Great weather for gardening and we’ve been blitzing the yard.
Boy have things grown with all the summer rain!
Some are alarming especially since they are growing over from neighbours’ and unless we negotiate with the neighbours to remove them we will have a forest of giant weed trees along our fence line.
Birds and bats drop the seeds we think (not sure) or maybe some come in mulch. Smaller weed seeds could blow on the wind or be washed from one property to the other in water.
Whatever! What happens is that all our gardens get a regular steady crop of weeds and some of these are tree weeds that will grow huge if not got out promptly. Either pull out or cut off low and Roundup within 16 seconds.
Chinese elm pepper trees cocos palms gum trees and lots more.
Then there are the plants that get bought and planted and run absolutely rampant. Someone in horticulture said the rule of thumb is to multiply by three to get how big things grow in Queensland (compared to NSW). We’ve learned to be very very wary of any vines. They can take over so easily.
We’re currently battling honeysuckle another awful vine and another vine we call ‘The Trifid’ because nothing at all works on it. Then there is fishbone fern and some other ferns.
And my old favorite cobbler’s pegs. And the pretty blue Billy Goat Weed and several others with names I don’t know.
If we work at it we can keep on top of our own weeds but if we have neighbours who aren’t their seeds come into our property. And if they don’t attend to tree weeds and vines it becomes a real problem.
Have any of you read “Wormwood Forest”? Fascinating description of the area around Chernobyl since all the people have been evacuated after the nuclear accident. The trees and plants have taken over. They’ve grown through the roads and paths and houses and buildings pulling them apart. They are well on the way to returning the whole area to nature and eradicating signs of human habitation.
We might love our plants but let’s be in no doubt who would win if we stopped managing them carefully.
Which raises something else to wonder about. How would we manage all our forests if we didn’t have enough fuel for big machinery and vehicles? Right now I’m not sure where the oil crisis is heading. It may be morphing into a gas-powered world for a while. We certainly need fuel to manage our forests our fire trails our controlled burns our fire brigades our road verges.
Meanwhile the plants keep growing.