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Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Weed Identification

I have 4 acres of land and much of it is not used so I have many wild plants and a few infestations of unwanted plants

Among the plants I hate the most is Tansy

Common tansy it looks very pretty covers lots of land and it has this nasty smell that makes me sick (if a mom of 5 is nauseated by a smell then the smell is STRONG)

According to some of my searches it says it wards off flies

sure it does I have seen flies swarm over the darn stuff

Some sites say it decreases the amount of mosquitoes you have well if I get rid of the stuff and the mosquito population goes up then I will cultivate it

my main reason for NOT liking tansy is that it is toxic to grazing animals
I prefer a wild flower mix with multiple colors to be in the place I affectionately call the pit

my other problem for hating this weed is it is a BEAR to get rid of we are thinking we will have to hire the fire department to help us with a controled burn or something to get rid of this stuff Dave has a weed burning and while it is nice and wet would be a good time to get it GONE

I read some GOOD things about Tansy first off I can cut it down and put it in my compost heap and add tons of good potassium to my heap so that is good news Here is a shot of what Tansy looks like now before flowering

The depression you see in the weeds is where Dave rolled the lawn tractor you guess it he broke the carborator on the damn thing so it is now NOT running again he is upset about it I am more upset about watching him tumble screaming under that big ol thing (we have an old Case lawn mower tractor thingie) freaked me out I thought he was going to horribly hurt at best but luckily he came out without a scratch just a bruise on his back where it hit him

What can I say he is a real man not one of those manicured psuedo men he got up grinned at me for his summer sault and said "I'm OK"!!

I slapped him for scaring me like that he was too busy giggling

grrr

anyways more on weeds and identifying them

my problems with weeds is well I dont know much about what I have I did by chance find that I have some lovely white yarrow growing on our land (COOL I thought) the ahrdest part about IDing these things is you have to know the name of the plant to positively ID it

I find this lame myself because I dont know the names of all of the plants on my property I want to be able to search for them by description you know

Stinky pain in my butt that won't let anything else grow

but that also describes another weed I despise this one is in the Mint family

creeping charlie creeping charlie and I have a hate hate relationship it hates me and grows big and lush and I hate it and wherever I dont want it I pull and pull and pull and dig out roots and shoots all to no avail

I really would LOVE to get some Wild Flower seeds of my native WI and have the lovely plants native to this area grow here

oh and I still want some Honey suckle vines for my garden (I know not native invasive but so pretty and reminds me of my mom so I want it!!)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ohhhh I loooove honeysuckle too, and want some immediately! One of my favorite, favorite memories was sitting on our back stoop and sucking out the hearts of the honeysuckle that grew wild out there in Virginia! I have no idea how to get my hands on it though, do you? I mean, it isn't in any seed catalogs or anything, and I've never seen any growing anywhere near Cleveland.

Sue said...

My mom used to have it in her garden in Milwaukee WI where I grew up she acquired some from a trip to her hometown in Kentucky and that means she pulled the car over grabbed Dad's pocket knife and got herself a cutting she then put it in Dad's handkerchief and wetted it down with some water

she took it home to WI and planted it along side the house

I tell she was vicious with that plant she would cut it back every year to make it stay in the shape she wanted it to be

It is considered invasive and noxious in many parts of the south but up here in the northern states because we have such harsh winters it does not have 4 seasons to grow so it goes kinda dormant in winter and we can chop it back and control it

SO if you go further south for a visit or something grab a cutting if you want to know how I am happy to give directions on how to get it to take root