[RWG] [APWG] Natural herbicides makes projects cheaper, quicker and easier

[Wayne Tyson]

APWG & RWG Forums:

I know that smokin' weed can be a good pain-killer, but that doesn't make 
every claim about every herb valid. I could steep some rosemary in olive oil 
and sell it to a few people in a crowd if I were arrogant enough to call 
myself an expert, but that wouldn't keep me from committing fraud. Many 
years ago, I visited Timothy Leary's mountain hide-out; the kid whose Dad 
had popped for the place had a bucketful of various herbs, Jimson weed among 
them. I mentioned that it was poison; the kid said that he knew how to 
handle dosage--he had read how the Indians had used it in sweat-lodges. I 
told him that a lot of Indians were carried feet-first out of sweat-lodges 
too. Later, a girl-believer's body was found floating--in the pond.

A certain number of cases of "medicinal" plant use are bound to appear to be 
effective, but that does not demonstrate causality--the "patient" can heal 
spontaneously, the placebo effect can take hold, or other causes can be 
involved. The same can be said about all sorts of incantations and 
ceremonies.

Personally, I do believe that all sorts of organisms do have influences on 
other organisms. Dremann may well be proved to be right (and I do not 
question his observations). What I do question is the lack of specific 
evidence regarding causes.

While I do not doubt for a second that piling straw of indigenous grasses is 
a better practice than using crop and other alien straw, I do not believe 
that a claim of allelopathic action, aside from the physical effects such as 
shading and temperature alteration can be eliminated as causes for weed 
suppression. I am concerned about the practice because of its potential for 
suppressing emerging indigenous species, and, by so doing, create the 
potential for creating conditions that could promote a shift in species 
composition, including weedy species.

I am not against using straw or other elements for habitat modification--I 
have used bigger piles of branches (in patches) in my practice in the past, 
but I am leery of the uniform placement of any sort of "mulch" in the 
context of ecosystem restoration--if you want diversity of flora and fauna, 
heterogeneous surfaces are better than homogeneous ones. I would like to see 
Dremann vary the kind of placement used, such as punching the straw into the 
soil surface and variations in thickness, compared with alternative 
techniques over several years.

In any case, I wish Dremann well. I admire his energetic work and 
enthusiasm, and hope that the results of his research are published in a 
well-edited and peer-reviewed journal; this would go a long way toward 
avoiding questions about methods and analysis and enhance his credibility.

WT


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Craig Dremann - Redwood City Seed Company" <Craig at astreet.com>
To: <apwg at lists.plantconservation.org>; <rwg at lists.plantconservation.org>
Sent: Friday, September 16, 2011 8:23 AM
Subject: [APWG] Natural herbicides makes projects cheaper, quicker and 
easier


> Dear Wayne and All,
>
> Thanks for your email.
>
> For tens of thousands of years, humans have been using plants for
> different purposes--like medicinal plants for example--without having a
> single clue what the active ingredients were.
>
> All people had to do in ancient times,  was to correctly identify the
> plant, know what part was active, and know the dosage, to cure whatever
> ills that plant was effective against.
>
> That is exactly what I am suggesting about the natural herbicides produced
> by the native plants.  Know which plant is active, what part of the plant
> is active, and what is the dosage?
>
> I have been writing to these lists about the natural native plant
> herbicides, with the hope that this knowledge could help all of our weed
> management and/or restoration projects, to try this concept and maybe make
> your projects much, much easier.
>
> Especially projects that absolutely must succeed--like environmental
> mitigation projects, or planting fire resistant local natives in the Great
> Basin in the place of the flammable weeds, or any project where a huge
> amount of time, effort or expense has already been spent, without the
> desired results.
>
> That is why if anyone has a dryland weeding or restoration project that is
> going to take more than a few days to complete, or if you are spending
> more than a few thousand dollars--if you try some small scale test plots
> in the next month or two, you might get some remarkable results that you
> could use on a larger scale next spring.
>
> At http://www.ecoseeds.com/standards.html I give some ideas of how to
> evaluate a large scale project, so you can quickly invent the methods you
> need, to complete the project in the shortest time possible.
>
> Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333
>
>
>
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