Testing how alleopathic sunroots are

I have an odd project going... I had sunroots expanding way past where I want them to stay, and I have a weird area that I can't mow, but the neighbors can see, that's always a mess of weeds.  
I'm testing to see how alleopathic sunroots are!

Sunroots is the word some of the Permies use for the plant called Sunchokes, Jerusalem artichoke, etc. We have a huge thread about them here on permies   The great big thread of sunchoke info - growing, storing, eating/recipes, science facts

They are alleopathic, meaning they put out a slight toxin that kills off competing plants.
I pulled out the sunroots I need removed, put them to dry, and then I'll pull the weeds in that bad area, and put all the dried sunroots there. I'm hoping the dried plants will A) not sprout, they are good at resprouting  and B) still be alleopathic enough to kill the weeds off.

I have reason to believe this will work, as I tried using some sunroot stalks in kind of a mulch trench for some plants, and they all got their roots down to about that depth, then died. I think it was the sunroot stalks, and they were dried.

So, pictures of the process!!!
Sunroots, running amok! The ones to the left, in the fence, stayed, the shorter ones had already been mowed down once this year, but then got too big for me to do it again. They got pulled out by the roots. Incidentally, the ones I did not remove will, if they perform as usual, grow to about 15 feet tall!

About to be pulled

All pulled out. The blue racks are part of why the area couldn't be mowed, they had been sitting there when the plants came up through them and were not easy to remove, not things I want to hit with the mower!

Pulled out

Cleaned up, mowed down tight

Mowed down tight

The racks being used for airflow as the plants dry

Drying out

I hope they will be dry soon and can be put where I need them. I'll report back how they work. If I fail to report back by Aug 30 or so, if someone would remind me to do so, it would help. I'm doing too many things, and losing stuff in the couch cushion cracks of my mind.
:D

Pearl Sutton wrote: Incidentally, the ones I did not remove will, if they perform as usual, grow to about 15 feet tall!

Seriously??? My friend's never grew that tall! She had some sprout in a bed that she had planted with bush beans and the beans did fine. However, those would have been tubers, not dead stalks. And I don't think there were a huge number of tubers.

I'm wondering how much it was that you had planted Sunchoke stalks vs that you had simply planted over top dried plant matter that hadn't composted yet?

Interesting experiment. I may be the only person I know who can accidentally kill sunchokes.

Wow! You've been busy.
Any particular reason you're drying the stalks before using them to mulch your weedy area? Seems that they would dry in situ, or are you worried about them regrowing? I think I've seen a post where someone had tubers up the stalk....
It's a pity they are allelopathic. They make such a good amount of biomass. I wonder how long the effect lasts.

Jay Angler wrote: Seriously??? My friend's never grew that tall!

See below, not the best picture I have taken of them, can't find the better ones.

Jay Angler wrote:I'm wondering how much it was that you had planted Sunchoke stalks vs that you had simply planted over top dried plant matter that hadn't composted yet?  

I don't know thus the experiment. I plant a lot of things over uncomposted vegetation.

Nancy Reading wrote:Seems that they would dry in situ, or are you worried about them regrowing?

Yes, I am worried about them regrowing. The ones that fall down flat put out roots all along the stalk, they are rowdy, and I don't want to trade my weeds in that area for sunroots. I'm drying them as a precaution.

Nancy Reading wrote: I wonder how long the effect lasts.

So do I! I'm looking forward to this experiment!
I'd love if it works for weeds easily.
:D

Pearl Sutton wrote: I'd love if it works for weeds easily. :D

OK, but if the weeds are gone, and you can't mow that area, what are you going to replace the weeds with? Those little purple flowered violets? Some other perennial? You have described some epic rainstorms, so the slope will need something to hold it.

I know, I'm getting ahead of the curve, but Hubby's notorious for clearing things he considers "weeds" with *no* succession plan and it's been driving me crazy. Particularly  his current abandoned project which I *don't* want full of Morning Glory and Himalayan Blackberry!

Someone put rocks in the area at one point, part of why it's not mowable, even when I could get the mower back there, it was artillery practice....
Anything I have planted back there went down to the weeds, I see no traces of them. There are some wild violets, and wild mustard, and a lot of things that stick to you like velcro, and things that make vines that trip me, or thorns that bite.
I really hope this kills it all off and it stays gone.
I don't know.

Next phase of this game.
The sunroots finally dried well, we had a lot of rain that slowed it down.
I got the weeds pulled, that was.... fun.

Weeds before I started that area:



Partway through pulling a section:



The next section, the tall and/or thorny ones had been pulled a few weeks before, as I had to move some stuff through there:



That whole section pulled as clear as I can get it:



How much biomass came out of just that area:



Sunroots are all dried up:



Sunroots spread in an area:



It's amazing how little of the area all those sunroots covered.
I'm hoping for good experimental results from this.

I really wish this fall someone with a chipper would chip their stalks and spread the chips on a bad spot and see what they do.  Or that I had a chipper to use to do it myself.

It will be fascinating if this works for weed control.
:D

It never ceases to amaze me how a huge pile of organic mater seems to melt into so little! Part of that is that water makes up a huge amount of that pile (60% of an average adult male, 86% of an average apple) and water doesn't hang around when things die!

Pearl Sutton wrote:I really wish this fall someone with a chipper would chip their stalks and spread the chips on a bad spot and see what they do.  Or that I had a chipper to use to do it myself.

Once they're dried and down like that, couldn't you just mow them for the chipper effect?

Christopher Weeks wrote:

Pearl Sutton wrote:I really wish this fall someone with a chipper would chip their stalks and spread the chips on a bad spot and see what they do.  Or that I had a chipper to use to do it myself.

Once they're dried and down like that, couldn't you just mow them for the chipper effect?

When I cut stalks, I have 12 foot stalks that are up to 3 inches at the base, and easily a truck full.
Even when dried they are difficult to break.
Chipper was made for that, my mower that I baby to keep it running for a long time was not  :D

The ones you saw in the pics were little ones that needed to be pulled due to location.

One more experiment:

Last fall I took some small sunroot stalks and cut them into nice neat little sticks about 10 inches long, meaning to do with them what I finally did today. There is a wooden landscape timber barrier between this yard and the neighbor's yard in the front. It's very hard for me to maintain the area, as I cannot use a weed eater due to back issues. I trim the grass along the edge of the timber with a knife. It hasn't been done all season. I finally did it as part of the weeding in the last two days, so I put the sticks along the board. They are short in case the mower grabs them, I tucked them in tight. I'm hoping they'll annoy the grass there.

As for tough sunchoke stalks after harvest, they take a long time to break down. I usually just turn them into biochar. Having a forage chopper would be really helpful for processing all kinds of plant residues.

As for allelopathic effect, more information is available for its cousin the sunflower. Sunflower is able to repress other plants even months after harvest from residues left behind. I am not sure if the effect is strong enough as to kill off the weeds even if you concentrate the residues though. After all, I have been making liquid fertilizer out of sunchoke leaves and the plants love it.

Hi Pearl!
Any chance of an update as to how successful your mulching experiments were? I'm interested to see whether there will be a significant effect on weeds in practice. I suspect the effect on seed germination may be more significant, but that is a separate experiment perhaps :)

Me too. When you have time we would love to hear what the results of your experiment was.