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This is a supremely beautiful ecological story, a story which illustrates, to perfection, the sheer and essentially inexhaustible power of a "biodynamic" agriculture.
The Canada thistle is a major scourge of all grain farmers in the U.S. and Canada. It infests their fields and degrades and devalues their grain crops. Tall, easily reaching 5 feet practically 'overnight', strong, painfully sharp, and incredibly tenacious, hardy and rampant, it propagates by millions of seeds and innumerable deep underground runners (stolons), and has proven to be 'impossible' to eradicate. |
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent over the last 5 decades both in the U.S. and Canada on efforts to get rid of this painful scourge of North American farmers. But all to no avail. Nothing, not even strong poison, has been able to deter this thistle in any way at all.
Fortunately, there were no Canada thistles anywhere on or around our place on Salt Spring Island, and our market gardens flourished without any sign of this implacable nemesis of all farmers. That is until the owners put in a new septic field for their new house. And since the Bobcat was here anyway, we decided to put in a drainage ditch running down the center of our market gardens as well.
Well, the next thing that happened was that we got, out of nowhere and practically 'overnight', a proud and stately forest of Canada thistles running along both sides of the new ditch, and around the perimeter of the new septic field. And thriving on the 'goodies' of the septic field, the septic field thistle forest was the most spectacular of all. Those thistles were as tall as I was, and at 5'-7, nothing to sneeze at.
But the most incredible thing about it all was this. There was an invisible line in the ground which the thistles did not cross. A thick forest of stately thistles on the other side, and less than a hair's breadth away, on this side of that invisible line, there were no thistles. None; zilch; zero. How could that be????
I mean I had, altogether, about 2.500 feet of that thistle border, and it was exactly the same story - at every inch and every centimeter - all along that border. A thick forest of stately thistles on one side of this hairbreadth line, and none at all on the other side. This puzzled me no end.
Since the new thistle forest followed the edges of the excavations, I decided to check out the soil. We had carefully separated the rich topsoil from the barren subsoil, and filled in the excavations in order; first came the subsoil, and then the saved topsoil on top again. But there is only so much one can do with a Bobcat. Inevitably, some subsoil ended up on top, and particularly along the borders of the excavations.
The cause now appeared to be obvious. I found that the thistles grew only in the turned-up subsoil, and simply did not grow in the rich topsoil next to it. The simplest and easiest solution then seemed to be, if my hypothesis was correct, a substantial and rapid increase of the quality and fertility of the poor subsoil. Fertility was no problem since we had lots of chicken manure from our chickens. But obviously, this would not be enough, as the particularly stately thistle forest feasting on the goodies from the septic field so vividly demonstrated. It was clear that I also had to increase the organic content of this subsoil as rapidly and massively as I could. But how was I going to get all that organic material on our severely stretched budget?
Well, it slowly dawned on me that the solution might well be standing right before my eyes. A thick and stately forest of first class organic material in the shape of thistles - and best of all, it did not cost a cent.
So, to try my hypothesis, I went ahead and sheared the thistles at about 6 inches above the ground - to make sure they would grow again - and laid the shearings over as a thick thistle mulch. On top of it came some chicken manure, along with a sprinkling of seaweed - also free from the local beach - to hasten decay. Seaweed is great for that.
We followed the same procedure several times that year, as the thistles soon grew through the mulch to their accustomed stately height. In late fall, and again in early spring, I rototilled the whole thing into the ground. The next year, the thistles came up a lot thinner, and much sparser. Nevertheless, we followed the same procedure again, letting them grow to their full height, and as we had done in the previous year, making sure to shear them before they could make seeds. Rototilling in late fall and early spring then returned all that mass of beautiful organic material into the soil.
There were hardly any thistles in the third year, and none at all in the fourth year - and every since. We had defeated the undefeatable thistle with itself, and in the process had turned barren subsoil into rich and beautifully fertile topsoil.
[Author's note: I've been back to the 'old place' in Sept. 1999 - over 15 years after my battle with the Canada thistle. There is still no sign of any Canada thistle anywhere - although the owners just do a bit of flower gardening here and there.]
Everything about the Canada thistle worked in our favour; its rapid, rampant growth; its incredible hardiness and tenacity; its deep ranging roots which bring up a wide range of precious trace elements from the subsoil; and the small mountains of organic material so generously provided by the Canada thistle itself. It worked like a charm.
It is obvious now that the Canada thistle is - like moss growing on stone - another of Mother Nature's pioneer plants. And it is the best kind of pioneer plant one could wish for. It thrives in subsoil, and once its mission of turning barren subsoil into rich topsoil - via its own growth and decay - is accomplished, it goes away by itself. All we did was to accelerate this natural process.
It is also just as obvious now that the steady loss of topsoil caused by modern farming methods, and the consequent plowing-up of more and more subsoil season after season, is an open invitation to the Canada thistle to come and do its job. And it does. And it does so with all the vigour, tenacity, might and sheer growing power it is endowed with.
This understanding now gives us a beautiful and highly productive method of getting rid of the Canada thistle. There are two ways. We can either rapidly and substantially raise the quality of problem soils with brought-in organic additives, which is a rather expensive project. Or, we can let the thistle itself do the job, as described above, and reap a profit in the bargain.
The average Canada thistle produces 1 million seeds in one season. And although they are very small, they are highly nutritious, due to the thistle's deep roots in the trace mineral-rich subsoil (the same holds true, by the way, for the thistle mulch). Canada thistle seed could well be a viable cash crop, since its yield of 1 million seeds per thistle far surpasses the yield of a typical grain plant. And most probably, the Canada thistle could well provide two, or even three harvests per year.
Here, in the Pacific Northwest, I have been utterly astonished by the thistle's sheer tenacity. There was one thistle which grew in an incidental subsoil patch in the middle of a walk near the new drainage ditch. Since it was in the middle of the walk, I just kept cutting it off and tossing the cuttings onto the thistle mulch. Well, this thing tried and tried to grow sufficiently to come to bloom and produce seeds with the greatest of determination. The last I saw of it was in the middle of October, by then a 2" high gnarled and twisted dwarf parody of the proud thistle. But what astonished me so much was that this tiny gnarled thing carried, against impossible odds, and that late in the season, a single purple blossom. I was almost overwhelmed by this little thing's heroic determination to fulfill its universal mandate to perpetuate its species.
I do not know whether a thistle will bloom and go to seed again, after it is allowed to go to seed. But, and given the example of the incredible tenacity of this miniscule remnant of a thistle, I think it will if it is sheared at about 6 inches after harvest and allowed to grow again.
Again, we are shown that our modern farming methods are, to put it honestly, plain crazy. First, we provide ideal growing conditions for the Canada thistle, and then when it appears, as it must, we fight it, albeit spectacularly unsuccessfully, with all manner of strong poisons, while utterly ignoring the great cornucopia of wealth the thistle offers. If this isn't crazy, I don't know what is.
PS. Both the U.S. and the Canadian governments have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on research to get rid of the Canada thistle, and all to no avail. Here is a surefire method for getting rid of and preventing Canada thistle infestations, while rapidly increasing soil quality and fertility and, perhaps, even making a profit. Is it worth a million bucks to these governments? It should be, by rights; and I, at least, think so.
NEXT
- a larger and better picture of the Canada Thistle for those who are interested in the Canada and similar Thistles. This page takes about 11 seconds to download at 28 Kbs.
All comments are most welcome, and I'll gladly answer any questions you may have pweis@shaw.ca
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