Weeds.

Weeds.

Posted on 31 Jul, 2008 4 comments

Weeds.
Weeds can be a real pest and some of them dangerous to people and cattle. They become an Australian noxious weed when they take off due to our favourable weather conditions. The weed I am talking about comes from South Africa and has been brought in by our first migrants. Of course in those days people didn’t know much about the dangers involved in bringing foreign plants to the new country. This weed is: Emex Australis or Doublegees or Cape Spinach, from Cape of Good Hope. This is a prostrate to partially erect herb with a fleshy taproot and stems up to 7-cm. It has ovate leaves, like spinach. Its seeds are brown, triangular with extremely sharp spikes 3-4 mm long. The plant contains oxolate and can be toxic to cattle. The plants mostly germinate in autumn and winter. Its seeds are the culprit: they can stay dormant for 10 years in the ground. These sharp spikes can cause lameness in cattle and dogs. When we first bought the farm we didn’t know any of this. One day we hubby found the first doublegee plants in the orchard. He found a different kind of plant which looked nice, but with painful spikes. Farmer friends identified it for us. These plants grew very fast and soon we discovered whole patches of them. They popped up between many rows of apple trees. What had happened and why hadn’t we seen them before? We soon discovered there were seeds on the tractor wheels. That is how we had spread them and the first patch must have been growing from some seeds, which had come to the surface when we ploughed before planting. But of course the tractor had performed other jobs, outside the fence of the orchard. We found them around the hayshed, in paddocks, here and there they popped up where we had been driving the tractor. Now we had established the cause, we had to get rid of them. There was no cure, you just couldn’t spray them, as the seeds would not die. There was just one way we could attack them: pull them out! And fast, before they would take over the whole farm. So, in between all the jobs we went with a spade and strong super(phosphate) bags and started. Not too bad a job, as long as you were careful, not to shake them too much and not to stab yourself on the spikes. I looked for the centre of the plant then dug out the root and very gently gathered the plant. Some were large, which was a bonus, because they make runners and no roots. We worked for weeks at it. I have always loved weeding and this job was no exception. Soon we had plenty of full plastic bags, tied them close and took them to the tip. We thought we had them all, but next spring out they came again, and again the year after. It was an endless job, but slowly we got on top of it. Then an old tree fell over and we burned it. The tractor pushed the branches together, you burn further, we rake the last stumps, and it burns further. This takes at least one to two weeks, until it is just one grey sandy patch. And of course, here we go again: doublegees came up! It seemed the previous owners of the property had never done anything about it. As these were concentrated around that bonfire spot, it was not too difficult to find them and dispose of the plants. And I can still see myself sifting through the soil finding the seeds, which had dropped off the plants. Every now and then one of the kids would come home with a doublegee stuck on the sole of their thongs. (These are rubber slippers with straps in between the large toes, in case someone doesn’t know this word, lol.) The seeds would stick right into them. It was a good way to find these seeds, much like a magnet finds needles on the floor. Under that old lilac tree were patches of doublegees too. Every spring we’d go out to find them. When the plants are still young the seeds are soft, when they mature the seeds become hard and sharp. If you leave the plant it will die naturally, but the seeds will drop off and sink into the soil. They honestly can lie there dormant for 10 years, if nobody would have stepped in them or driven over them. But in the end we manage to rid the whole farm of doublegees. Every now and then we still found a small patch, but nothing like in those first years.
Of course these were not the only weeds we’d have to control. There were Canada thistles, blackberries and spear thistles. Thank goodness of the last species we didn’t have many. Will talk about those next time.

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