Dastardly. Seeds of sorrow. Roots of all evil. The bane of farmers and gardeners everywhere. Johnson grass. Pervasive and invasive, like the hordes of Ghengis Khan, nothing can cloud your horizon like the sight of this weed sprouting in your garden.
Perennial weed superstar, Johnson grass scoffs at how slow other weed grasses like bermuda invade and take over new ground. Fast growth, no, make that overnite six inches taller growth, and spreading by rhizomes are the arrows in it's quiver. With each plant producing up to 5000 seeds, bare ground is soon covered and then overwhelmed, leaving you to fight a war that never ends. The problem with trying to grow a garden with Johnson grass around is that every time you till the soil you chop the Johnson grass roots into smaller and more numerous pieces, and each of these pieces sprouts more grass, so you're actually producing more weeds while you think you're getting rid of all the weeds.
Slick, man, Johnson grass is so evil slick. Large and red tinted, the roots do have their achilles though - pigs. Pigs love roots and seem to have a special affinity for Johnson grass roots. One of the added benefits we're seeing from rotating our pigs through our garden plots is a reduction in the amount of Johnson grass on the farm, and eventually we want to get all of it off our land. Conquer it, defeat it, take no quarter, but do it chemically free. The alternatives to fighting this garden killer are mowing before seed is produced, or digging the grass out and burning it, both ways are labor intensive, which is the reason so many people turn to products like round-up. We let the pigs do the work for us, which keeps the chemicals away, a win-win in our book. Here's some more info on Johnson grass if you're interested.
We made a short video of the pigs today, as it was absolutely beautiful for this time of year:
We'll be sending out an e-mail update in the next few days. Thanks for reading!
Pork & Greens