, like spinach (to which it's related), will absorb pesticides if they're present in the soil, and will also accumulate nitrates (very common in conventionally fertilized fields).

Up next: wood sorrel. When I was little, I called this "Hasenklee" ("rabbit clover") - you probably know it as a "shamrock". It looks like clover in that it has three leaves but, unlike clover, the leaves are heartshape and they fold up a little in the middle (to protect themselves against the sun, when they're stressed, and at night) Like lamb's quarters, it's edible (unlike lamb's quarters, it's perennial, spreading underground along rhizomes). I have tried it, it's kind of sour (hence another name, "sour clover"). The sour taste also gives it the "sorrel" apellation, which is a misnomer since the plant is not related to the sorrels at all. It, too, has been used for various medicinal properties.

And since I'm all over the edible medicinals that are weeds here at Greenfields, let me introduce milk thistle, which has been used for liver ailments for generations. You may also know it by its other names: wild lettuce, prickly lettuce or horse thistle. It is considered a noxious weed, and much like lamb's quarters, is a problem in pastures because it accumulates nitrates. It grows as both an annual or a biennial, depending on when it germinates. Milk thistle is considered a noxious weed (besides the livestock poisoning, it likes to crowd out other plants - and it gets very big), and if you're not going to be controlling it chemically (ahem!), you really need to get it when it's in the seedling stage. Which is now, and Lorenz has had the crew out weeding a fair bit of late.

One of the ones that I particularly don't like is the Canada thistle. Sure, it will make a pretty purple flower - but have you ever wandered barefoot over the grass and stepped on one of these, or try to pull one while not wearing gloves? From a cropping perspective, it's a problem for several reasons: it spreads by underground rhizomes, and does so prolifically. These rhizomes aren't destroyed by cultivation, because they're deeper than you normally cultivate. There are eight or so buds per metre of rhizome, and a mature spreads by over six metres of rhizomes every year! Nasty.

I saved my favourite weed for last: dame's rocket. I tend to call this "wild phlox", but it's not a phlox at all, it is a member of the mustard family. It's really a perennial (introduced) wildflower, and it grows rampant behind the horse barn and along the greenhouse. Technically, dame's rocket is an invasive, meaning that it is an introduced plant (yes, we can once again blame European gardeners) that spreads rapidly and thus displaces native plants - but it is also actively fostered by all sorts of gardeners now, since it is a common ingredient in "wildflower" mixes. Lorenz explained that he also had it as part of his wildflower garden behind the house years ago. When the new septic bed was put in, some of the soil from that garden ended up behind the horse barn. What was left of it is along the edges, including by the greenhouse.

So, that was my introduction to the weeds. There are many, many more - and a lot of them, Lorenz doesn't know the names of, just that they're weeds. But, in the case of some of the ones above (leaving out ragweed and the Canada thistle!), one farmer's weed is a gardener's treasure. If you're farming vegetables, you don't need weeds - no matter how useful they are in other contexts - competing with your vegetables for water and light. Weeding is crucial at this time of year, since it's not only easier to get the plants out when they're young, but under no circumstances do you want them to go to seed. One lamb's quarter plant allowed to go to seed, for example, yields about 72,000 seeds! The seeds can survive several seasons. Lorenz says the rule of thumb is seven years - as in, if you let your weeds go to seed, you'll have a problem for seven years (I asked why seven was the magic number, and he said it's because that's how long it takes for most of the seeds to stop being viable - but some can survive 20 or more years!). Unfortunately, just that happened here at Greenfields a few years ago, so due diligence is called for now.

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Besides weeding, the farm crew has been putting in the plastic mulch for some of the crops (which helps with moisture management and weed control), transplanting like fiends, and harvesting - and that's in addition to the regular taking care of the greenhouse and animals chores. I don't often get to see the Triplets working in the fields - not because they don't work because they do, they work very hard, but because while they're in the fields, I'm at my job... Lorenz, however, works insane hours and weekends, so I can catch him while I'm at home too. I've been hearing the tractor roar to life before six a.m. lately. I ran into Lorenz by the chicken coop on Monday morning. All I'd done that day, so far, was drink one mug of coffee and deal with my email (what? it was 7:15!). Lorenz, on the other hand, had already tilled a field, done a load of laundry, opened the greenhouse, let out the roosters, cooked a full breakfast, and scrubbed the pool (he was also on his second mug of coffee - I'm sure by the time I hit #2, I'd achieved a comparabla volume of stuff. As if...) On Wednesday, I was on coffee #1 when Lorenz climbed onto the tractor and headed up to the fields. I was still on coffee #1 when he returned, but his return was prompted by a torrential downpour (so this time, you get a wet farmer on a tractor photo).

The rain was just what the weeds - and the vegetables - needed. Since that early morning shower, there has been a lot of heat and things have grown at a rate that you wouldn't believe. The row covers have come off the early brassicas, and now they're being harvested. This morning, I decided to wander up to the fields before work (passing first a chicken-feeding Justin and then Ruth's horses on the way). J.P. was harvesting asparagus, Sean was filling a crate with lettuce mix, and Lorenz was harvesting and bunching kale. I can't get over how big everything is now. If the growth rate we've experienced this week were to continue, we'd be in a lush rainforest by the end of the month. Lorenz and the wheelhoe have other ideas on that front, though.

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The growth spurt has been because it's been hot this week. That has also been the driving force behind the work that Lorenz and HP have been doing to get the pool opened. Lorenz fixed the broken elbow on the PVC pipe and got the pump going to circulate on the weekend (he'd patched the hole in the pool ages ago, and has been running the hose in to bring up the water level). The pool has been shocked, so the nasty algae has retreated. Now, both Lorenz and HP have been scrubbing and vacuuming. Once it's clean, it will be stabilized, and then it will be ready for me to jump in! The Barn Troll is expanding her operations and becoming a Pool Troll as well...

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And as for the Garden... On the weekend, Malcolm went to a yard sale in Brookville and came running back with a whole bunch of stuff, including tiki torches - he came barging into the barn with a "hey Johanna, I put some of those survivor things in the secret garden!". I quite like them, and I've already picked up some citronella oil for them. (Malcolm had lots of presents, by the way - HP got a weight lifting belt, there was a kitty toy for Malcolm's mom, and for some reason the most appropriate present for Lorenz, in Malcolm's mind, was a dated Harlequin Romance. Hee.)

I love that garden. Despite my initial assertions that I was all over the perennials and annuals were a waste of time, I've gone a bit nuts with the sales on annuals. I have petunias, begonias, salvias, a couple of geraniums, and loads of annuals that I started from seed (I'd like to tell you what all they are, but I have no idea which of the seeds came up and which didn't. I can tell you that I seeded chrysanthemums, snapdragons, poppies, morning glories, nicotina, candytufts, sweet alyssum and sunflowers. Likely, there were some others. The only ones I'm sure came up are the poppies and the sunflowers. The rabbit ate all the sprouted sunflowers, though). So there are things sprouting all over the place, though probably 50% are weeds. We'll have to see. I'm all for a riot of greenery, but I'd rather that greenery include yellow, red, blue, pink, orange... and I'd like relatively low density of burdock, dandelion and twitch at least in the beds).

Thanks to Ellen, I have many perennials. I don't know all their names, but I'm sure of the bleeding heart, peonies, hostas, ferns, forget-me-nots, woodland violets, monk's hood and phlox. She also gave me some virginia creeper, but I don't think it made it. At the nursery, I bought more hostas, honeysuckle, English daisies, columbine, cardinal flowers, more phlox, strawberries, sweet william, serbian bellflower, delphiniums, lavender (it might not make it, it's not looking good), bugleweed and creeping thyme. Tara and HP contributed some perennials (they showed up in the beds one day!), and I dug up more violets, periwinkle and ferns behind the labour lodge and transplanted them. When I list it all like that, it does sound like a lot of plants!

My other major project was getting a lawn going. Where once was a bush lot, there's nothing but ryegrass...

Posted by Johanna at June 11, 2004 06:08 PM