Vanilla eXee
These are some good tips! I've been wondering similar things. I generally know if I want something or not in my garden, but as for the things that I don't want, I need a way of identifying them so I can tell if they're poisonous or not. You can never have too many edible green things when you have a tortoise and chickens. I haven't seen any dandelions here, which makes me sad. Those are Lazy's favorite.Puff dandelions are native to Europe and are one of the great annoyances to people who want flawless lawns, they're abundant as hell.
If you want some dandelions, you could easily go look for some in some less attended gardens, their rosettes are easy to find since they grow either very flat to the ground or have a few long leaves out at an angle.
You can leave a plot of soil empty and let nature take its course and wait for a seed to come by and germinate. Many a times dandelions don't really grow in areas that are very well established, since they're pioneers. So if bare compost and soil are left alone, likely a dandelion or brassica or some kind of onion will start popping up...or...some other new plant.
OR you can offer to weed your neighbor's yard, likely they'll have some if they're not the obsessive NO-WEED yard and garden.
Most of the time you don't even have to wait for the puff to fully form. You can easily pull off the yellow head and stem if its mature and been shining its awesome glory for some time, (make a pretty crown
blaugh ) and put it in a dry place and it will start forming its seeds and it's fluff at that time, you can probably pull it apart and start your own dandelion salad bar plot, or your Tortoise or Chicken's all you can eat buffet.
Dandelions are compound flowers and very likely don't have an issue when it comes to self fertilization, also their flowers are attractive to bees and butterflies. Soooo.... yeah! More pollinators!
There alot of uses for dandelion, you can just google them! There's Dandelion syrup, jam, salad, quick garden ointment for itches
For poisonous plants pick up a guide or google them. Garden forums are pretty awesome just post your picture and someone is likely to answer them. I like to just google, since if its a weed or some kind of invasive all you have to do is wait for it to mature, and then google their leaf shape, flower color, or type ie vine bush, etc, their fruits.
If they're young, I usually I don't really care, and just yank them up. If in doubt, bag it and don't put it to your compost pile.
9_9 I haven't been gardening for a very long time, an on-off kind of girl, but my garden and yard has been neglected for 4 years since I went away to college. So coming back I'm looking up a lot of plants and I've always like those cotton balls.
smile Also an easy way of finding dandelions. Don't mow a part of your lawn for a while. Or don't weed a spot for a while.
My uncle use to have a rabbit and purposefully didn't mow the back corner of his yard so he'd just put the cage out and let his rabbit munch it all down. It was a fat rabbit. And that rabbit hated pellets.
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