When I arrived over a year ago to the Johnson Quinta, I found it very easy to get lost. It took me a while to learn the lands, and find my feet, but eventually I stopped falling down the mountain everyday and even started to be able to walk up the hill without feeling out of breath.
There are so many exciting aspects to this farm I have discovered along the way, with many areas showing huge potential that get added to the long list of areas Magnus needs to go through with a chainsaw. However, there is one plant that really begins to make me think my mothers habit of spraying with Roundup in only a t-shirt and denim shorts isn't really as crazy as it may seem. That plant isn't cana roca or the false tobacco plant. It is this:
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Mexican Pepperleaf |
Now, I have a 'to do' list that goes on forever, so if someone recommended to me that I should grow an aromatic herb that gives you superpowers, but I hadn't even heard of it, alarm bells would be ringing. I'm all for growing herbs that your average human uses, anything else can get grown in pots when I have nothing better to do.
The woman 'running' the gardens before me decided to plant it in the home gardens, on the sloped area, where the soil is beautiful but quite uncontrollable until we are able to build a long stone/concrete wall - essentially a garden fortress. So, this plant has found it very easy to sprawl across this area, going through the camellia hedge, and up the mountain. It's underground runners are huge and aggressive. Neighbouring farmers in Fazenda, if I wasn't here killing this plant for you, i'm afraid it would appear in your fields in no time 😟 and this is what you find when you dig out the plant:
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| Seems very similar to false tobacco, but spreads underground. |
The older the plant is, the more it becomes like a tree and impossible to completely remove. See https://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/530/#b for accounts of this plant. The research is clear that this is one of the worst plants you could put into your garden if you are in an area that does not experience frost, and it must instead be contained in a pot. It took a 5 minute internet search to figure that out, and it took her 5 minutes to plant it into the ground. I have already spent many days removing this plant, and I anticipate that it will take many more days of work, year after year, to guarantee that one day Mexican Pepperleaf will not be in the gardens.
Last spring/summer, I had the fortune of having volunteers to help me remove this species for the first time. One volunteer, after many sweaty hours removing the roots, suggested we get some dynamite and blow up the areas the Mexican Pepperleaf occupies. Good idea, but instead we collected all the debris in the area, started a fire, and I found the tree like stems do burn quite well. So, I spent a pleasant evening throwing the evil plant into the fire.
The second phase of removal took on a wider area. It took me around 3/4 days of work to complete. I found it very frustrating to see how the plant entwines around everything in its path. A very large root system had become embedded in the roofing tiles that had been put in the ground to make a garden bed, which was not a well thought out idea given I had to dig a meter down to remove all the tiles. Some of the roots found a home within cana roca roots that are stacked on top of each other, and others found their home within stone walls and underneath huge rocks. I started to remove so many rocks during the removal process, that I figured it was best to create a rock bed where the plant can be stacked to make sure it rots away and does not re-root itself.
Having removed the plant for the second time, I can now turn some of my attention to landscaping the gardens. The stone walls Magnus built are the only structures I won't be changing, and the small 'greenhouse' will keep for another year until I can budget for something more productive. I need to put together another set of stairs out of concrete blocks, build a garden bed with stones that was not done correctly before, eradicate the long grass from the pathways, and replace a lot of the wood that holds together the garden beds. There was also a 'flower' garden, which makes little sense to me when it could be a great area to grow peas, so I am transplanting all the flowers to surround the garden beds. I am also in the process of removing comfry which is currently taking up valuable space inside the beds.
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