Geoff Colpitts

As said above, stalks are good for hibernating insects, hollow ones for spiders and pithy ones I believe are used by birds.  In nature, I imagine it's from animals eating the top half of the plant.  I'd leave the lower half.  Rodale mentioned a study in China where they reduced cotton pesticide use by 60% by just digging holes and filling them with straw over winter, so the spiders could hibernate, so... it has an effect on the landscape.

However, since nothing biodegrades without soil contact, you'll have to account for the stalks next year.  In the PNW, I'd just plant a stratifying native if I was doing succession, but you'll know your options.

Fun story, I nearly died because of those stalks - when I was, in the spring, chopping away at some of the remaining woody stalks of my kale plants, I was being very very careful not to put the axe into my foot.  Then I swung downward, and trapped my hand between the top of the stalk and the axe handle, which then got infected, and I got to experience my first enjoyment of taking antibiotics and healthcare for granted, a habit I'm glad to say I've continued to this very day.  Hooray!  Pruning saw if you're doing it by hand.

Or if you're really really manly... wrap a smouldering piece of vine maple around the stalk like they used to do around these parts for chopping down trees.
Sorry, I mean: 'round these 'ere parts.  I forgot my 'forebears were from the prairies for a second there...  For a sec' there...  F'r'a sec' ther'...  F'r'a's'c'r'....

James Bridger wrote:I've got 4 bottles of dandelion wine ageing in the basement, from last spring. I know dandelion wine is supposed to be good, and I followed a proven recipe, but it was pretty nasty right after fermentation. Supposedly dandelion wine needs time to age, though, so i;; crack open a bottle this spring, once new dandelions start coming up, and see if it's transformed into something good.

99% of the time that means you let some of the green base of the flower petals get in the mix, or god help you, part of the stem.  Dandelion wine should be very light in flavour.

Scissors or a knife are useful for separating petals from their base, but ultimately, if your fingers are dextrose enough (wine making pun!... oh... now I hate myself...) you can just develop a very quick "grab and twist" method that will separate the petals without losing much of the pollen.

Ray Sauder wrote:I firmly straddle the fence on this topic.  I have a very large boulevard with 42 different flowering weeds growing along with grass.  (I have larger wheels and lowered wheel mounts to get a 1 foot high cut to showcase the flowers.)  The dandelions are awesome - beautiful yellow flowers, dynamic accumulators, shelter for little grass seedlings under their leaves,  dew collectors, survive the summer drought, etc.  They help other plants right up to the time when THEY KILL THEM DEAD and take over the kingdom!

So I compromise and let them live 1 full year.  Each spring before the flowers turn to seed, I dig up ALL dandelions, getting the whole root, and chopping the plants fine for fertilizer.  At the same time I plant a spring bulb into the hole left by the tap root and pay attention to everything else growing in my wildflower lawn.  I have thousands and thousands of scilla, siberian squill, snow drops, grape hyacinths, crocus, star of bethlehem, etc. etc. finished blooming and some needing to be transplanted, having roamed too far from home.   The other plants blooming along with the dandelions are thousands and thousands of violets, and dandelions are one of only a few seeds that can successfully take root among the violets.  I have other plants among the violets but they need my assistance to grow there.  Did I mention dandelions are low maintenance?  They need no help arriving; only help to keep moving along and leave....

This might seem like a lot of work but there is a surprising thing about dandelion seeds.  Unlike other nasties that can survive 50 years to plague future owners, dandelion seeds last only a year or two.  So keeping a sort of dandelion-free lawn is pretty easy.  

I'll give you another bit of information you will never see anywhere else.  It would be nice to have a plant which is allopathic to dandelions, meaning it will kill them or at least not allow new seedlings to sprout.  There is one! - autumn hawkbit.  O.K. it looks like a dandelion so average observers might think I actually do have dandelions.  But the hawkbits are a kinder, gentler version.  The flowers are smaller, with many on one stalk.  They prevent even their own seed from sprouting so they spread out nicely rather than hogging all the space in one spot.  And they bloom in the heat of late summer when not much else is trying very hard.  If there is one drawback its that the flower stalks are pretty tall and leggy.  Now that my wanted weeds are well established, it is time to shorten the lawn height and with that I will encourage my hawkbits to evolve locally to bloom on shorter stalks.

Ray Sauder

First: on fence straddling, I used to do that, but I've recently been told by my doctor that it's a bad idea and now I need an ultrasound.

Second:  The big disadvantage of dandelions is their simple pollen - not nutritious for bees, though many will assume that 'the big field of dandelions has got to be great for them'.  Like many plants, it thrives in destroyed ecosystems, and urban and rural areas alike are likely to be destroyed ecosystems at present (and I think that while this comment can be read, it will likely continue to be the case, so... great?)  "Naturally" they should have a place - in terms of natural cycles, they make sure fall rains don't destroy soil nutrition, like every pioneer.  The issue is that you mentioned 'dandelion free lawns' really.

The reason they'd be so good at transporting seeds is largely that - they have a niche, but are probably very 'confused' as to why their niche seems to be 'everywhere'.  There's no need for them to actually be so good at seeding when we wreck everything that might compete with them.

Hawkbits, Cat's Ear, Chicory - they all have the same qualities as dandelions do, breaking up soil and reducing the impact of rain.  I think that ultimately the should coexist quite well with grasses geometrically.  If they take over though, I think that's a sign the ecosystem needs to move on, or that the ecosystem is too much under stress.  Everything you mentioned was a small, short flowering plant - that's pretty one dimensional to me.  The dandelions are likely going to thrive mainly because they are needed to keep the place from loosing too much soil nutrition, as nothing else is likely to hold much in.

Ultimately I think that unless the soil depth is naturally very shallow then it's simply a matter that only the dandelions have any significant root depth.  In a lawn they can certainly help the natural cycle progress, as can any kind of long root (Fukuoka recommended planting daikon and then just letting it rot in the ground to create better soil.)  That does beggar the question though - does the soil really benefit from it?

One last thing - dandelion roots for roasting apparently taste better in year 2.  Also I have seen mention of 'dandelion crowns barbequed', though it does require very clean crowns.  They would blanch themselves naturally, so I imagine after a quick parboil they'd be excellent.  Upright specimens would work well - something that had to compete, but had decent soil nutrition in the first place I imagine.

The other reason for spreading well is that if there aren't enough pollinators, they actually clone themselves.  It does mean that they will act oddly, adapting inconsistently to their surroundings.

I've seen many people advise/note the use of horsetail fibres because they're rich in silica, though I've not used them myself.  Useful for those who find that horsetail is coming up everywhere and they can't be eaten because of the sketchy soil.

I find that long handled brushes beat out dishcloths by a large factor.  Lever/place to stand/move the world etc.  

I use a "bottle cleaning brush" made with tampico fibre (agave I think).  The top portion flattens out and looks like it's going to fall apart after a few days, but it's been fine for 6 months now.  Might be a little precious as a solution, but honestly I wonder if the skills required to make them are that unreasonable.  Wood carving, source of hard fibre, glue....  we do far less practical things.  10$ and it'll last me a year, and it's very easy on the wrists.

Read James C Scott's book "Against the Grain".  Or at least the portion on wetlands.  It's very accessible.

More than just being the lungs of the planet, wetlands outproduce every other ecosystem for materials and food.  The whole reason that nations hate them is historically simply because the wetlanders didn't need the roman road, the roman patrol, or the roman administration, so every single nation gets rid of wetlands because ultimately they are deemed "untaxable".

And now we preserve them... except that we don't, because city planners think that you can just put a hard line around them.  If you build houses around a wetland, it compacts the soil around the edge, and the wetland shrinks.  The only downside to "owning" a functioning (crucial word there of course) wetland should really be the envy of your neighbors.

Geoff Colpitts wrote:
You're not, I assume, creating a time capsule or a bomb shelter, I assume.

I'm never going to live down my shameful treatment of the I assume twins.