Bringing IN the weeds!

I’m sitting at Cafe Sia in Gawler, writing this post. I thought I’d spend more time in the community and support local businesses a bit more too.

Bringing home the goodness

Lots of folks spend much of their gardening time removing weeds. Many even remove them from their property – via the green bin!

At Ligaya Garden, we often bring IN weeds! Many weeds are super nutritious for both us and the garden. Even those that we use for the garden provide nutrition for us eventually through the vegetables that we eat from our block.





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Nettles and Thistles are classic examples of plants that are reviled by some gardeners but loved by us! They’re so rich in so many things that are good for the microbes and soil fauna in the front garden and the microbes in the aquaponics that we just love bringing them home.The chooks love them too, so whatever we don’t turn into beautiful, potent, liquid fertiliser goes to them and is eventually converted to eggs and chook poo. This week we also scored a big box of potassium rich banana skins too!

One day, at the end of Winter, I went to harvest both Nettles and Thistles from Greg’s Shared Garden where they abound in unsprayed glory! I harvested about 3 kg of fine, young specimens for drying and tincturing for their direct health benefits. Another 10 – 12 kg came home to be added to the Compost Tea Presses (see pic below - markdown isn't letting me add captions today. It sure is a clunky thing!) to make my potent extract for the garden and aquaponics. Over one or two more bumper weed harvests, this provided enough concentrated liquid compost tea for half of the year.





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That should be enough for the next 12 months when blended with a Comfrey extract made in the same manner. My Nettle and Thistle extract, when blended with a Comfrey extract gives a massive boost to flowering, fruit set and retention in the right season. It makes Tomatoes go crazy!

This year, I also made a Nettle tea the traditional way by fermenting it in a bucket for several months. It really is a stinky brew by comparison.

Collecting weeds also has further ecological ramifications. By collecting them, we are reducing the amount of seeds out there and reducing their spread. This helps land owners manage their infestation problems with less or no use of herbicides. That makes it a win win situation that, in this area benefits the health of our rivers too!

Our chooks benefit too! They get to eat the trimmings, the leftover sludge and convert it into eggs and ...more fertilizer!




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20 comments
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Who else brings IN weeds to their garden?

I love doing stuff like that too!

It works good, especially with the chickens creating such rich fertilizer.

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It's all nutrition, one way or another, isn't it. When we're short on rabbit food from the garden I'll go to the creek and collect some.

@tipu curate

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When we had rabbits, they went crazy for Thistles.

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Thistles and dandelions are their favourite. They also love apple leaves. I give them the prunings and they strip the bark off too. They like wild lettuce, too, spikes and all. 😆

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They're great at converting biomass!

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They really are. More efficient with the more fibrous plants than chickens, as well.

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we're considering getting anther bunny or guinea pig to maximise the range of stuff we can turn to compost without having a compost bin.

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Gotta love those little animal garbage disposals. You just need to put the right things in the right place. 😆

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Im making a run for one now...or would they work in the chook run?

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(Edited)

I guess that depends on the approach and what you are comfortable with. I think it was Joel Salatin who had rabbits in mesh bottom cages over the chooks, so any poops and food dropped through to be dug over or eaten by the chooks.

Being in the run itself, I think some make it successful, but if you can manage to have them both getting along (usually the rabbits terrorise the chooks or the chooks peck the rabbits), then you need to be cautious on the foods that one can eat, but the other can't. So nothing long and fibrous that could give the chooks an impacted crop and nothing fermented that could make the rabbits sick.

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Thanks. I'll probably keep them separate but have a small (bunny sized) entrance to the chook run so that the rabbit can go in there for a bit more space.

I have a friend in the Philippines who keeps goats on the top level, chickens on the next, then fish on the bottom. It seems to work well. I'd try and work a worm bed in there somewhere too.

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(Edited)

I was brought here my @curie! Yes, many weeds are nutritious, and most greenery normally hauled off-site would still probably serve better as compost so the nutrients can return to the soil.

That said, we have a few truly noxious weeds here which warrant special attention. Spotted knapweed is an abomination! You can't eat it, livestock can't eat it, it poisons the soil, and happily grows in gravel.

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Some of the weeds that aren't directly useful as food or medicine are great indicators of what is wrong with the soil that they're growing in.

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True that. I just live on glacial till, or maybe a remnant gravel bar from when Glacial Lake Missoula last burst. Essential clay and gravel with just enough topsoil for conifers.

I see I typoed my referral attribution. Fixed!

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Glacial till sounds like it would be hard to grow stuff on. I've never worked with it before. What are it's properties as a soil?

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Gravel and clay. No organic material to speak of. You need lots of good manure and compost.

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sounds horrible. What kind of plants grow there naturally?

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