BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please

Subject: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Genie
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 08:47 PM

One of my wonderful "volunteer" plants

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Alice
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 08:59 PM

It got that big in only FOUR YEARS??? Wow!!!
It grew like a... um.. uh.... WEED!!!!


LOL
Alice

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Genie
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 09:40 PM

Actualy, it's probably been 6 years since I asked my then housemate to "cut down that weed," but it didn't bear any fruit at all till the next year. It's been pretty big for the last 4 years, but its crop (the ones that didn't fall off prematurely) ranged from a low of about 5 fruit to a high of about 25.   This year I've counted over 60 that are still on the tree and just about ready to pick.

I have to pick a lot of them before they're really ripe, because the tree is in my front yard right next to my porch, and if I wait a day too long, someone comes along and steals most of them.   Fortunately, peaches do continue ripening after being picked when they're pretty green.

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Beer
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 09:50 PM

Great video Genie and don't cut it down. wonderful story.
Beer (adrien)

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 11:23 PM

Congratulations. They look lovely.

By the way, I don't know about Portland but I do know that less than 40 miles south is great peach growing country.   A broad band of the land between the Wilsonville/Salem/Independence/Monmouth/Dallas area has very large peach orchards.

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Peace
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 11:58 PM

The volunteer plant I sorely wish I had.

However, I like peaches.

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Genie
Date: 28 Aug 09 - 12:05 AM

Ebbie, I didn't know that. I planted a peach tree in my back yard (not next to the house) in the 1980s. That year or the next it bore 3 peached.   (I waited 1 day too long in letting them ripen on the three, and someone took all 3 the night before I was going to pick them.) The next year it died, apparently due to the combination of a dry summer and a pretty cold winter. I'm kind of surprised the Willamette Valley can grow a decent crop of peaches. But maybe there are varieties specially grown for this area.

I think the fact that mine started as a volunteer, and then survived the first winter on its own, may signal that it was a pretty viable peach pit to start with.

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Genie
Date: 28 Aug 09 - 12:11 AM

Peace, your plant pic reminds me of another "volunteer" I once had on my property. Back in the late '70s I was renting an apt. here in Portland, and after a while I noticed a frilly-leafed plant, a couple feet high, next to my water meter.   I thought, "Hmmm. That weed looks like, well, weed." A month or two later I noticed there were two of them and the bigger one was about 6 feet tall -- tall enough so that the meter reader would have had to move it out of the way to read the meter.

Later that year I had a party and we ceremoniously "harvested" both plants -- and people tried to 'cure' them using the oven on its lowest setting.
Zip. Nada. Niente.

I know this isn't the preferred method of aging and curing such "volunteer plants," but I suspect they were probably both females (or both males -- whichever one doesn't get you high -- anyway. The scary thing, looking back at that, is that I might have been in trouble with "the man" if someone had reported the plants before I got ride of them.

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Peace
Date: 28 Aug 09 - 12:36 AM

I hear that.

Years back I went to visit my parents. In their living room/kitchen area was a plant that was curling off the ceiling. I was informed that it was my brother's. He trimmed it and kept it in good shape. Turns out--after a few questions--that my mom knew what the plant was. I suggested she could be prosecuted for trafficking were the police ever to arrive. I asked her if she'd ever smoked any. She said she tried it once and it did nothing for her. I asked my brother and he said that she (mom) and a girlfriend of hers had tried some one night--I guess my brother rolled them a bomb. He went out for an hour or so and went back home. The 'girls' had ordered from St Hubert BBQ, the best chicken place in Montreal at that time. They had devoured TWO chickens, French fries, cole slaw, buns and sauce. Not bad for a couple of really petite gals (110 lbs soaking wet and 120 lbs soaking wet). I snipped a few bottom branches from it and left.



From the www:

Marijuana plants are either male or female . The male Marijuana plants produce pollen which pollinates the flowers of the female Marijuana plant, which once pollenized, produce seeds . If the female Marijuana plant isn't pollenized (if there are no male Mariuana plants nearby producing pollen), the flower/buds continue to develop and produce THC. Female Marijuana plants which are not pollenized are referred to as sinsemilla (without seeds). Usually 30-50% of the Marijuana plants are male.

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 Aug 09 - 12:49 AM

Unfortunately, this is a common weed in the creekbed at the bottom of the back yard.

Ah-choo!

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Genie
Date: 28 Aug 09 - 02:23 AM

What is that, Stilly?

(Whatever it is, I like my volunteer plant better.)

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Beer
Date: 28 Aug 09 - 07:59 AM

I do believe that plant would be the Giant Rag Weed.
Adrien

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 Aug 09 - 08:14 AM

Yes. This is in the category of noxious weed. But along the lines of your original "weed," I've eaten some might fine weed cantaloupe and tomatoes over the years! The ones that volunteer in the compost are especially delicious!

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Genie
Date: 28 Aug 09 - 01:35 PM

Yeah, Stilly, I've had "volunteer" tomatoes, tomatilloes, cherry trees, a pumpkin and even a watermelon in my yard over the years. Only got one melon from that plant, and it was pretty dinky, though tasty.   My volunteer bing cherries look and taste like the domestic ones, but they're so small it's not really worth dealing with the pits to eat them. (Could maybe boil them down for jelly and separate the seeds from the pulp that way.)

My compost, of course, was the source of my volunteer peach tree too.

And next to that peach tree is a 2-year-old volunteer avocado tree. I'm amazed it survived the last winter in Portland!   I doubt it could ever bear fruit here, even if I grafted cuttings from a fruit-bearing avocado tree onto it, because of the weather, but it it makes it through this next winter, I may try that.

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 28 Aug 09 - 03:05 PM

WEED, n. A plant growing where you don't want it.

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Genie
Date: 28 Aug 09 - 03:27 PM

You mean like the pretty mallow flowers that are growing right in the middle of my lawn instead of in the flower bed where the well-behaved little flowers stay?

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: GUEST,Broadside Man
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 02:01 PM

Wow I'm impressed. So far this year we have had a few explorers in the allotment and have had great success with a marrow plant, the last fruit is now slowly being turned into marrow rum. Never anything as exotic.

Wonderful video as well

Cheers
Geoff

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 03:16 PM

Weeds are also the melancholy clothes that widows wear.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Genie
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 06:30 PM

Broadside man, I know about making wine from your dandelions, but I did not know about marrow rum.   How many marrow plants (flowers? leaves?) do you need to make that?


Oh, and an update on my peach tree "weed":
I've now counted over 90 peaches on it!

Genie

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Bobert
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 06:54 PM

I love weeds... No, not in my garden but in fields... Especially this time of year when so many are in bloom... I also love jo pi weed... It's blooms are magnificent...

Nice peaches, Genie, but the pics don't look like Portland 'cause there's blue sky...lol...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Peace
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 06:58 PM

Just don't get any 'volunteer' dill weed. Good lord, it never ends.

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Beer
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 07:17 PM

Hay Broadside man, please do post the receipt.
ad.

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Genie
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 09:35 PM

LOL, Bobert!
But I'll have you know that Portland's been almost Saharan during most of the summer (July 5 to Labor Day, here in Puddletown) for about the last 5 to 10 years.   We've had 10-day spells of 90 to 106 degree temps and as many as 6 to 8 weeks with negligible rainfall.

(Recently, in the midst of about a month of clear, hot days, it clouded over and even rained a little for two days: the two main days of the Perseid meteor shower!   Aarrgh!)

Joe Pye weed is one of those that can be edible at certain stages.

Another of my favorite weeds is Amaranthus (pigweed) - especially the dark red or purple ones.   They look like they are related to celosia, and they are very (too?) easy to grow. Very easy to pull up if they're where you don't want them. They can grow quite tall and are very pretty in the garden.
You can also pop the seeds like popcorn.

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Genie
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 08:42 PM

This amaranthus,
Not this one

Now, amaranthus being a wildflower, it's not unusual to find the green-flower and other colored flower plants sprout from seeds you've harvested from the dark red ones. But, as with other flowers, if you just keep harvesting the seeds only from the plants you like, eventually, you'll pretty much eliminate the colors you don't like.

Amaranthus can easily grow to several feet tall, and if you pinch off the tops, they will bush out and produce a lot of flowers everywhere on the sprouting branches.   They can be strikingly beautiful.

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 11:55 AM

As an amateur botanist, here in Manchester, UK I had been researching the old cornfield weeds that once grew here when this was an agricultural district. I assumed that they were, more or less, extinct until I stumbled upon some heaps of soil at the back of our local cemetery (I assume that these heaps were the spoil from recently excavated graves). On these heaps were many of the old field weeds that I had read about: Poppies, Fumitories, Pansies etc. I assume that the seed bank must have been in the soil. Amazing! The dead come back to life in the midst of the dead - as it were!

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Genie
Date: 09 Sep 09 - 02:28 PM

Love that story, Shimrod.



BTW, I have harvested 103 peaches from my "weed." And that doesn't count the few that were snitched from the low-hanging branches in my front yard by passers-by.

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: gnu
Date: 09 Sep 09 - 05:54 PM

Great stuff, Genie!

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Bobert
Date: 09 Sep 09 - 06:41 PM

Burdock, as nasty as it can be for taking over nice gardens, is a purdy weed... I like thistle, too...

Saharah in Portland, Genie??? I'll have to talk with my son about that seein' as he lives tgyhere an ; is always complaining about the rain...

103 peaches is alot of weed...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: paula t
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 05:36 PM

Genie,
Marrow rum!.I still remember the headache I got when I made this at college in the early 80s.From what I remember, we cut the top off one large melon, cut out the seeds and filled it with (brown?) sugar. We the put the top back on, stood the filled melon in a plastic box and left it in the airing cupboard for a month or two.Ouch!

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 09:02 PM

I have a small space I planted in oil seeds, grass, oregano, canola, vetch and volunteers; no pattern, just randomly strewed. The bees enjoy it, field mice run about in it, and soon the birds will harvest the seeds.
I did it by accident last year, too lazy to put out grass and flowers, and let the seeds scattered by birds and squirrels from the feeder, and volunteer plants come up. It was entertaining to relax on the deck and watch, so I repeated deliberately.

Bees really work on the oregano and vetch. Two of their favorites.

Subject: RE: BS: A little respect for 'weeds,' please
From: Genie
Date: 11 Sep 09 - 12:22 AM

Gnu,
So far, my peaches are a little more tart than in previous years, but I probably should still let them ripen in the windowsill a few more days. Still very good, though.


Paula, your melon hootch story reminds me of the time I inadvertently made some 'moonshine' in college (at a Southern Baptist school, no less). We didn't have refrigerators in our rooms, and stuff left in the communal fridges in the dorms tended to disappear (gremlins, no doubt), so in the winter we'd sometimes use the area between our windows and the screens as fridges.   I had a pop bottle full of orange juice there to keep it cool, and then we had a sudden winter 'heat wave,' with the sun beating down on that window. Pretty impressive explosion, that.

Thing is, how do you get "mallow" rum out of ...
Oh, nivver mind. I thought you said "mallow" rum.

(Still don't know why you called that melon hootch "marrow wine," though.)


Bobert, PDX does indeed get pretty 'Saharan' these days in July and August.   Not unusual to go 6 weeks with no measureable rainfall, in recent summers (between July 5 and Labor Day).

Oh, and I've got plenty of milk thistle in my yard too.
(I should learn how to use the plants medicinally instead of buying the stuff in capsules at health food stored.)

Same goes for my evening primroses.   They are strange weeds. They look bloody ugly most of the time, as the blossoms always appear at the top of the stalk (which tends to get gangly) and they are aptly named. The blossoms open up at dusk and close up at dawn, but while they are open they are a bright, pale, almost fluorescent looking yellow.   Very striking.
But I also pay good money for the oil from those little critters. Wish I could use my weeds instead.