A year and a half ago I posted images of my cornfield sprouting through various states. [stderr] Since that time, the price for ethanol has dropped sharply, so the farmer(s) in the area who were making corn just harvested the fields and … left.
I never heard another peep out of the fellow, which was pretty irritating since our arrangement was that he got the corn, and didn’t mess up my field. Instead, he left the field roughly cut, and it rapidly grew a bumper crop of weeds.
There’s a guy up the street who makes hay, and I asked him if he’d be willing to spray and seed the field, in return for some old farm equipment I knew he wanted. The deal being done, he and a friend sprayed 3 weeks ago then ran seeds last week. The grass is already coming up!
I’m in Los Angeles the next two weeks and when I get back I expect it’ll be a beautiful green carpet.
Well, technically corn is grass too…
Yeah, it’s grasses all the way down!
The varieties of hay/clover/timothy and whatnot all scream right over my head. “Field stuff”
if ya need a plot id offer mine, but im sure were too far apart. (and its half blackberry briar right now)
A V Sandi Nack@#3:
and its half blackberry briar right now
Oh, I have a lot of those, too! I hate them (and they were starting to grow in a few spots on the cornfield. Deer won’t eat them. Nothing will. But they’re great for lacerating an ankle, if you ever need that.
So, this “blackberry” briar stuff does not produce berries?
Does it burn?
Personally, I’d love to have a big plot of land that I could let overgrow with whatever came along. It’d be fascinating to just follow it year after year.
re: blackberries. Goats will eat those. They actually relish things with thorns, such as roses and black locust. If you want to eradicate the blackberries you’ll need to come in after the goats and remove the crowns of the plants but goats will certainly help get them under control.
Having someone mess up my field like that would annoy me quite a lot. Glad to see it’s coming up in grass…
LykeX @#6
Where I live we have such fields all over the place. Plenty of former kolkhoz land is now overgrown with weeds and small bushes and has been this way for years by now. I’m so used to seeing these grassy fields that I perceive them as mundane and thus I don’t pay much attention each time I see one, but actually you are right that such fields and weeds that grow in them are fascinating. What kind of plants grow in them depends on where the field is—more sandy land closer to the sea has different plants compared to wet meadows. There are also lots of plants with beautiful flowers, for example, dandelions, Canadian goldenrods (Solidago canadensis), clover (various Trifolium species), butterfly-orchids (Platanthera bifolia), fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium).
Marcus @#4
I will eat them. I love blackberries. They are tasty. Of course, the wild growing plants tend to have fewer and smaller berries, but they are still tasty enough for me to be willing to pick them. As for lacerating an ankle, that’s why you are supposed to wear appropriate shoes and pants when approaching thorny plants.
@9 ya might not wanna eat our berry, it grows in from the highway buffer. :-(