I’ve been paying attention to the weeds in my yard, even looking them up when I don’t know what they are. It started in the fall and has progressed in the summer to now. I’ve found 39 different weeds in my own yard…there might be a few more that  I’m missing as well.

I’m actually happy over the fact that I have 39 species of weeds in my yard. It’s good biodiverstiy, and I haven’t done a thing about it. Some of the weeds are edible or environmentally beneficial: I’ve got milkweed for butterflies, dandelions for bees and greens, and the chickens eat nearly everything. Most of my weeds are annuals and not widespread, so when I don’t want them it isn’t going to be a horrible task to get rid of them. For instance, the clover I seeded in the backyard has happily overtaken all of the weed species out there. The biggest problems I see in the future are bindweed and bulbous bluegrass.

My weed list (using common names from Weeds of the West):
Spring 2014
Shepherd’s Purse
Common Mallow
Dandelion
Bindweed
Puncturevine
Downy brome
Scotch Thistle
Dyer’s Woad
Redstem filaree
Annual sowthistle
Prickly lettuce
Henbit
Bur Buttercup
Catchweed bedstraw
Fernleaf Biscuitroot
Siberian Elm
Bulbous Bluegrass

Summer 2014
Black Medic
Creeping woodsorrel
Prostrate Knotweed
Prostrate Pigweed
Redroot pigweed
Showy Milkweed
Musk thistle
Horseweed
Annual sowthistle
Western Salsify
Flixweed
Lambsquarters
Kochia
Prostrate spurge
Crabgrass
Green foxtail
Bristly foxtail
Wild buckwheat
Curly dock
Common purslande
Virginia groundcherry
Bittersweet nightshade

One weed problem I’ve come across is purslane. It started overtaking my parkstrip bed I planted. Purslane is a hard weed to eliminate: it reseeds easilyand grows from small leaves left behind. In truth, my efforts to weed it out have been fruitless, it just comes back. Getting the mulch deeper has helped, and just continued hand pulling. But the truth is, I’m conflicted about this weed. I knew it was edible, and one day I started snacking on it. And I kept snacking on it. My neighbor came out and talked to me, and found me perusing my weed bucket for the delicious new shoots of purslane. I kept snacking in front of her, and actually offered her some explaining what it was. She declined and probably thought I was very strange.

I wouldn’t mind just keeping the purslane there…but this is in the parkstip bed that is mostly on the neighbor’s yard, a traditional and highly manicured landscape. I don’t think my elderly neighbors would quite appreciate the benefit of allowing a weed to take over. Good thing is, purslane is hard to eliminate and the young shoots taste the best anyway. So I can keep weeding it back harvesting heavily, and I will keep having my supply while not allowing the bed to look weedy.

A new home and yard for me means a lot of new experiences and experiments. 

We moved the little chickens in with the big chickens. It involved letting them free range together, moving the brooder box close by the coop, and ultimately just throwing them all together. It was relatively peaceful actually…they still maintain two separate flocks, but they are pretty nice to each other and I never had any injuries. I think I worried more than I needed too.

I also moved the compost pile into the chicken coop. They are excellent compost turners. Although I don’t really enough material to make lots of compost the chickens are great at making branches, chicken scraps, grass clippings and even a dead bird disappear. The chickens have also turned out to be the best puncture vine control. We move our coop around, and when it is over a puncture vine patch they will eat it gone in a couple of days and it stays gone.

In the spring, I bought a bag of clover seed and inoculum. One day as I was turning on the flood irrigation, I thought why not just throw down the seed and inocolum right now, while the water was flowing, and see what happens. So I hand broadcast the clover seed pretty densely and just basically dumped the inoclum into the start of the irrigation water. The area was a pretty bare patch of mown weeds, mostly winter annuals. All I did to help the clover germinate was turn on the flood irrigation when we had our turn, twice a week. Because it was irrigated, plenty of plants grew, and happily much of the clover. After mowing it once, the clover has become even more vigorous and I think by next year it will have completely taken over. Fifteen minutes was all it took to establish a small patch of clover, and I think I will replicated the process over a broader area next year.

In our side area, we had a bunch of Bridal Wreath Spireas. I mentioned before that we had cut them back to the ground. I was unsure if they would come back. But they’ve come back just fine, even without consistent irrigation. They look so much better than they did, I’m glad we went for it and hacked them back.

The last little experiment was moving our dryer. It was inside and had a long vent line. The dryer worked horribly, and I was pretty sure it was because of the vent line, even after I cleaned it out. My bright idea was to just move the dryer outside on our back patio. My husband wired up a new plug and we moved it. It now takes about half the time it did to dry clothes. In the winter we plan to move it back inside, but also vent inside.

The unattractive but functional back patio complete with dryer.

We are still in the thick of many projects in our garden, and our front yard might look a bit like a construction zone right now. A few things haven’t worked so well–free ranging the chickens in the evening has meant of decrease of of tomato crop and no melons this year. Most of my squash died from an unknown cause. There are weeds everywhere. But we’ve had plenty of things go right as well.