Putting "bad" "weeds" to good use

All the best planting areas of my yard (in other words, anything that isn't solid clay) are full of Japanese knotweed. Looking into potential uses for it as I try to fight it back; it's almost time to chop everything before it seeds. I know it's edible, but I have far more than I can eat on my own and it's all very large and tough now. Poles for trellises/temporary fencing? Fibers for twine? I could make an insect house. I know I need to heavily mulch over the clay if I hope to ever plant on it without raised beds, but I'm more than a little wary of using the knotweed for that given its tendency to reroot. It clearly doesn't love the clay either, but I don't want to take that chance!

I try to eat it or drink it, if it's a medicinal or edible.  The chickens and ducks will typically get to it first, though.  Whatever is left is usually something too prickly or thorny or has tiny, irritating hairs on it.

Dodder has been the worst.  Looks like yellow-orange silly string, draped over everything, and it seems to double overnight.

I cut that carefully, trying not to drop a single flower, and drown it in a bucket of water, covered, for months, until it has rotted down to sludge and black liquid. Then I throw it into the compost pile.

I do NOT want to take a chance of any of it spreading.  It's THAT bad.

Some info--catch it ASAP if it ever shows up!
https://ipm.ucanr.edu/weeds-identification-gallery/dodder/#gsc.tab=0
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/plant-problems/weeds/dodder-weed-control.htm

I have come to appreciate any and all invasives on my half-acre patch. All wild grasses are just mulch in the wrong spot, or begging to become compost in the middle of my keyhole gardens. Saplings are asking to be relocated, chipped, or turned into tomato cages.

Anything else goes into a bucket and gets drowned underwater to make fertilizer tea. I have several of these percolating most of the time, making the back corner of my lot smell like I have cows on the property.

I like to find ways to convert them into compost. Since weedy pioneering plants are so good at mining minerals or accumulating them, using them in compost add colloidal forms of minerals to the mix. Sort of like adding rock dust suspended in the weeds. You can essentially grow your own compost if you plan it out.

Stake or fence a thick patch of weeds, nurture it a little, give it some contours and a good drenching once or twice, even add a little compost to get them boosted. Before the seeds mature, chop the whole patch and chop it all into a mash for compost processing. If it's seedy, use it for compost tea, if not as seedy add it to your Berkeley flip or long term pile.

Now there is an opportunity to smother the roots of the newly chopped weeds and the whole soil surface with card board and compost. You can add a no-till bed right on top of it! Just smash the stems down with the layers of wet cardboard then add a layer of finished compost and/or topsoil then seed it with your chosen cover crop. Some persistent weeds will get through, but if that is the situation manual removal is needed anyhow and doing this step this will knock the weeds back and fill the same space with a desired blend. By allowing the weedy patch to grow there you will have preset the subsurface of the soil for the no-till bed.

Two of my weed enemies are Johnson grass and Bermuda grass. I pull them out, and pile them on top of a weed patch I'm not going to have time for. A nice thick layer of weeds, seem to kill and suppress weeds for a good amount of time.  It doesn't look very good, but in some places I really don't care. It also solves the problem of what to do with the weeds when I do get around to pulling them. Win, win.

I am planning to take cuttings to root Horseherb.
 
Some consider this a weed:

https://permies.com/t/392087/Horseherb-Calyptocarpus-vialis-Straggler-daisy

It likes both sun and shade.

Mart Hale wrote:A weed is a flower growing in the wrong place.
George Washington Carver

Yes!  Thank you for this connection. George Washington Carver was an agricultural scientist who practiced "permanent agriculture" decades before the portmanteau term "perma-culture" was created: https://globalearthrepairfoundation.org/george-washington-carver/

Apparently, George Washington Carver said this so often, there's a book about him entitled:

A Weed is a Flower: The Life of George Washington Carver
https://www.afriwarebooks.com/store/p142/A_Weed_is_a_Flower%3A__The_Life_of_George_Washington_Carver.html

"The word "pest" and the word "weed" are social constructs, they refer to our own management. It's not the trees' problem.

"It's our problem ..

".. we've created that problem ourselves. And nature is constantly adapting, constantly adjusting.

"A plant can be sacred in one place and vilified in another ..

"I used to be super adamant around "natives only" and "invasives no, pull those things out." And now I'm like, "Well, what are they telling me?"

Ethnoecologist Timoteo Granzotti, co-founder People of the Forest, actuveIndigenous food sovereignty supporter in the Amazon and beyond.