Thanks for sharing this great conversation and offering your insights on the topic of "invasive" plants.
Here in Ontario people get really over excited about demonizing "invasive" plants and the government staff here in parks spray glyphosate (poisoning animals, beneficial insects, humans and killing the soil life) in the name of their war on "invasives". Totally backwards and insane, for people that claim to be experts in ecology use systemic biocides (antibiotics) in forest ecosystems and waterways.
One of the plants that is high up on the chemical warfare hit list for Eden Ecologists is Phragmites australis.
Rather than demonize and engage with a futile chemical war against that well established plant, I have been striving to recognize the gifts offered by the plant and to receive them in a way that simultaneously increases opportunities for native species to reclaim some territory.
So far I have managed to harvest the tallest plants, dry and then use the bottom 4 feet of rigid stem instead of imported bamboo support posts for pepper and tomato plants in the garden, I also harvest the seed fluff and use it as insulation in homemade bush crafted pillows and the most promising use for the plant material I have found so far is I have experimented with using the grinded up Phragmites stems as a substrate for growing Oyster mushrooms.
The idea was hatched when I was reading Peter McCoy's excellent book (The Mycocultural Revolution) and when I got to the section of the book about growing oyster mushrooms (on a straw substrate in buckets) we happened to be driving by an endless sea of Phragmites australis growing in a vacant lot and this got me to thinking. What about using the stalks of Phragmites in the place of straw (or at least as the main bulk of the substrate with some other nutrients added in if need be)?
Turns out I am not the first person to think of this idea. Below are some research articles that focus on using ground up and hydrated Phragmites australis stems/stalks as a substrate for growing Oyster mushrooms. It seems that the material does indeed work as a suitable substrate. I have experimented with this myself on a small scale with success and will be scaling up.
I have found that single harvest can yield at least two (and often 3) separate end products (with the spent myceliated reed stalk oyster mushroom blocks being able to be used either to feed animals afterwards or build soil fast).
I share some pics and in depth descriptions of those efforts about half way down this photography post:
Thanks for this great wealth of resources Gavin. We are in the same boat here in MN and WI. Some people even cut down black locust because they are invasive, which is just mad as far as I'm concerned. I'm trying to stay creative with the uses for buck thorn and tartarian honeysuckle here.
Yes Black Locust can be a benefit when it exists in a certain context.
This is unrelated to invasive species, but I am currently writing an article on regenerative mariculture and regenerative ocean farming (seaforestation) and I am curious if you have ever done a plant profile or research on oceanic medicine/food plants (aka sea vegetables) ?
I haven't yet. As a midwesterner, I don't think about the ocean as often as I should, though as someone of Irish Descent, I'm super interested in seaweed as a food source.
I used to live on the west coast so harvesting bull kelp (and other seaweeds, both for eating and enriching my grandparents garden soil) and shellfish was a big part of my childhood, but ya my interest now is certainly connected to wanting to learn more about my ancestral ethnobotanical connections and also considering over 40% of humans live within 100 km of the ocean I wanted to at least provide some info on how people can interact with the ocean regeneratively. Growing kelp and having oyster or clam gardens (creating biodiversity enhancing tidal zone habitat) are some of the things I am researching now. I have found records and archeological data points dating back close to a thousand years now that show Oyster gardening and Dulse gardening (involving cultural modification of ocean shore habitat for enhancing long term harvesting capacity and enriching biodiversity of other choice edible species) was part of ancient Gaelic culture. There is a more well studied history here on Turtle Island, but it appears that our ancestors also engaged in forms of regenerative mariculture or ocean gardening.
Thanks man! I came across an author during my research for the Regenerative Ocean Farming and Marine Permaculture article which offers a unique perspective on "invasive plants" that I think you guys would appreciate.
The book is called "Medicine Wheel for the Planet
A Journey toward Personal and Ecological Healing"
by Dr. Jennifer Grenz.
The author is a woman with indigenous blood connected to the Salish people of the pacific coast of Turtle Island but she was brought up in a fully government propaganda colonized, assimilated and indoctrinated family and had a conventional ecology education. She became a specialist in waging war on so called "invasives" and then embarked on a path of awakening, remembering and looking at things from the perspective of her ancestors (requiring much unlearning and decolonizing of her adversarial viewpoint that conventional education inculcated into her with regards to some plants).
Glad you appreciated the conversation, Gavin! And thanks for all the links about Phragmites. I will be checking them out, as my co-author, Nikki Hill, and I might include a section about this plant in our upcoming book. It's quite an interesting subject, since it's a species that is cosmopolitan in distribution, with different subspecies in different regions. The North American sub-species apparently grows less vigorously with the introduced sub-species, and they are also hybridizing. Interestingly (and maybe this is one of your links) the hybrids are able to tolerate higher levels of contamination than the native sub-species, which goes a long way in explaining why it is successful. Because so many of our waterways are polluted!
Fascinating to hear about your uses of this plant! I admire both your open mind and your ingenuity!!
I was more focusing on removing large amounts of plant material and using in ways that can enrich local soils for other plants at the end of their usefulness but directly edible features of the plant are worth while too (especially if someone was to find a good recipe for pickling large amounts of the rhizomes in a tasty format.
I did touch on the inherent capacity of species in that family to hyper-accumulate certain toxins but did not get into the hybrid aspect.
I also admire your open mind and would like to get one of your books. Given what you know of my work so far, which of your published works would you recommend I start with? :)
I Loved this convo! Thank you. Very informative. As an avid gardener/immigrant, I find the term invasive very derogatory. Even the language we use is warring and violent.
I don’t agree with the definition of invasive as it relates to living beings. Be they plants, bacteria, or plants.
I hope we can be open to relational repair both on micro and macro levels.
Radical reframing is so vital and this interview does just that!
Thanks Nessa! Yes, something is invasive, but it's not the plants. That's what I loved about that term invasive land ethics. There's this really lovely children's book called The Other Way to Listen that speaks to that old new way of relating.
this was fascinating to listen to. i have a modest background in eco agriculture and learned something like this but not at such a high level
of irrefutable and wise facts. thank you for that. i just wish those who speak for a
living would simply stand on their square and eliminate the filler words,like like and right and you know. it is apologetic and immature to be so unbelievably knowledgeable only to speak like a teen age girl. we should speak as if to the most intelligent person in the space. let’s give up the teen speak forever.
Glad the conversation was enriching! Speech is so variable regionally and generationally. I don't think either of us were trying to water down what we were saying, but it is incredibly difficult to identify and eliminate vocal habits while still saying something worth listening to.
i think it’s quite simple: be plain in speech. be as intelligent and knowledgeable as you actually are( which your guest is. and empathetic) and trust your listeners to follow and understand. so much of todays communication amounts to this kind of fawning with filler words to signal ‘i’m not smarter than you,so i hope you’ll go along with what i’m saying/sharing/teaching.’ just be smart and articulate minus the you knows and like and right. this horrendous habit has zero to do with regionalism. it is an absolute plague of language in america today. regionalism is about CHOICE of words. ie: soda pop coke. that’s regionalism. i listened the whole way through. SENT it to two friends and book marked it for another listen AND ordered a book he referenced AND signed up for the sense and nonsense website!! effective speaker. drop the fillers🙇🏽♀️👩🏽🌾🤎
Critique appreciated as I'm aware I'm not the best public speaker and am trying to improve. I'll correct you though to say I definitely do not speak for a living! I write.
I always felt on an intuitive level that battling invasive species was fighting a dumb fight and our time would be better used doing other things to save the environment
I also had that intuitive feeling, and once I dug into the subject, including the peer-reviewed literature, I found that feeling confirmed. The field of Invasion Biology is full of debate on so many particulars, but there is a general consensus at this point that efforts to eradicate "invasive plants" have mostly been failing, and that these newer arrivals are just here to stay. I'll add that, environmentally, the widespread use of herbicides for such efforts has its own undeniably negative effects, meaning that we can be compounding problems on site, and what's the point of that? I'm co-authoring a book on the subject right now, but in the meantime I would recommend Tao Orion's "Beyond the War on Invasive Species." She worked in restoration for awhile and was shocked by the use of pesticides, and in her book, she takes a deep dive into the many problematic elements of the whole "invasive" narrative.
Such a radically important conversation! Thank you. Have you read Invasive Plant Medicine by Tim Scott? Very practical and helpful. I think, too, we think we are in charge of the earth's plans without realizing the plants and the animals have so much more widom about what's coming and how to prepare for it. What is the invasive barberry doing in my forests? I notice the songbirds and the small rodents and bunnies find refuge there--which has brought more fishers and coyotes to my yard. The ash trees are all dying...but what are they making room for. The problem with Nature Conservation is that it violates the principle tenet of nature which is CHANGE. How can we align ourselves with those changes, collaborate with them, and experience their healing?
I haven’t read it, but it looks like I have a sample of it on my kindle, so I must have crossed paths with it somewhere before. I’ll have to see if I can pick up a used copy somewhere. Tyson Yunkaporta has some really interesting points about how indigenous Australians meet and get to know non-native plants too. And yes, the plants’ wisdom for healing the earth’s injury is astounding. We have a profusion of Black Locust here (which I don’t think is native to this area), but it is busy about the work of replenishing the nitrogen in our soils, which farming wiped out (and of course dandelion and burdock and plantain and all of their earth healing powers). I think you’re right that in general, we have this feeling that we “should” be in control of the trajectory of an ecosystem, which is kind of fascinating psychopathology in itself, I think.
Yes, CHANGE. Absolutely. Sonia Shah wrote a book called, "The Next Great Migration" and in it she writes about "the myth of an orderly, unchanging world," which she identifies as an artifact of the Book of Genesis in particular and Abrahamic religion in general.
And absolutely I believe that the plants and animals have so much more wisdom about that's coming and how to prepare for it. They're certainly more readily adaptable than we in modern human culture are because they just do it and we have to be convinced, lol.
I have read Invasive Plant Medicine yes, though it was years ago. Probably you've also read Stephen Harrod Buhner? If not, I think you'd like him.
I've ordered Shah's book. Yes, excellent. Have you read Otherlands by Thomas Halliday???It's such a deconstruction of Edenic mythologies. He has two assertions as he moves through geological epochs with a poet's visionary wisdom--nature is change, and nature is not nostaligic. As to Buhner, I am a longtime fan and that's how I found Tim's work.
Thanks for sharing this great conversation and offering your insights on the topic of "invasive" plants.
Here in Ontario people get really over excited about demonizing "invasive" plants and the government staff here in parks spray glyphosate (poisoning animals, beneficial insects, humans and killing the soil life) in the name of their war on "invasives". Totally backwards and insane, for people that claim to be experts in ecology use systemic biocides (antibiotics) in forest ecosystems and waterways.
One of the plants that is high up on the chemical warfare hit list for Eden Ecologists is Phragmites australis.
Rather than demonize and engage with a futile chemical war against that well established plant, I have been striving to recognize the gifts offered by the plant and to receive them in a way that simultaneously increases opportunities for native species to reclaim some territory.
So far I have managed to harvest the tallest plants, dry and then use the bottom 4 feet of rigid stem instead of imported bamboo support posts for pepper and tomato plants in the garden, I also harvest the seed fluff and use it as insulation in homemade bush crafted pillows and the most promising use for the plant material I have found so far is I have experimented with using the grinded up Phragmites stems as a substrate for growing Oyster mushrooms.
The idea was hatched when I was reading Peter McCoy's excellent book (The Mycocultural Revolution) and when I got to the section of the book about growing oyster mushrooms (on a straw substrate in buckets) we happened to be driving by an endless sea of Phragmites australis growing in a vacant lot and this got me to thinking. What about using the stalks of Phragmites in the place of straw (or at least as the main bulk of the substrate with some other nutrients added in if need be)?
Turns out I am not the first person to think of this idea. Below are some research articles that focus on using ground up and hydrated Phragmites australis stems/stalks as a substrate for growing Oyster mushrooms. It seems that the material does indeed work as a suitable substrate. I have experimented with this myself on a small scale with success and will be scaling up.
I have found that single harvest can yield at least two (and often 3) separate end products (with the spent myceliated reed stalk oyster mushroom blocks being able to be used either to feed animals afterwards or build soil fast).
I share some pics and in depth descriptions of those efforts about half way down this photography post:
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/nourishing-november
Research and data on the viability of using Phragmites australis stalks/stems as a substrate for growing oyster mushrooms :
- https://www.academia.edu/62013452/Cultivation_of_Agaricus_bisporus_X25_on_Reed_Plant_Phragmites_australis_Straw_Decomposed_by_Using_Actinomycetes
- https://outsidethehops.wordpress.com/2014/12/26/growing-oyster-mushrooms-from-wild-grasses/?fbclid=IwAR1oL_NQLjjyIlruszsYZNz4DN9fYipso3c4lhtXMFedf7N58qBCNvm9EGA
- https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/1060/1/012060/pdf
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889157522005427
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29801232/
- https://www.slu.se/globalassets/ew/org/inst/huv/forskning/vass/wetlands.pdf
-----------------------------------------------
For info on how to grow oyster mushrooms in containers (such as buckets or laundry baskets):
- https://northspore.com/blogs/the-black-trumpet/growing-mushrooms-in-buckets-containers
- https://outsidethehops.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/oyster-mushrooms-straw-bucket-tech/
- https://www.fieldforest.net/product/oysters-on-straw-instruction-sheet/instruction-sheets
- Growing Oyster Mushrooms in a Bucket: How to use a bucket and pasteurized straw to grow mushrooms:
Thanks for this great wealth of resources Gavin. We are in the same boat here in MN and WI. Some people even cut down black locust because they are invasive, which is just mad as far as I'm concerned. I'm trying to stay creative with the uses for buck thorn and tartarian honeysuckle here.
Glad you appreciate the info.
Yes Black Locust can be a benefit when it exists in a certain context.
This is unrelated to invasive species, but I am currently writing an article on regenerative mariculture and regenerative ocean farming (seaforestation) and I am curious if you have ever done a plant profile or research on oceanic medicine/food plants (aka sea vegetables) ?
I haven't yet. As a midwesterner, I don't think about the ocean as often as I should, though as someone of Irish Descent, I'm super interested in seaweed as a food source.
I used to live on the west coast so harvesting bull kelp (and other seaweeds, both for eating and enriching my grandparents garden soil) and shellfish was a big part of my childhood, but ya my interest now is certainly connected to wanting to learn more about my ancestral ethnobotanical connections and also considering over 40% of humans live within 100 km of the ocean I wanted to at least provide some info on how people can interact with the ocean regeneratively. Growing kelp and having oyster or clam gardens (creating biodiversity enhancing tidal zone habitat) are some of the things I am researching now. I have found records and archeological data points dating back close to a thousand years now that show Oyster gardening and Dulse gardening (involving cultural modification of ocean shore habitat for enhancing long term harvesting capacity and enriching biodiversity of other choice edible species) was part of ancient Gaelic culture. There is a more well studied history here on Turtle Island, but it appears that our ancestors also engaged in forms of regenerative mariculture or ocean gardening.
So cool!
Thanks man! I came across an author during my research for the Regenerative Ocean Farming and Marine Permaculture article which offers a unique perspective on "invasive plants" that I think you guys would appreciate.
The book is called "Medicine Wheel for the Planet
A Journey toward Personal and Ecological Healing"
by Dr. Jennifer Grenz.
The author is a woman with indigenous blood connected to the Salish people of the pacific coast of Turtle Island but she was brought up in a fully government propaganda colonized, assimilated and indoctrinated family and had a conventional ecology education. She became a specialist in waging war on so called "invasives" and then embarked on a path of awakening, remembering and looking at things from the perspective of her ancestors (requiring much unlearning and decolonizing of her adversarial viewpoint that conventional education inculcated into her with regards to some plants).
Glad you appreciated the conversation, Gavin! And thanks for all the links about Phragmites. I will be checking them out, as my co-author, Nikki Hill, and I might include a section about this plant in our upcoming book. It's quite an interesting subject, since it's a species that is cosmopolitan in distribution, with different subspecies in different regions. The North American sub-species apparently grows less vigorously with the introduced sub-species, and they are also hybridizing. Interestingly (and maybe this is one of your links) the hybrids are able to tolerate higher levels of contamination than the native sub-species, which goes a long way in explaining why it is successful. Because so many of our waterways are polluted!
Fascinating to hear about your uses of this plant! I admire both your open mind and your ingenuity!!
You are very welcome. Here are some more uses for the plant https://www.ediblewildfood.com/common-reed.aspx#:~:text=It%20can%20be%20dried%2C%20ground,at%20their%20peak%20for%20taste.
I was more focusing on removing large amounts of plant material and using in ways that can enrich local soils for other plants at the end of their usefulness but directly edible features of the plant are worth while too (especially if someone was to find a good recipe for pickling large amounts of the rhizomes in a tasty format.
I did touch on the inherent capacity of species in that family to hyper-accumulate certain toxins but did not get into the hybrid aspect.
I also admire your open mind and would like to get one of your books. Given what you know of my work so far, which of your published works would you recommend I start with? :)
I Loved this convo! Thank you. Very informative. As an avid gardener/immigrant, I find the term invasive very derogatory. Even the language we use is warring and violent.
I don’t agree with the definition of invasive as it relates to living beings. Be they plants, bacteria, or plants.
I hope we can be open to relational repair both on micro and macro levels.
Radical reframing is so vital and this interview does just that!
Thanks Nessa! Yes, something is invasive, but it's not the plants. That's what I loved about that term invasive land ethics. There's this really lovely children's book called The Other Way to Listen that speaks to that old new way of relating.
this was fascinating to listen to. i have a modest background in eco agriculture and learned something like this but not at such a high level
of irrefutable and wise facts. thank you for that. i just wish those who speak for a
living would simply stand on their square and eliminate the filler words,like like and right and you know. it is apologetic and immature to be so unbelievably knowledgeable only to speak like a teen age girl. we should speak as if to the most intelligent person in the space. let’s give up the teen speak forever.
Glad the conversation was enriching! Speech is so variable regionally and generationally. I don't think either of us were trying to water down what we were saying, but it is incredibly difficult to identify and eliminate vocal habits while still saying something worth listening to.
i think it’s quite simple: be plain in speech. be as intelligent and knowledgeable as you actually are( which your guest is. and empathetic) and trust your listeners to follow and understand. so much of todays communication amounts to this kind of fawning with filler words to signal ‘i’m not smarter than you,so i hope you’ll go along with what i’m saying/sharing/teaching.’ just be smart and articulate minus the you knows and like and right. this horrendous habit has zero to do with regionalism. it is an absolute plague of language in america today. regionalism is about CHOICE of words. ie: soda pop coke. that’s regionalism. i listened the whole way through. SENT it to two friends and book marked it for another listen AND ordered a book he referenced AND signed up for the sense and nonsense website!! effective speaker. drop the fillers🙇🏽♀️👩🏽🌾🤎
Critique appreciated as I'm aware I'm not the best public speaker and am trying to improve. I'll correct you though to say I definitely do not speak for a living! I write.
Glad you got something out of it anyway. 😁
I always felt on an intuitive level that battling invasive species was fighting a dumb fight and our time would be better used doing other things to save the environment
As a person who is guided by my mind to a fault, I always love those times that I can get some rational/science-y confirmation of my intuition:)
I also had that intuitive feeling, and once I dug into the subject, including the peer-reviewed literature, I found that feeling confirmed. The field of Invasion Biology is full of debate on so many particulars, but there is a general consensus at this point that efforts to eradicate "invasive plants" have mostly been failing, and that these newer arrivals are just here to stay. I'll add that, environmentally, the widespread use of herbicides for such efforts has its own undeniably negative effects, meaning that we can be compounding problems on site, and what's the point of that? I'm co-authoring a book on the subject right now, but in the meantime I would recommend Tao Orion's "Beyond the War on Invasive Species." She worked in restoration for awhile and was shocked by the use of pesticides, and in her book, she takes a deep dive into the many problematic elements of the whole "invasive" narrative.
Yay!! So excited to Tend the Hearth with you, Amy!! And thank you for this reframe around invasive plants and how we relate to the Earth.
Thanks Ellen, it will be great to create some coziness together, and I love to help misunderstood plants get better understood :)
Thanks so much for making this happen, Amy! I really enjoyed it.
Me too, we'll have to dream about more ways to improve understanding of the misunderstood plants out there.
Such a radically important conversation! Thank you. Have you read Invasive Plant Medicine by Tim Scott? Very practical and helpful. I think, too, we think we are in charge of the earth's plans without realizing the plants and the animals have so much more widom about what's coming and how to prepare for it. What is the invasive barberry doing in my forests? I notice the songbirds and the small rodents and bunnies find refuge there--which has brought more fishers and coyotes to my yard. The ash trees are all dying...but what are they making room for. The problem with Nature Conservation is that it violates the principle tenet of nature which is CHANGE. How can we align ourselves with those changes, collaborate with them, and experience their healing?
I haven’t read it, but it looks like I have a sample of it on my kindle, so I must have crossed paths with it somewhere before. I’ll have to see if I can pick up a used copy somewhere. Tyson Yunkaporta has some really interesting points about how indigenous Australians meet and get to know non-native plants too. And yes, the plants’ wisdom for healing the earth’s injury is astounding. We have a profusion of Black Locust here (which I don’t think is native to this area), but it is busy about the work of replenishing the nitrogen in our soils, which farming wiped out (and of course dandelion and burdock and plantain and all of their earth healing powers). I think you’re right that in general, we have this feeling that we “should” be in control of the trajectory of an ecosystem, which is kind of fascinating psychopathology in itself, I think.
Yes, CHANGE. Absolutely. Sonia Shah wrote a book called, "The Next Great Migration" and in it she writes about "the myth of an orderly, unchanging world," which she identifies as an artifact of the Book of Genesis in particular and Abrahamic religion in general.
And absolutely I believe that the plants and animals have so much more wisdom about that's coming and how to prepare for it. They're certainly more readily adaptable than we in modern human culture are because they just do it and we have to be convinced, lol.
I have read Invasive Plant Medicine yes, though it was years ago. Probably you've also read Stephen Harrod Buhner? If not, I think you'd like him.
Thanks for the comment!
I've ordered Shah's book. Yes, excellent. Have you read Otherlands by Thomas Halliday???It's such a deconstruction of Edenic mythologies. He has two assertions as he moves through geological epochs with a poet's visionary wisdom--nature is change, and nature is not nostaligic. As to Buhner, I am a longtime fan and that's how I found Tim's work.
Halliday sounds like he's totally up my alley, thanks!
This comment doesn't deserve a response due to its tone: "I don't know who you're shilling for but it's pathetic."