Matthew Hatfield

If you go in the dead of the night you are just as likely to be spotted

by police and there will be no doubt you are doing something covert

and the police WILL stop.

If you go in the middle of the day, wearing the same color vests and

maybe with a clipboard every passer-by except the actual owner will assume

you belong there. Police will see you but they may not bother to stop.

Or you could just sit down on the ground and casually plant stuff while moving from

place to place.

But if they do, you'd be better off not lying unless you have an iron clad story.


We were just talking today about doing the same thing on a vacant lot.

Yes, it will work just the same...better actually. Non tillage will

cause no disturbance to the worm population so they will

increase in numbers and make great soil. Mulching should retain

as much of the fixed nitrogen as being tilled under the soil since even with

tillage there is exposed green matter.

Nice! Don't forget to post "after" pictures when you get them planted.

PaulB wrote:
I'll take the blackberries, you can have all the russian thistle that you want.  We call 'em tumbleweeds.

IT'S A DEAL!!

Well, not to go "bonkers" or anything, but I don't want to have to trample down all

the perennial herbs and flowers I will be planting in this area every other day. Goats

and chickens, while great animals, would decimate the entire planting area and

eliminate what I am trying to create. These invasives WILL capture the area if not eradicated.

My best hope is o go over every inch of soil with a fine toothed comb and get as much as I can

out in the hopes that they will not completely rebound during the growing season

and then go in when my herbs have died back and cut out the stuff I missed with as little

disturbance to the rest of the area as possible.

We have a serious problem in the Pacific Northwest. From other countries they

come in and take over our land. Something extreme has to be done to keep them out.

I am referring of course, to English Ivy, Japanese Morning Glory and Himalayan Blackberry, the

three most invasive exotics I have ever seen in my life. Any one of them can completely

capture almost any site. I've seen the ivy destroy whole forests. And lucky me, I just found

a huge presence of two out of three in my new perennial site. Nothing destroys them. This

ground has been covered with weed cloth for years but today when I was digging I

saw that it is criss-crossed with blackberry rhizomes and Morning Glory roots. I mean, a massive

amount.

The only solution I can see is to physically dig out every inch of soil from the whole

area and sift through to remove all the runners and then surround the area with some kind of

rhizome barrier so they can't re-invade from the surrounding area.

This qualifies as a set back. A major one.

Kirk Hutchison wrote:
Or, you could give friends live flowering plants to put in their gardens. I did that for my Mom's birthday last year.

Good idea.

Most of the people I planted something for don't have their own

planting areas or else they live somewhere else. Also, the perennial

area I'm trying to develop is in a community access area where everybody can

come. I hope some of them will want to get in on the planting...I remember

when I planted trees in a community...I always felt like I had a stake in the

well-being of those trees. The way I see it, people who actually participate put some of their

heart into the area, which I think is good.

One idea for Valentine's Day is, instead of getting hothouse pseudoflowers,

plant some live flowers in your bee yard or perennial area and dedicate them

to a friend. A gift to the Earth in a friend's name.


Where I am it is still too early to plant outside but I planted seven plants for

several friends in seed trays. When the time comes I'm going to ask them if

they would like to get in on planting them.

I planted Calendula, Anise Hyssop, Chamomile and Lavender.

Noon-thirty, February 13, 2011.

Some gypsum products were contaminated with asbestos but (supposedly) that is a thing

of the past. Still, I would never trust the manufacturers of those types of products to fully disclose

what else is in their wall board beyond the probability that they do not intend it to ever be used

in and around living soil. God knows how the soil organisms would be effected by the stuff.