Originally Posted by N2TRKYS


There again, y’all keep getting butt hurt over suggestions and questions. Since dog fennel is so beneficial, why haven’t you planted it in your other fields? Nobody is hating on a process that nature has been doing for years. Saying so is what’s ridiculous. It only makes sense to take the non beneficial plants out and replace them with beneficial plants to speed the process along. From experience, we can speed these type things up and be beneficial at the same time.




Read Aldo Leopold’s quote again…..Do you disagree with idea he’s putting forth in that quote?

“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”

--- Aldo Leopold



I happen to agree with it myself to an extent……There is no such thing as a bad plant (again to an extent)…..There is no such thing as a non-beneficial plant…..Every plant that’s here has a function and serves a purpose of some kind. It actually does something other just stand there and look green. I’m suggesting that one of our biggest issues is that we simply write off most plants as a “weed” when we really don’t even understand them. How much thought have you ever actually given to what something like dog fennel was actually put on this earth to do? …..

One of these places we differ in opinion is I’m not just looking at every single plant for deer food. About 75-80% of the plants that grow in my field and on my property in general….will be browsed by deer. There’s plenty of summer food so I don’t stress about trying to eliminate that other 20%....Its just added cost and hassle that gives a very poor return on my investement compared to what I’m getting at a free cost right now......I leave that 20% and let it preform the function that it was put here to do….whatever that may be….there’s a lot of other roles to be played in this cycle other than produce deer food. There are some plants that I believe replenish the soil but are intentionally made to not be liked as food. That ensures that there’s a certain amount of biomass grown to feed back to the soil…..And that’s why I don’t mind dog fennel…..It bringing back a high c:n ratio type of biomass that I’m not getting from any other plant. It’s almost a “woody” plant. This effects the quality of my end humus product and it also effects bacterial composition. I believe this type of biomass brings in more of fungal community to balance with the bacteria if I remember correctly. I also recognize that there’s probably a lot about dog fennel…..and many other plants we call weeds….. that I don’t understand. The only way to learn where it fits in the natural system though is to study it…..That’s hard to do if you get rid of it.

Let’s just say for instance that having a little dog fennel in the fields during the summer returned all the P to the soil we’ll ever need to grow winter grains. It just completely eliminated the need to ever buy any phosphorus again……Would it then be a beneficial plant?......That's just a made up hypothetical example to make a point...... but all of these plants are preforming some type of function like that. We might just not understand what it is yet because we haven't really even looked and given it any thought. This is how nature was designed to be self-sufficient and regenerate highly productive prairie ecosystem for eons….year after year without input from humans. Why just discard all of the free plants without even understanding their true value?






Last edited by CNC; 11/11/19 01:16 PM.
We dont rent pigs