Notices by Lotus (farmerlotus@regenerate.social)

@thatguyoverthere that does sound like a tricky one and yeah I’d prob just try to get rid of the mother vine in that situation.

Luckily we don’t have that one here. Lots of mean cactus tho :P

Many plants that are considered weeds are edible and very nutritious.

Learning to “read the weeds” is also fun because they can tell you all sorts of things about the conditions of the soil they are growing in.

Once you start paying attention to what grows where, you will start to see patterns that can teach you a ton about the soil below.

Usually the 2nd succession of weeds here is bindweed & a few diff species of brassicas but along with that, I’ll usually see some annual rye grasses coming up too

3rd succession brings more native perennial grasses, wildflowers, etc.

But the point is, all of this is normal and expected and predictable.

Weeds are good actually because they begin the process of covering the soil in disturbed areas. We can steer areas towards later succession perennial plants instead of trying to eradicate weeds

So this is sort of a corollary to yesterday’s rant about landscape fabric and I know it goes against people’s ideas of “gardening” but…

you don’t actually have to get rid of weeds.

What we call “weeds” are typically just very resilient plants that function as pioneer species which establish quickly in degraded & disturbed areas.

If you improve the conditions of the soil (via better aeration, water retention, nutrient & mineral cycles, etc) then the weed problem will solve itself.

#gardening

@thatguyoverthere

They are much less easy to keep over winter so we’ll have to make some decisions about stocking density for the cold season, but the intention was always to fill the freezer and keep building a strong & resilient foundation flock to work alongside land management partners.

@thatguyoverthere

I think we’ll probably incorporate geese into our system at some point but the ducks are already a really integral part of our soil building program and they are also just really enjoyable to work with, imo.

The way we’ve got things set up, the ducks are super easy to keep during the warm season when water is ample. Their ponds are spring fed and get a constant supply of fresh water and then we send the duck poo water out to the fields to “fertigate” via flood irrigation.

@thatguyoverthere @Flick

This year’s swarm:

* Hens
3 blue runner
2 fawn & white runner
2 Welsh harlequin

* Drakes
1 Welsh harlequin
1 welsh harlequin x blue runner

Got some Ancona and Rouen that are just feathering out now. If any make it to next spring they will be added to the mix along with the best of this year’s farm born babies.

@thatguyoverthere @Flick

Really interesting.

I’m not really selecting for color at this point, more aiming for a diversified swarm of heritage breed crosses and the ones that thrive in our situation will be the foundation of our flock.

But I still love seeing all the cute color combos that are popping up.

Got a little crash course in duck genetics yesterday. Super interesting stuff.

The whole impetus was that we ended up with 3 black ducklings and none of the parents were black so I was like, “what gives? Are these the mailman’s babies?” 🤣

Turns out Blue Indian Runners don’t breed true and a percentage of their offspring will be black or silver instead of blue.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/mallard-derived-duck-color-genetics-basics.74277/