Invasive species on purpose

Anybody out there intentionally plant invasive and or aggressive edible/medicinal plants? I intentionally planted autumn olive because it’s zero maintenance and the berries are awesome. Also planted sunchokes in several spots for the same reason. I removed mullberry saplings from a different property and put them in my yard. Stuck stinging nettles around here and there. I’m not too worried about something taking over because of where I placed them and my use of them will keep them in check.

I don't have a clue about what are invasive in your area.

In my opinion not all invasives are bad.

It depend on the location and how the plant responds in that area.

I have seen posts about Autumn Olive here on the forum:

https://permies.com/t/50346/Autumn-olive

https://permies.com/t/8236/Autumn-Olive

Anne Miller wrote:In my opinion not all invasives are bad.

You and I agree on that! Yesterday I had my mind blown by a publisher's monthly newsletter praising 1) kudzu and 2) garlic mustard. Down in the Southeastern USA here, these plants are excoriated. But I now have an all new appreciation for them.  (Kudzu can be used as an alfalfa substitute for livestock feed! Garlic mustard is food and medicine!) If we actually use these plants, as the cultures do in the places where the plants originally came from, we will probably come to love them too. Makes sense to me!

I tried some on the warning list (not full invasive) for our area like woad but alas, after three or four years, the chickens found it and I don't think any are coming up this year.  

Great plant for making blue dye and I think it has some healing stuff, but I can't remember.  It's also great for improving crappy soil.  

Ah, I found the thread about growing woad


woad-lings

I welcome plants into my garden without any care about where they lived previously, or when. I don't fuss about how they grow for other people in other places. I simply can't be bothered to do the research.

If a particular plant causes problems for me, I cull it. For example I don't allow curveseed butterwort, or goathead caltrops, because I live habitually barefoot, and don't like walking on the spiny seeds. I also cull spinach with spiny seeds.  

In my opinion, most "invasive" plants and even animals are simply crying out for a use.  In a general rural landscape, an "invasive problem usually means that people aren't raising enough animals or using firewood and other methods of putting biomass to work (things like hugelkultur, biochar, chipping and mulching, and so on)  My own attitude towards these plants took a huge turn for the positive during my years keeping goats.  Sometimes I could be seen driving around town, behind parking lots and other places (often dumpster diving as well!) stuffing the back of my car with kudzu, privet, bamboo, and other such things to bring home to my goats.  

I can see both sides of this issue.  As kids we had it drilled into our head that invasive plants were bad bad bad.  But, as is common with knowledge, it shifts a bit over time and now it seems that the general consensus is what the original poster feels, that as long as you're keeping an eye on it you can plant, and utilize anything in the space you're stewarding, and find smart and clever uses for it too of course.

People should not see everything as a problem. If it's invasive chop and drop it. Ecologists have this tendency to see everything that is not super rare as a problem. Sure we must protect rare plants, keep some areas full of them in reserves. But why hate so much on plants that finally do well because they're well adapted or fix nitrogen or can live in cracks without being moddy codle to death, is beyond me. If they don't like it, chop it down and leave it to rot, build soil.
Prickly shrubs like sloe berry have been known as the oakmothers, wild life nor cattle came and ate oaks when they grew snugly were in a sloe grove. But in UK they go out by the hundreds with volunteers to kill the oakmothers every year. On the other hand they collect money for rewilding.
The black locust is such a problem to them where i live, but the farmers use them as fenceposts and they're one of the best firewoods out there.
The ecologists in Europe have decided it's the best to burn wood in incinerators for the environment. So we chop down USA forests and drag it over the ocean to make green energy.
Sure they do good things as well, but they're not critical of themselves. And i'm not saying, go out there and deliberately plant everything which is really invasive, one should always try to be conscious, but it's not a group of people that i consider to be right about things all the time.

I use Autumn Olive, Black Locust, and Box Elder extensively on my land.  Autumn Olive fixes nitrogen and the berries are delicious.  Black Locust grows fast, fixes nitrogen, makes excellent long-lasting fence posts, is a great shade tree, and coppices well.  Box Elder is the consummate wood chip tree.  It grows super fast, rots down easily, coppices beautifully.  I make nearly all my ramial chips from Box Elder and no matter how much you cut it back, or in what season, it recovers and grows back many feet in a year.

Dioscorea alata. I confine it to my yard!

I am slowly winning the war against inedible Dioscorea bulbifera on a property by yanking up the new plants and gathering the air potatoes from the vines or after they fall. On a confined area, it can be done, but in wild lands, it seems to be a losing battle.

I had children on purpose and humans are the most invasive organism of all. I'm not sure why I'd be harder on some plant just because it's on a list.

I love the invasives that aren't straight up poison.

I've been working to develop my property into a micro ecosystem of plants that grow so vigorously they could qualify as invasive.

They are especially desirable in combination with goats, for whom invasive lists are essentially Hometown Buffet, and chickens, who are surprisingly open-minded when hungry. I have been somewhat frustrated in my attempts to integrate rabbits - who breed like an invasive but have incredibly finicky digestive systems.

Some invasives I've come to appreciate and depend on:

Chinese privet  - kudzu gets the bad press, but privet actually occupies more territory. Grows anywhere - in the worst soil, in full sun or full shade. Suckers from roots or puts up thousands of seedlings. If the android from Alien could see it, he'd call it the perfect organism. And while all parts of it are toxic to humans, it has a very valuable place on the farm. First, its a true evergreen at least up to zone 7 and can feed goats when there's no other green to be found during the winter. It also coppices and pollards with incredible vigor even during the growing months because it's virtually invincible. It's made up maybe 80% of my goats' diet for extended stretches and they do very well on it. Its berries are also an excellent supplemental chicken feed that stay on the tree into the worst of winter. Makes good, straight stakes and short-term fence posts and a completely serviceably firewood as well. And you can't find a faster or denser growing hedge for windbreaks and privacy.

Japanese honeysuckle - love this plant. Even hardier than privet, it will put on new growth in the middle of winter in my 7b/8a climate. Smells incredible in spring. Elegant gold and white art deco flowers. Goats absolutely love it and crave it all the more intensely in winter.

Jerusalem artichoke - nobody calls this an invasive here because it's native, but it sure acts like one. Love how abundantly it produces. Love the flavor. Love how cold-hardy it is - the tubers shrug off hard freezes like they're nothing. Love that I can run my goats through a field of them in fall and they'll eat them down to the ground and leave the tubers for me. Love that no matter how many I harvest, they always find a way to come back.

Chinese yam - who doesn't love food falling from the sky? David the Good on youtube calls these tater tot plants and I think it fits - mini potatoes by the handful on every one of these vines. They grow just about anywhere with no maintenance. And they both reseed themselves with all those falling tater tots and come back from their edible tubers. I'm not crazy about the flavor - or lack thereof - of either the bulbils or the roots, but it's a great source of starch to add other flavors to and it's a great chicken feed. I grow them all around my coop and throw the bulbils in for the chickens.

Bamboo - entire books have been devoted to the infinite uses of this plant. I have a clumper variety that goes dormant in the winter and an evergreen variety that is a key component of my goat winter feeding plan.

Duckweed - the scourge of aquariums is a huge boon to pond owners with lots of fish, ducks and chicken to feed.  Reproduces at science fiction speeds and packs loads of nutrients.

Amaranth/pigweed - a self-seeding, zero-maintenance grain that also provides greens.

Cardoon - considered invasive in California, I like it plenty in the mid-south because it can take a beating in terms of neglect, insect pressure, animal grazing and climate fluctuations and comes back stronger than ever. My family isn't crazy about the flavor, but I really like it.

Tangentially, I just found out it's not technically illegal to plant kudzu in my state.

I find that garlic mustard creates a lot of erosion in their establishment phase, when they kill off the mycorrhizal fungi. Big black lumps of soil falling down the hillside—perfect for harvesting some potting soil if you want it. But not something I’d want to encourage.

“Invasive plants” have been some of my best medicines too. If not for them I think I would be very sick still. There is an adage that plants show up when and where they are needed. That as well as my intuition generally has lead me to the ones that are best for whatever things I am faced with. So what are these plants telling us? I will leave that question, maybe come back to it another time.

The three plants considered to be “invasive” that I have planted are honeysuckle, creeping bellflower, and autumn olive. Only the first has any right to the title as creeping bellflower is rare here and limited to gravel and rock of roadsides. I was incorporating honeysuckle boughs into some hugelkultur and they took root, and for the autumn olive I took cuttings from a bush with very tasty berries.

Nick Mick wrote:Anybody out there intentionally plant invasive and or aggressive edible/medicinal plants? I intentionally planted autumn olive because it’s zero maintenance and the berries are awesome. Also planted sunchokes in several spots for the same reason. I removed mullberry saplings from a different property and put them in my yard. Stuck stinging nettles around here and there. I’m not too worried about something taking over because of where I placed them and my use of them will keep them in check.

I have a dream of getting an island and release running bamboo just to see what happens

Invasive plants I do see as most useful if there is starvation and if they are well managed.    

If I had that Island I would start kudzu, and release goats to see which one would win      I am thinking a padock system on an island would be ideal with invasives.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/u_tnKXiu_OY

China figured out how to use this invasive.

https://susanhomecare.com/how-to-plant-kudzu-seeds/

How to responsibly grow kudzu.

Cara Campbell wrote:Dioscorea alata. I confine it to my yard!

I am slowly winning the war against inedible Dioscorea bulbifera on a property by yanking up the new plants and gathering the air potatoes from the vines or after they fall. On a confined area, it can be done, but in wild lands, it seems to be a losing battle.

I adore Alata, and war against bulbifera...   Wish I knew how to use bulbfera for something useful..

Rachel Lindsay wrote:

Anne Miller wrote:In my opinion not all invasives are bad.

You and I agree on that! Yesterday I had my mind blown by a publisher's monthly newsletter praising 1) kudzu and 2) garlic mustard.

Just last week I ate pudding made from kudzu. In Japanese called Kuzu. Yummy.

I don't know why they aren't using kudzu for its edible starch. Why does it seem all the kuzu powder comes from Japan? It seems a really stupid missed opportunity to get rid of the overgrowth and start an industry.

As someone who constantly battles an onslaught of kudzu encroaching from a neighbor's property I do not share this thread's optimism. While I'll happily take advantage of an invasive species that I come across (like the lovely chinese yam I found growing on my fence) I refuse to intentionally propagate an invasive species on my property; I'm quite a lazy gardener and all it takes is one growing season of negligence to create a problem that won't be easily gotten rid of.

Cara Campbell wrote:I don't know why they aren't using kudzu for its edible starch. Why does it seem all the kuzu powder comes from Japan? It seems a really stupid missed opportunity to get rid of the overgrowth and start an industry.

Kudzu roots are very deep, difficult to dig up, and almost always intertwines with rocks, not to mention that a lot of it has been repeatedly sprayed with herbicide for years. It's a lot of trouble for a product with very little demand that's more often than not contaminated.

I wish all of you doing this the best, and I hope you don't accidentally cause a localized ecological disaster.

Allen Ayers (post above) Sure. Nobody here said. Even if something is superinvasive on your land and very time consuming and it really bothers you, plant a lot more of it, and everywhere you can.

It's a bit about the difference what the expert say is invasive and what is actually really helpful in a certain setting because it thrives easily.

My family has a holiday home at the beach, the dunes have always been protected area, some special type of grass they have planted there. It attracts sand build up and grows above.So the dunes grow and stop the sea. It's native, but they planted for millions of euros after the war when it was destroyed.
Then it got invaded by a certain rose. Nobody said a thing, over time people consider that rose as belonging there. It keeps taking a bigger surface of the dune, fighting the native grass and winning.
In recent years autumn olive has arrived, the government knows about it, i checked it out online. It is spreading like wildfire in their precious dunes. Me i like this, from a permaculture point of view, i see succession, i see trees starting to grow in the dunes, because the rose and autumn olive are building soil and retaining water. It's some kind of new global tree guild forming in front of my eyes, building soil and forest where the native fauna could not have gotten to forest.

I talked to a member who works for the government out of curiosity. She knew as well. She spend her freetime digging out some invasive herb. And didn't care about this Autumn Olive spreading.

It's just so cynical. They only make rules for ordinary people to have something to forbid them. Like little children, and they can get control over our lives. And they can get money from the government from the taxpayer to go in and "do something" to protect the ever changing nature which is only doing what it has always done, taking sunshine and converting that into building soil. Taking money from the taxpayer and fight nature, but have a lot of minions working under you.
At the same time they make money from garden centers that have sprung up selling Autumn Olive.

It's about money, power and control and they use people worried about the environment(ecologists) to spread the word.

I planted Fuki and became a little concerned at how fast it can spread, and then the deer discovered that they LOVE it at my place.  Now the only Fuki that I have left is what had made it inside my dog's fence.  "More biology" running amok always seems to win out in my forest garden.  We'll see.  I just keep an eye on everything and foster more biology.