soil building with weeds

[ottawagardener]

May I just say, the idea of edging a bed with dandelions to hold it up is fab. Do you have a picture?

[greenfinger]

Regrettably, no. And the boss has decided to change the direction of the rows this year, to better conserve water on our sloped garden. Maybe they'll be back for fall. We do still till, trying to add more matter, but leaving the edges alone. Hence, the accidental solution to erosion. Yay dandelions!

[davida]

Jan 24, 2013 10:17:57 GMT -5 ottawagardener said:

Back to building soil with weeds.

Reminds me of the old adage:

"One year's seeding makes seven years' weeding".

[greenfinger]

But in a different frame of mind, it could read.
...seven years of eating.

[kwilds]

Jan 25, 2013 9:32:54 GMT -5 greenfinger said:

But in a different frame of mind, it could read.
...seven years of eating.

I have been learning a lot in recent years about the nutritional/medicinal uses for a lot of "weeds." I no longer look at the opportunistic plants as weeds but rather as potentially useful - for food, healing, green cover or as others have found - garden bed edging!

I still pull weeds if they are growing where they are not useful but I always think twice before I do.

[olddog]

"seven years of eating", good saying!

reminds me of my old corn patch, many years ago, and the weeds that grew among the corn, as a groundcover between the corn plants, were purslane. Two crops right there, and i only had to tend to one, the other was a "weed".

i think the total yield would be higher per field in that case, (though never proved it) even theough the corn yield and purslane yield were each smaller, than if they were grown alone.

[steev]

Purslane is a good plant source of omega-3 fatty acids, besides which, it's tasty. With high soil fertility and plenty of moisture, the wild purslane on my farm produces nickle-sized leaves; the fanciest cultivated varieties don't do much more.

[steev]

I harvested dock today; I like it, but wish it didn't cook to such an icky olive-drab.

[olddog]

thanks, Steev, that is good to know, now just have to figure out how to eat purslane. always have fed it to the chickens.

[ottawagardener]

I toss purslane in salads or other green mixes like quiche though I'm sure there are more creative recipes.

[steev]

I cook the tender 2" tips like any other greens: braised with onions and olive oil/bacon grease.

[olddog]

Yum! Thanks for the cooking tips, Ottawa and Steev.

Will try these;

[MikeH]

Jan 22, 2013 4:59:52 GMT -5 MikeH said:

We've never seen fungal diseases other than one case of late blight on our tomatoes which I put down to too much crowding of plants leading to no air circulation. I wonder if the lack of fungal disease has to do with the fertility of the soil? It seems that horticultural problems lead back to soil fertility or rather lack of it, ie, organic matter content.

My conjecture may have legs.

Disease-suppressive soils are exceptional ecosystems in which crop plants suffer less from specific soil-borne pathogens than expected owing to the activities of other soil microorganisms. For most disease-suppressive soils, the microbes and mechanisms involved in pathogen control are unknown. By coupling PhyloChip-based metagenomics of the rhizosphere microbiome with culture-dependent functional analyses, we identified key bacterial taxa and genes involved in suppression of a fungal root pathogen. More than 33,000 bacterial and archaeal species were detected, with Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Actinobacteria consistently associated with disease suppression. Members of the γ-Proteobacteria were shown to have disease-suppressive activity governed by nonribosomal peptide synthetases. Our data indicate that upon attack by a fungal root pathogen, plants can exploit microbial consortia from soil for protection against infections.

[raymondo]

...By coupling PhyloChip-based metagenomics of the rhizosphere microbiome with culture-dependent functional analyses, we identified key bacterial taxa and genes involved in suppression of a fungal root pathogen.

Is that English?

Seriously though, a little book that I think Telsing mentioned somewhere, Teaming with Microbes, talks a bit about disease suppression in healthy soils. The basis for it being plenty of organic matter.

[steev]

Make a rich environment; everybody's happy. Stress things; the bad guys start pushing their weight around.