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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 13, 2021 16:45:36 GMT -6
Years ago my nextdoor neighbor (a retired master gardener) told me that this was an invasive weed and to mow or pull it when it was small. She could not, however, remember the name of it, and I’ve wondered ever since. I do follow her advice and pull or trim the weeds. If left, they get huge and bushy like a small shrub. Driving in the area I see huge stands of it filling the roadside ditches. I was pulling some of the weeds this morning and wondered if perhaps some of my Oklahoma gardening friends might know what it is. I’d be grateful for an identification.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 14, 2021 13:24:37 GMT -6
We have that weed here too, though I don't know the name for it or what it's good for. Here's a good website to search though: weedid.cals.vt.edu/selectors/1#tag101
On this website, you can enter criteria for searching, such as "Upright, Non-Woody" "Prostrate, Non-Woody," "Stickers," etc.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 14, 2021 14:01:18 GMT -6
I will say that we have a few times pulled some up and fed it to some goats that live down the street from us. Maybe it’s good for that?
I shredded some yesterday and used it as a nitrogen layer in my last raised bed I’m working on. It doesn’t seem to seed after being pulled or to grow back from pieces. We often pull it and let it decay in place and have had no problems from that.
Thanks for the link to the website. I tried it using just what I could off the top of my head and didn’t come up with the right answer, but there was a lot that I’ll need to answer with the plant in front of me. It looks like a great resource. I appreciate it.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 15, 2021 15:36:27 GMT -6
I’m not sure that this is an exact match, but it’s pretty similar. I couldn’t get it to come up with the data I was entering because I don’t perceive hairs on the stems or leaves, which this says are present, but “Horseweed” or “Marestail” has been my operating assumption for the plant, and the description is quite close. It made me go outside and take a pretty close look at the plant. weedid.cals.vt.edu/profile/123In looking for more information, I found this interesting article where the writer did the same thing I did: found the plant listed as a Texas native by the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center and wondered whether it has value. I thought the answer she received from her source was helpful. Having seen how it grows up as a monoculture and outcompetes other natives, I’ll keep pulling or mowing it. sherylsmithrodgers.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-likely-nuisance-plant.htmlShe has two brief follow-up posts with good pictures for anyone who is interested in a better look at my weed. I’ll post links here as I had a hard time finding them on her blog, but I hunted them down. sherylsmithrodgers.blogspot.com/2015/07/horseweed-continued.htmlsherylsmithrodgers.blogspot.com/2015/08/end-of-horsetail.html
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2021 20:30:34 GMT -6
I have this too. I like to allow certain portions of my yard go in the spring and spend the rest of the year whacking it down. This one comes up in sunny places, another weed to restore and repopulate the sunny landscape. I suspect the seeds lie dormant in the soil for decades so I do not worry (in my yard at least) about its suppression or extinction. But that's my soil. I can appreciate your diligent attention to the most humble of weeds in your environment where you have a fewer selections of natural soil enhancements.
I can say that the local pollinators enjoy its many blooms during the drought season.
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Post by macmex on Jul 16, 2021 6:18:47 GMT -6
I don't think the first photos are of horseweed, though I could be wrong. I have horseweed, as shown in the last link Chrysanthemum shared. I don't find it especially troublesome and my goats and rabbits adore it. Since I'm perpetually behind on weeding, I sometimes leave it to get more size before I weed it out, since the animals appreciate it so much. No, I also agree with Bon, there's no danger of making it go extinct! It does pull easily too.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 16, 2021 13:46:16 GMT -6
Thanks for the input, Bon and Macmex. There is absolutely no danger of my getting rid of all of it. I was just pulling it in the area around the garden so that seeds would be less likely to blow into our raised beds. We are letting all sorts of stuff grow on our property to try to turn it from barren rock back into living soil, and it is working. I’ll have to do more investigation to see if I can nail down an exact identification. The pictures I took were a very small plant. It grows into something like this. Does this look more like yours, Macmex? This size is pretty much impossible for us to pull. When we pull smaller stuff, we used to take it to goats that live down the street from us, and it was their favorite. We haven’t been visiting recently because it’s too hot by the time I finish garden chores to take a long walk on the road. When I went out to get the photos, I also took a shot of just how green this one section of our land is. When we moved in, this section was absolutely the only place that had any real growth (and lots of it was thistles and horehound) other than the previous owner’s landscaped plants. Since then it has really spread, and we have green moving into more areas. We are perfectly happy with weeds but prefer them to be native, which is one reason I try to identify plants. My kids name everything, and this section was immediately dubbed, “The Oasis of Tranquility.” In September of 2018, one year after we moved in, we were thrilled to see that in areas where we had pulled horehound and thistles, we were getting huge drifts of Cowpen Daisy. The pollinators love that, so we’re letting it grow as much as it wants. We tell anyone who inquires about our landscaping, that we are “wildscaping” our land. There is definitely still more land that needs to recover from overgrazing, and there are still some nasty plants that we need to try to keep from spreading. (Malta Star Thistle is one. It steals water and has what my kids call “meanie burrs.”). There’s a lot of my mystery weed here, too. Now I’m off to use that weed identifier on a new plant I’ve not seen before but just spotted when I was taking pictures.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 16, 2021 14:36:49 GMT -6
Fantastic!
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Post by john on Jul 19, 2021 5:33:21 GMT -6
Chrysanthemum you have got me stumped, I spent at least a half hour perusing the internet and found nothing. I am familiar with horsetail and don't think it is that. Horsetail is probably one of the closest guesses I can think of. The best time to ID anything is when it is in flower or fruit. Most weeds have very inconspicuous flowers so you will have to get up close to see them. The leaves can be deceiving as they can take on different shapes and sizes depending on many factors. THe only other weed that came to mind was kochia but you would know it is that because the leaves are known for turning red in the fall. Let us know if you find out what it is. Or get some pictures of it's flowers or "fruit" and I am sure we can figure it out.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 20, 2021 6:03:45 GMT -6
Thanks so much, John, for taking the time to help with my mystery weed. I’ll have to get a photo of flowers when I can. They are definitely inconspicuous but numerous on this plant.
I had never heard of Kochia before but looked that up. This plant does not turn red at all and has different leaves (more serrated). I can be thankful that that’s one weed I don’t have (yet).
Today, if possible, I’m going to be spending some time pulling nutsedge out of two mulched areas, one where we have young pomegranates growing, and another where there is a small lime tree. I have been surprised at the vigor of the “grass” that takes over these spaces, but I just realized that it’s nutsedge. I had heard of that but didn’t really know what it was until I did some reading on it. I’m feeling a bit discouraged at the prospect of tackling it, but we were blessed with some rain last night, so I figure now is the best time for pulling until the sun gets too bright in those areas.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 21, 2021 6:35:26 GMT -6
I pulled a lot of nutsedge yesterday. It grows its way right back through cardboard and mulch, but I wanted to slow it down a bit, so I hauled just about everything I could find from around our property to try to slow it down (a pile of paving stones that previous owners left tucked under a pergola in out backyard, heavy rubber doormats, wood from a shipping container, and finally just some cardboard to fill the worst of the uncovered areas. It won’t win a beauty contest, but to me it’s an improvement over the green that was trying to choke my young pomegranates. (The first pomegranate froze completely to the ground in February when the covering blew off the night of the big storm, but it’s coming back from roots. The others suffered less damage but still got set back a bit.) You can see where there’s still nutsedge to be pulled in the back of the picture by the driveway. I was running out of time and ran into a couple of fire ant nests. That area will have to wait. I plan to go out this morning to work on the nutsedge growing around my young lime tree (which survived the winter storm but lost some branches due to the freeze even with a frost cloth covering and heat underneath). I don’t see nutsedge in other areas on the property, only in what the previous owners had landscaped in some way. I wonder if it was contaminated soil or if they actually planted it. Maybe it just thrives because these areas are a little more moist than the usual soil around here, in part due to their location, in part because we’ve mulched so heavily.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2021 19:40:42 GMT -6
Looks great to me! I find that nutsedge likes the moisture. Seeds lie dormant and remain viable for really long periods of time. When you pull it, each root that remains becomes another plant. However, makes good compost material. ha
I'm jealous you can grow pomegranate. I know the polar vortex last winter set things back, tho.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 22, 2021 15:11:00 GMT -6
Maybe it’s our unusually rainy summer that is causing the nutsedge to thrive. It’s still pretty amazing to me that it’s July and we’re not in any type of drought. The particular patch I showed in my photo is at the bottom of my steep driveway. It certainly collects run-off there. The other patch is in a flowerbed in our backyard, and there are no gutters on part of the house there, so that dumps additional moisture that drains to the low point of the bed, just where the nutsedge grows.
You must be more brave about compost than I. I’m not sure that I get my piles hot enough for long enough to kill really persistent weeds. I put all the sedge in whatever containers I could cover to rot it down. I’m not sure how long to give it because of the “nut” that is attached to some of the roots. (Our latest thistle bucket is just about ready for use, so I’ll have another bucket available for more sedge.)
When my husband and I were house shopping, I think we spent almost as much time looking at the property around the houses as we did looking at houses. Our realtor was really good and knew his plants, and he was pretty patient with our asking all the time about things growing. This house had a lot of overgrazed property, but the backyard had been kept up much better at an earlier point, and we called it “the resort” because it was beautiful. Things had been planted too closely together and were overgrown, but it was amazing to me when I looked at a shrub and actually saw a pomegranate growing on it. That big bush gave me the idea that I could use pomegranates as a hedge eventually. The big existing pomegranate was killed to the ground this winter because I couldn’t cover it. I covered the little ones, and they are alive at least. They are a Russian variety that is supposed to be more cold hardy, but they’ve not flowered yet, so it remains to be seen whether I can actually grow pomegranates. (The large bush didn’t fruit much, probably because it was overshadowed by too many other plants. What it did produce, the squirrels stole. Grr.)
What zone are you, Bon? There are Russian pomegranates that can be fairly hardy. I think I may have read about one that can be planted in a zone 6, but I’m not sure.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2021 18:52:38 GMT -6
6b/7a which means unpredictable weather extreme snaps. Late winter and spring is a crap shoot. The South side of my yard is a good hot spot micro climate by the house where I've considered growing citrus or pomegranate.
Russian varieties might do well here. Might require shade in summer, but that's doable for smaller things.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 22, 2021 21:25:36 GMT -6
I think a more accurrate description for our part of the State might be Zone 5, thru Zone 8.
Back in 1978, we had the coldest winter I can remember ever having. In January of that year, it snowed a foot in one night and got down to 20 below zero. We had a calf born that night that froze to death before its mama could finish licking it off. Our Science Teacher nearly worried us kids half to death by claiming we were entering the next ice age.
Quote from NOAA, 1978. The “Great Blizzard of 1978” struck the Upper Midwest and Ohio Valley regions of the United States on January 23–28, 1978. The blizzard produced the second lowest atmospheric pressure ever recorded over the contiguous United States from a non-tropical storm system. It is still the strongest storm to affect the Upper Midwest region since 1900 as measured by the Regional Snowfall Index (RSI).
Then, in the winter of 79-80 it was nearly Christmas Day before we got out first killing frost. I remeber because we had not started feeding our cows any hay yet, which is very unusual for any time in December, much less late December. My cousins from New Mexico were visiting during that time. They both made the remark that they wouldn't be able to live in a place where it was still so warm on Christmas Eve.
Then, in 1985 it never got above freezing for about 30 days, from January through Mid-February and froze Fort Gibson Lake over so solid that we drove our trucks out on the ice to set brushpiles cabled to 55-gallon barrels full of rocks for crappy fishing. A year later, the space shuttle Challenger exploded, due to extreme cold shrinking the O'rings of its fuel pods.
In 2006 we had a drought so severe that it hardly rained for 18 months. We had one of the only wells in our neck of the woods that didn't run dry that following Summer. In the winter of 2006, I remember dry snow sticking to my warm shoes, leaving foot prints of bare, brown, dust behind me, as I walked out to fetch an armload of firewood during a 1" inch dusting of snow.
In 2011, we had a 130 degree fluxuation in temperature between February and August. In February, we had 20" inches of snow over a 10 day period and temperatures dropped to 15 below zero. In August, it was 115 degrees and we were heavily into a long drought.
In 2015, it rained 12" inches the first two days after Christmas, to cap us off at 82.5" inches of rain for the year. Quote from national Weather Service: "Widespread 5"-12" of rain fell over most of eastern Oklahoma and northwest Arkansas from December 26-29, 2015, with the majority of the rain occurring over the two day period of the 26th-27th."
Then, there was the Winter of 2020-2021 ... The February arctic Blast that we are all too familiar with, and this weird, wet Summer that so far has not broken the century mark with high temperatures, nor depleted our soil of moisture and it's nearly August already.
Like Bon said, "Unpredictable weather extreme snaps." But somehow, George, just 4 miles from here has been able to keep Japanese fiber banana plants alive through it all.
Kudos, George!
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