Hello Robert
Thanks for this, nice read!
You're welcome. I thought things were sounding a bit grim on this
forum lately!
Equisetum arvense?
Yes, that's the one. It's toxic to colts and lambs when it's dry.
I've read that its tubers store food reserves, which, coupled with an
extensive creeping rhizome system, makes the plant very persistent.
I've dug up rhizome leads better than a meter in length, but the plant
will regenerate from even a tiny bit of root left in the ground.
Thank God the fertile stems don't remain active for very long!
Interestingly, equisetum arvense has medicinal uses. The dried herb
aids in the treatment of urinary and prostatic disease, repair of lung
and pulmonary tissue, among others, but its high inorganic silica
content makes ingestion dangerous for children.
Ancient plant. Midori picked a whole bunch of them
two days ago and stir-fried the tops according to Japanese traditional
practice. Not bad!
My loving wife, who is a very good cook, wrinkled her nose when I
told her you'd written this.
Horsetails indicate acid soil and drainage problems.
This is certainly our situation. It rains a lot in this climate, and
acidic soil loving blueberries grow well here. When we built our
house, the excavator removed 17 loads of soil from our property,
leaving us in a sea of grey colored muck; a perennially wet clay in
which very little that's useful to us will grow. We stopped several
trucks that were removing dirt from the properties around us and asked
them to dump their loads back on our lot, simply so we could get
proper landscaping done. (And worse, we got a bill from the
excavators for taking our dirt away!) Now, as the area around us
develops, the same thing is happening on other properties.
Right now, we have a very lumpy front yard, mostly in grass, that is
doing marginally well. Our front flower beds are flourishing, but
we've conditioned the soil extensively with barn litter and compost,
so we have very little trouble with horsetail at the front of the
house. I had a vision for the western slope of our property that
involved a combination of fruit trees, shrubs, evergreens and aspens
that was supposed to provide shade as well as food. (Our house gets
very hot during the summer because we're a corner lot and there is NO
shade around us during the long daylight period. R 50 ceilings trap
heat very nicely!) After grading by hand (agonizingly) to minimize
run off (which had been a REAL problem when we first moved in), we
planted the trees, shrubs and covered the ground with cedar bark mulch
in the hope that creeping ground cover would eventually occupy the
slope. So far, the creepers we've planted have hardly taken a foothold.
This is where our horsetail problem is dominant.
The north end of our property is the sunniest place during the
growing season. This is where we've built four raised beds and where
our crops of lettuce, cabbage, beets, purple beans, broccoli and
carrots thrived last summer. On the eastern side of our driveway, a
long, narrow strip of land serves as our area for corn, squash,
potatoes, eggplant and other large plants. It's been extensively
worked, the topsoil there is about half a meter deep, and it's
literally crawling with living things!
Horsetail doesn't grow there.
We subsoiled one of our fields today, thin layer of topsoil over really sticky clay, with,
indeed, severe drainage problems. Tomorrow we'll compost it and rotavate
it lightly, since we can't lay our hands on a disk harrow. Then what
would be ideal would be a deep-rooting grass mixture and a two-year ley,
heavily grazed by livestock, along with several hay cuts. But we don't
have the grass mixture either, nor can we get anything suitable here,
but we'll do what we can.
Getting a thick layer of well drained topsoil seems key to
controlling the horsetail. We can't have grazing animals here because
we're in a subdivision, though I've thought of miniature goats or
miniature horses. I have to come up with a better solution for our
western slope than the one I planned originally because I'm a slave to
weeding right now. At present, my home business isn't exactly
thriving, so I have the time to work outside. I'm hoping, however,
that things will pick up soon. . .
I've solved this problem before without subsoiling, just by growing
weeds. I had the best weeds in the valley, taller than me! Sunn hemp, it
ended up being at the end of the succession, and it sure fixed the
drainage problem, excellent field that was, though it was useless at first.
My neighbors ALREADY think I'm crazy. If I start growing hemp, that
would remove all doubt!
Yes! There's nothing better. I was reading someone who said that any
health problems that don't vanish after a day's gardening should be
taken seriously. I think you have to add the mind and the spirit to that
too.
I agree. There's something very cathartic about working with the soil.
For them that hasn't noticed:
http://journeytoforever.org/garden.html
Organic gardening: Journey to Forever
That's the best part of the site for those of us who don't do
biodiesel and can't legally distill ethanol.
robert luis rabello
"The Edge of Justice"
Adventure for Your Mind
http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=9782>
Ranger Supercharger Project Page
http://www.members.shaw.ca/rabello/
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