Weeds, sin and genetics.

[N80]

Why is it that if we want to grow something it is hard to grow despite our best efforts and if we don't want something to grow it grows well despite our best efforts to keep it from growing.

I asked a farmer who is wise enough but is a man of few words. All he had to say was "sin"...... as in the Garden of Evil and the Fall of man. As a religious person, I can buy that. And that may be THE overriding reason.

"cursed [is] the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat [of] it all the days of thy life;

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread"
​

But is there more to it in the details? (They say the devil is in the details, you know). In other words, I look at a food plot in which I have gone to great lengths and effort to make plant 'x' grow in it. It does so-so. But the weeds, briars and grasses that I have plowed under, etc. Pop up and flourish as if they were the desired crop. And when drought and poor soil are thrown into the mix the weeds hold up fine while the crop dies. I want to know the science behind that. And I can only think of one thing. Genetics and breeding. Is it just that over thousands of years we've bred crop plants to be so fruitful that we have bred the ability to deal with anything but perfect conditions out of them?

Just a guess.

 

[dooleysm]

Local weeds have had millions of years to adapt to the local environmental conditions. Generally, the stuff we want to grow has not been bred over thousands of years. Wasn't it Gregor Mendel that did the first experiments with cross-breeding peas in maybe the 1400's or 1500's? Certainly it was less than 1000 years ago. The stuff we're trying to grow is millions of years behind the local weeds, as far as adapting to the local conditions.

 

[dmccarty]

I don't think it just local "weeds" having advantage. My place is infested with a bamboo stilt grass, nut sedge, and Russian olive. I don't think they are all native but boy do they grow!

As I work to "clean up" our place meaning the places I can see and use, it is very apparent that we only lease the land from Momma Nature for a very short time. Momma wins. I will NEVER clear out all of the bamboo or olive. If I do the birds bring it right back. FLA has the same problems with some trees, Oscar fish, and Brazilian pepper bushes. Watching all of the different plants fight for every bit of soil, light and water while I try to "neaten" the place up is amazing. Momma Nature does not seem to like empty space.

I think of the zillions and zillions of seeds released every year. Year after year. Decade after decade. Century after century. Then suddenly the ground is disturbed or a tree falls and light hits the forest floor and BOOM! The seeds that have survived are suddenly given a green grow light and the race is own.

Its hard fighting them weeds. They gots all day to grow while I have to work and then I spend a bit of time trying to stop them from growing. Unfair really.

Later,
Dan

 

[N80]

Generally, the stuff we want to grow has not been bred over thousands of years. Wasn't it Gregor Mendel that did the first experiments with cross-breeding peas in maybe the 1400's or 1500's? Certainly it was less than 1000 years ago.

Very true. But, even when a cave man selected to re-plant using the taller, better producing plant within a same species, that is still a form of breeding even though he may not have known he was manipulating natural selection. The Romans and the Greeks took this even farther and that was thousands of years ago.

Regardless, you are right. Most of the stuff any of us plant these days was probably 'developed' in the last 100 years.

 

[MossRoad]

As someone else stated, nature fills the void. Just look at a forest (the plants are big and it is easy to see). You may find one very large tree that is forcing any tree around it to grow crooked to reach the sun. Our tree farm has alternating rows of pines and hardwoods. The pines grow fast and in a pyramidal shape. This forces the slower growing hardwoods to stretch up tall and straight between the pines in an upside down pyramidal shape. So, the hardwoods end up with few branches on the bottom and long straight trunks... ideal for timber.

Now look at your garden. You plant some plants and all that open space is just sitting there around them. Any seed is going to find that a great place to try to reach the sun. Add to that the nicely tilled soil, the water and the fertilizer and, well, you have created weed heaven.

I've found that drip irrigation and spot fertilization goes a long, long way towards controlling weeds. I also use plastic mulch under my tomatoes and peppers. It not only blocks weeds, it heats the soil, which those plants love. Grass clippings work great for mulch, but unless you have a perfect lawn you will get week seeds in there. And if you use any fertilizer on your lawn, that just ends up in the clippings and then fertilizes the soil, which grows weeds as soon as the clippings rot away. A vicious cycle.

 

[N80]

When I look at the woods around here I see hybrid pines choking out all but the gums and cedars. I guess what I really wish for is corn, sunflowers and clover that grew the way those hybrid pines do. The only plot plant that has behaved that way, in other words grew like a weed, was grain sorghum. It out competed the weeds and produced lots of seeds. Problem is, I couldn't tell that much of anything was eating it. Figures.

 

[MossRoad]

When I look at the woods around here I see hybrid pines choking out all but the gums and cedars. ...

Well, that's kind of funny, as our white pines haven't reproduced themselves here, but our "field" is starting to sprout cedars! I guess it just depends on a lot of things.

 

[jinman]

It's all the fault of that air-head woman who took the apple from the snake. It's all women's fault. Isn't that what Adam said?

I just hauled in yards and yards of sandy loam into my new garden area. It has weeds in it, but they are easy to control because the soil is loose and they pull up really easy. However, I just also dug the soil out of three big flowerbeds around my house and replaced it with organic humus and cow manure. I had about six bucket loads of soil from the flowerbeds that I dumped into the corner of my garden spot where I don't have anything planted. Well, that spot of soil from the flowerbeds is full of nutgrass and a bunch of other noxious weeds. It looks like a certifiable weed garden. As much as it looks like the flowerbeds caused the weeds, I know different. I got sand for the flowerbeds from the sandy bottom of a creek. I'm sure every noxious weed for miles around has contributed seeds to that sand and I brought them to my flowerbeds and gave them water and fertilizer to help them grow. It's my fault and there's no way around it.

 

[polo1665]

In the past I was never really good about weeding the garden. Seems like I would be pretty gung ho about it at the start of the season, but as time wore on during the summer I would have alot of trouble keeping up with it and eventually it would get out of hand. If my dad had ever seen one of those gardens he would have come unglued.
Now things are a little different and I am taking a whole new approach in his honor. I'm weeding daily and the garden looks fantastic. The one thing that astounds me about the weeds is not how they spread or where they come up, but how difficult they are to kill. I use a hand cultivator to "uproot" and turn the weeds under. It is not uncommon for the weeds (roots and all) to lay on top of the soil and somehow survive to get a foothold in the soil again. Try that with a pepper or tomato plant, my bet is they won't make it.

Mark

 

[charlz]

I guess what I really wish for is corn, sunflowers and clover that grew the way those hybrid pines do.

Corn is actually an example of the 'selective breeding' you mention above. Corn originated from a grass and looks nothing like it's ancestor today. The corn we grow couldn't 'go wild' because the seeds (kernels) are too close together and would strangle each other as they all fought for the same space.