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What Is a Weed?

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Re: What Is a Weed?

#41

Post by [deleted] »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #40
ghaff wrote: post #37

Mint is very clearly an herb. Given the right conditions, it will also pretty much overtake large patches of garden and lawn. I generally take a very Darwinian approach to what grows in and around my garden given that any careful curation tends to get overtaken by native grasses from my field. But the mint can be a bit much--though I mostly let it do what it wants at this point.

where are you that you still have native grasses? where I live it's all introduced lawn grasses that take over everything.

[deleted]

Re: What Is a Weed?

#42

Post by ghaff »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #40
ghaff wrote: post #37

Mint is very clearly an herb. Given the right conditions, it will also pretty much overtake large patches of garden and lawn. I generally take a very Darwinian approach to what grows in and around my garden given that any careful curation tends to get overtaken by native grasses from my field. But the mint can be a bit much--though I mostly let it do what it wants at this point.

where are you that you still have native grasses? where I live it's all introduced lawn grasses that take over everything.

I don't know how literally native they are in central Massachusetts given the cycles of forests, forests being cut down, and fields regrowing. But it's certainly not lawn grasses. Meadows in New England generally are not lawn grasses.

Re: What Is a Weed?

#44

Post by djbusby »

goda90 wrote: post #35
bryanlarsen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farmers call those peas "volunteer crops". Volunteer crops are considered weeds.

#1 weed among in my garden last year was tomatoes. I let tomatoes fall off the vine and drop their seeds the year prior, and last year I planted something else entirely, but the tomatoes made an appearance. They hybridize easily, so whatever was growing was some weird conglomeration of several varieties of tomato.

Tomacco?

Re: What Is a Weed?

#45

Post by zwieback »

goda90 wrote: post #35
bryanlarsen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farmers call those peas "volunteer crops". Volunteer crops are considered weeds.

#1 weed among in my garden last year was tomatoes. I let tomatoes fall off the vine and drop their seeds the year prior, and last year I planted something else entirely, but the tomatoes made an appearance. They hybridize easily, so whatever was growing was some weird conglomeration of several varieties of tomato.

Yeah, tomatoes are the worst, at this point I'm like rain man OCD about picking up any tomato that falls. If you let them grow they become just medium size medium flavor supermarket tomato bastards.

Re: What Is a Weed?

#46

Post by zwieback »

mvdtnz wrote: post #36
goda90 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1 weed among in my garden last year was tomatoes. I let tomatoes fall off the vine and drop their seeds the year prior, and last year I planted something else entirely, but the tomatoes made an appearance. They hybridize easily, so whatever was growing was some weird conglomeration of several varieties of tomato.

I can't stop potatoes from growing in my compost. I let the first bunch get out of hand and now I'm stuck with them. They make my compost worthless because I end up propagating potatoes to any bed I try to compost. I'm in potato hell.

That stopped for me when I got those big plastic boxes that totally enclose the compost. I don't live in super potato friendly climate though

Re: What Is a Weed?

#47

Post by friend_and_foe »

Arrath wrote: post #28

To my girlfriend a weed is anything not part of a manicured lawn, as far as I can tell. My protests of "that's a native plant!" matter not.

My girlfriend finds the edible ones (hint: almost all of them are edible) and we eat them together.

Re: What Is a Weed?

#48

Post by friend_and_foe »

I consider grass to be a weed, and I prefer to have other things grow.

Lawn grass is a cover crop to prevent soil erosion. It is pretty good at that job, at the cost of constant maintenance and expense. There are plenty of other plants that can grow and cover the land, not grow tall on their own, are comfortable to walk on and as a bonus, actually have uses. A patchwork of wild plants, mint varieties and thyme varieties would be ideal for me. Can you imagine the smell? And I can eat them whenever I want. Converting a patch of land into something like this is something of a life goal for me.

Re: What Is a Weed?

#50

Post by kevviiinn »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #30
poulsbohemian wrote: post #5

my uncle with an ag degree has always said “a weed is any plant in a place you don’t want it.” I’m getting better at accepting this and moving / pulling things that may be beautiful but have outgrown their spot in my yard.

I actually learned this from "Space Ghost: Coast to Coast" when SG was interviewing an Ag professor from Georgia Tech. Who said you can't learn anything from cartoons?

I forgot about that show. Some great memories with that one
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